September 

scape-gardening. How strangely these autumn 
flowers quietly bide their time through all the 
enticing warmth of spring and stronger heat of 
early summer, until, after the year’s decline has 
begun, as if startled out of their absent-minded- 
ness, they suddenly shoot up their tall stems, to 
be quickly laden with rank foliage and coarse 
blossoms. It isasort of carnival of golden-rods 
and multitudinous asters: that hold full sway in 
this belated season, as if they had an instinct 
of congruity in both herding together, and also 
in keeping themselves apart from the more deli- 
cate forms of life prevailing in spring and 
summer—playing the part of the picturesque 
rabble that brings up the rear of the great an- 
nual procession of vegetation. 
269 
