VARIETY IN NEWER FLOWERS 



The May of last year, for gardens in Michigan, was truly the 

 merry month of May. Cold till it opened, when each day grew 

 gradually more spring-like, until in a burst of warmth about 

 the tenth, every tree and shrub seemed to shout for joy in 

 sudden leaf and bloom. Gentle rains fell at precisely the right 

 inter\'als — rains warm and soft: such rains as no one but Mrs. 

 Shorter has perfectly translated into words. 



All night the small feet of the rain 



About my garden ran; 

 Their rill-like voices called and cried 



Until the dawn began. 



May shrubs known to be early and late bloomed together that 

 year. Spircea Thunbergii was in snowy drifts below old lilac 

 Charles X ; f orsj'thias held over almost to these two, and daffo- 

 dils and tulips, below these flowering things, made a wonderful 

 outburst of color, a flowery picture, all enveloped in blossoming 

 apple trees, Asiatic crabs and cherries. Indeed I remember 

 thinking one day that the whole scene was far more pink and 

 white than it was green, yet below all this lay the small fresh 

 leaves of spring. 



There is early in this month, however, a day that exceeds all 

 the others; it is that day on which the apple-tree boughs are 

 all studded with the palest softest green of leaf buds; that day 

 on which hard and soft maples are overlaid with a green that is 

 almost yellow, a sunny green; when the Bradshaw (or is it 

 Burbank?) plum is set with pearls along those drooping twisting 

 up-turning branches — those branches that always make me 

 think of the lifting eaves of a Chinese roof. This day, next to 



