MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD 



ranks of individual beauties, so that May flow- 

 ers shall hardly be upon the wing, when 

 the blossoms of June shall flame over 

 their heads; and June in its turn have 

 hardly lost its miracles of color, when 

 July shall commence its intermittent fires, 

 and light up its trail of splendor around all 

 the skirts of the shrubbery. I want to see the 

 delicate white of the Clematis (Virginica) 

 hanging its graceful festoons of August, here 

 and there in the thickets that have lost their 

 summer flowers; and after this I welcome the 

 black berries of the Privet, or the brazen ones 

 of the twining Bitter-sweet. 



Or, it is some larger group with which we 

 deal — half up the hill-side, screening some 

 ragged nursery of rocks — and a tall Lom- 

 bardy-poplar lifts from its centre, while shin- 

 ing, yellowish Beeches group around it — crowd- 

 ing it, forcing all its leafy vigor (just where 

 we wish it) into the topmost shoots; and amid 

 the Beeches are dark spots of young Hem- 

 locks — as if the shadow of a cloud lay just 

 there, and the sun shone on all the rest; and 

 among the Hemlocks, and reaching in jagged 

 bays above and below them are Sumacs (so 

 beautiful, and yet so scorned) lifting out from 

 all the tossing sea of leaves, their solid flame-jets 



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