DECEMBER. 



FLOWERS OUT OF DATE. 



December 4. It is not every year that you can go 

 out and gather a bunch of wild flowers on the first of 

 December. Nor, perhaps, is it worth while to do so 

 even when you can. The lingering poppy, which still 

 makes a bright spot of colour here and there in the 

 weed-margin of a late stubble, is a poor thing when 

 you take it in your hand. It has not had the heart 

 to smooth out its wrinkled petals properly, and it is 

 always borne, as a sort of stumpy afterthought, on a 

 weak side-shoot from some old flowering stem that 

 lost its seeding capsules long ago. All of the other 

 August flowers that have lingered into December 

 scabious, ragwort, toadflax, yarrow, campion, and so 

 on seem equally paltry when you gather them ; for 

 very different chords of sentiment are struck by the 

 last flower of autumn and the first bloom of spring. 

 The early primrose or violet is the virgin promise 

 of the coming beauty of the ripe year; the other 

 suggests as hollow a pretence as the fixed blush 

 on cheeks that are old enough to know better. The 

 December poppy attracts no insects and sets no seed. 

 If the sheep do not tread it into the mud, the frost 

 will cut it down. 



