266 



OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



tops, and the tips of sprouts from the stumps o; 

 trees that have been cut, still hold leaves whose 

 pale yellow simulates flowers, as if the trees, like 

 the witch-hazel, had decided to bloom only at the 

 very last moment, preferring the Indian summer 

 to that which came to us in the full flush of June. 

 So it is with the blueberry shrubs. The pinky- 

 red top twigs hold their foliage still but they 

 have sent some of thei'r own flush up into these 

 leaves and they hang there like pasture poinset- 

 tias, waiting to be part of the red of Christmas 

 decorations. The meadow-sweet is in the bloom 

 again, but instead of pinky white racemes top- 

 ping the whorled green on its brown stalk the 

 leaves themselves bloom in pale yellow with pinky 

 flushes that make it as truly a sweet thing of the 

 meadow as when it called the bees in July. The 

 red alders add the coral of their berries and the 

 barberries give the deep rich red of their fruit 

 through which the sun shines with the ruby ef- 

 fect of stained glass windows. The November 

 pasture is less profuse in its colors than it is in 

 earlier autumn but one sees farther in it, and 

 clearer. There are times when the gray walls 

 of its maples and hickories stand illumined by the 

 sunlight slanting through the vivid colors of its 



