3 2 Life in the Open 



fill the air with fragrance, and star the green trees of 

 the groves with silver frosting. 



The country in the open is running riot with flow- 

 ers. It has been a rainy winter and the fall came early. 

 Twenty inches have fallen, and, as though touched with 

 a magic wand, the gray sombre beauties of the land 

 have melted imperceptibly into green. You may almost 

 see it spread and kindle into flame, so subtle, so rapid, 

 is the response of nature to the call of winter or spring. 

 Over all the land is spread a carpet of alfileria, soft as 

 velvet, and radiant in changes of shade and tint, as the 

 days slip away. On this carpet flowers are budding 

 and blooming, and as the trout are pushing up-stream 

 against the floods that are coming down, the land be- 

 comes a garden of many colours. The upland slopes, 

 the great mesa in the San Gabriel and beyond, a're a 

 blaze of golden yellow. The copa de oro has opened, 

 and the land is a field of the cloth of gold, the cups of 

 gold covering barren slopes, drawing a mantle over 

 ragged wastes and washes, as though all the mines of 

 Southern California were flowing liquid gold that ran 

 over the length and breadth of the land. 



There is a procession of flowers as the weeks pass : 

 bells of cream among the barley or by the roadside, 

 bells of blue along the trails, violets of gold and brown 

 in the fields or on the hillsides, radiant crucifers in yel- 

 low and white, shooting-stars, mariposa lilies, and a host 

 of others. While it is still winter in the East, South- 

 ern California is a wild-flower garden. 



