W^S^ (Uoon 



crowded, communal. The odors mingle now and drift 

 wide on the winds, and as wide on the hillsides spread 

 the colors, gold and green and white, and, where the 

 rocky pasture runs down to the woods, the pink of 

 the steeple-bush, like a flush of dawn. 



Across my neighbor's pasture lies this soft glory 

 of the spireas all through July. It runs in irregular 

 streams down to the brook, rising there into a low- 

 hanging bank of mist where the clustering spires of 

 pink are interspersed with the taller, whiter meadow- 

 sweet, — the "willow-leaved spirea." 



There are shadowy rooms in the deep woods where 

 the spring lingers until the leaves of autumn begin 

 to fall. Here, in July, I can find the little twin flow- 

 ers Linnea and Mitchella, blossoms that should have 

 opened with the bloodroot and anemone. But Life 

 has largely fled the woods and left them empty and 

 still. She is out in the open, along the roadsides, 

 rioting in the sun. The time of her maidenhood 

 is gone. She is entirely maternal now, bent on re- 

 plenishing the earth, on reseeding it against all pos- 

 sibility of death. She covers the ground with seed, 

 and fills the very air with seed that the winds may 

 sow. She has grown lusty, bold, almost defiant, no 



^55 



