40 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



the two sides of the mound of excavated earth beside 

 them. The south side of the trench, in shadow, is 

 frozen solid, while the north side grows softer and 

 mushier day by day. The side of the piled earth exposed 

 to the sun is also soft, the dark side hard as ever. Day 

 after day in March I have watched those trenches, test- 

 ing with a pick or spade to see when I could begin to 

 sow. Ultimately there comes a day when enough of 

 the ice has melted out of the trench and enough of the 

 excavated earth has become friable, to enable me to 

 plant. Then the carefully soaked and chipped seeds are 

 brought forth, the labelled stakes are prepared, and 

 into ground that, after all, is still cold and wet and full of 

 frozen lumps, go the precious promises of bloom. More 

 than once I have covered the row and risen the next 

 morning to find even the tops of the labels buried hi 

 snow. But once those sweet pea seeds are in the 

 ground, we have ceased to think of Winter. Our faces 

 are set forward toward the Spring. 



The first and sweetest sound of Spring, of course, is 

 the song of the Hylas, those little sappers and miners of 

 the advance guard who attack through the marshes, or 

 even through the melted snow water in the grassy hol- 

 lows beside a country road. In our Berkshire Hills 

 Spring is late in coming, sometimes almost a month 

 later than in New Jersey. There have been seasons 

 when the Hylas did not sing till April (once, to prove 

 the lateness of our season, I ran down my garden slope 



