44 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



light, a long, wooded slope was a lovely pattern of lavender 

 and straw yellow, streaked with the white verticals of young 

 birch trees. The lavender came from birch buds in the 

 western light, the yellow from the poplar tops. The spring 

 where we paused to drink was gushing full, and farther 

 along the roadside the hepaticas were brave amid last year's 

 leaves. 



But when the hepaticas have come, Winter is almost 

 in full retreat. The lavender birch buds will soon be a 

 frail green veil, and then, after a day of hot sun, a fresh, 

 intense colour note on every hillside. Soon the great 

 elm limbs that arch over our village street will be hazy 

 with a hint of red, and then red indeed against the pale 

 blue sky. A new note comes into the sunset then, a 

 new star into the west. Our village street runs east and 

 west almost on the compass line, and the winter sunset 

 glow is framed by the delicate, naked tracery of the 

 arching elm boughs. But when the red fuzz has sud- 

 denly appeared on the trees the whole quality of this 

 frame is altered, and with it the quality of the western 

 glow. It is as if a new colour note of warmth had been 

 sounded. At the same time, too, with the lengthening 

 twilight, comes the hour of the lone evening star, not 

 with the suddenness of Winter, the obscuring haze of 

 Summer, but swelling slowly into the western vista out 

 of the afterglow, with a sweet serenity. 



Now like a crop from the famous dragon's teeth the 

 iris spears will be stiffening up all over the garden, and 

 in the woods a wake robin will nod in a shaft of sun by 



