Flowers in Colorado. 



stem pushes up, 

 until you sud- 

 denly find some 

 day in a spot 

 where you left 

 low clumps of 

 what you will 

 persist, for a 

 time, in calling 

 blue crocuses, 

 great bunches 

 of waving blue 

 flowers, on slender stems from six to twelve inches high, 

 the blossoms grown larger and opened wider, till they look 

 like small tulip cups, like the Italian anemones. A week 

 or two later you find at the base of these clumps a beau- 

 tiful fringing mat of leaves, resembling the buttercup leaf, 

 but much more deeply and numerously slashed on the 

 edges. These, too, grow at last away from the ground, 

 and wave in the air ; and by the time they are well up, 

 many of the flowers have gone to seed, and on the top 



9 



