CHAPTER XVI 
ARIZONA GARDENS 
T is difficult to imagine, in looking at this 
rough mountain country in December, 
what a garden it will become in March and 
April, for many flowers exhale their sweetness 
on the desert air for the bee and the moth. 
Early in January the cottonwoods bloom and 
the first leaves appear on the ocotilla. By 
February the white spirea is in flower while 
perhaps a castilleia glows here and there like 
a coal on the rock. Thenceforth the lava 
peaks and the basalt mesas daily soften their 
mood and yield themselves more and more 
to the gentle influence of the flowers. Ina 
land so rude and savage, where the mountains 
were vomited from the fiery throats of vol- 
canoes, the contrast of the flowers with their 
stern setting enhances their delicacy a hund- 
red fold. 
In February the sensitive brier puts out its 
feathery old-rose coloured blossoms and little 
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