High Moon 
abundant sowing of stick-tights, tick-seeds, and 
burdock burs. 
There is little beauty, fragrance, or even economic 
value in this wild, overrunning host of thistles, docks, 
daisies, plantains, yarrows, carrots, that now possess 
the earth ; but when they crowd out along the dusty 
roadsides and cover the sterile, neglected, and un- 
sightly places, we can sing, like the good gray poet, 
“the leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds” in 
our “Song of Joys.” 
There is certainly some praise due the chicory, 
or blue corn-flower, for it is a waste transformer, a 
“slummer” among flowers, if ever there was one. 
Like the daisy, it is a foreigner; but unlike the 
daisy, its coming is wholly benevolent. It asks only 
the roadsides, and for these along only the choked, 
deserted stretches; and where the summer dust lies 
deepest. Coarse, common, weedy, it doubtless is; 
but it never droops in the heat, and its blue shines 
through the smother like azure through the mists of 
the sky. 
The winds and the birds are the sowers of the 
wayside, and to them I am indebted for this touch of 
midsummer color. But they miss certain spots along 
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