AN OLD-FASHIONED COUNTRYSIDE. 



~|T IS now early in May as I write, 

 and the weather is more Hke the 

 usual California March than in 

 any season I remember. June 

 time will be the "one perfect 

 spring-tide," so late and long were 

 the winter rains. The land was full of wild flowers 

 many weeks ago, but the skies have been too 

 changeable for long expeditions into the hills ; the 

 rains are only now ceasing in light, warm showers 

 and mingled sun and cloud. In February, though 

 the long southern slopes of the foothills that bor- 

 der our valley, were sweet and elastic with wild 

 oats and grass growing ever since the first Novem- 

 ber rains, yet there was too much cold and damp- 

 ness to justify picknicking or long explorations for 

 the first flowers of the season. One chose, instead, 

 to climb the vast rock-masses that project from the 

 mountain sides like the old "hill-forts" of forgot- 

 ten tribes of men, for here in the moist, warm 

 crevices are the earliest flowers of the year, white 

 blooms of wild strawberry, and glistening flames of 

 the California poppies. 



When April came this year, it began with sun- 

 shine, and soon there were more flowers in bloom 

 in the valleys and on the hills than in any year I 

 remember since the spring that followed the famous 

 "wet winter" of 1861-62. But after a week of 

 sunlight came another rain, and then more sunshine, 

 and gentle spring showers, such as California does not 

 often have, and grasses, clovers and wild flowers 

 that had almost disappeared from our district, were 

 seen once more, as in the pioneer days before a 

 plow had been started in Alameda. 



As April closed and may began, the especial 

 charms of this marvelous year of great rains and 

 luxuriant growth were such as to impress even old 

 Californians. "Where have all the new flowers 

 come from ?" asks my neighbor who came here only 

 a few years ago, and is planting a young orchard 

 in an old long-pastured field. I cannot quite un- 

 derstand it myself, this sudden appearance of wild 

 bulbs and annuals in the valley where they have 

 not been seen for at least 20 years. They must 

 have "held on" all this while, in hidden corners 

 that plow and scythe could not reach, under fences 

 where the most nomadic heifer was unable to crop 

 them, or else the seeds must have lain unsprouted 



through ordmary seasons, to spring to life in this 

 year of extraordinary rains. It is not only that the 

 hill-pastures are rosy with dodecatheons, brown and 

 golden with wild violets, snow white with gillias, 

 blue with the heavenly azure of nemophilas and the 

 darker shades of larkspurs ; but these, and an in- 

 finite multitude of others, are down in the orchard- 

 planted valley, not in hosts, to be sure, but in shy 

 and beautiful groups, conscious that only once or 

 twice in a quarter of a century can they again 

 blossom in the lovely valley where of old they cov- 

 ered hundreds of acres. On the creek-bottom 

 pastures are "cream cups," lupins and eschscholt- 

 zias now, very rich and glowing, over a few acres ; 

 forty years ago, the whole valley, containing a 

 hundred scjuare miles, was white, golden, rose-col- 

 ored, purple, azure, in mile-wide masses of color 

 at this April-May season. 



I remember it thus in my childhood, when one 

 could gather fifty or sixty different species of wild 

 flowers on the old valley-farm; when they were weeds 

 in the wheat fields, and even grew unplanted in the 

 little garden plot where lilacs and roses were set. 

 Alas ! we sowed and tended many a loudly-adver- 

 tised " novelty " that was not half so fair as the 

 collinsias and pentstemons that were natives of the 

 generous soil. 



In the rich southern counties the roads begin to 

 be dusty ; here in central California they are in 

 perfect condition ; further north they are yet hard 

 to travel, and will be for a month longer. On the 

 lowlands farmers are sowing barley and planting 

 potatoes ; on the uplands the barley fields have 

 already headed out, and hay cutting has fairly be- 

 gun. The rivers of the Coast Range, such streams 

 as the Trinity, the Gualala, Russian, Sonoma, Pa- 

 jaro, San Lorenzo, Salinas, and all the rest clear 

 down to San Diego, are clear as crystal, and yet 

 full-flowing and strong, while on their banks tangle 

 wilder growths of grape vines, clematis and azalea 

 than for 20 years past. The greater and wilder 

 rivers of the Sierras, that flow down from snow 

 height and glacier to the lowland plains, are full to 

 the brim. Such famous rivers as the Merced, Mari- 

 posa, Calaveras and Chowchilla, whose very names 

 are musical, sweep past pink-blossomed apple or- 

 chards and golden-fruited orange groves, and if 

 one climb upward along their courses, he will soon 



