. In God's out-of-doors. Natural history. Therefore are they welcome. The elms have the earliest cloud of green bloom visiting my woods except the willow. Willows are first comers with their leaves. They come first, the elms follow, and later the buckeye and hickory and walnut and sycamore. Gooseberries leaf early and have a vivid green. The oak-trees are tardier than anybody. They are late sleepers. Even the blue jay's voice does not wake this drowsy sleeper, although it clings in his branches. Nobody but the sun can wake the oak. He is thick-skinned and impervious to hints. The sun must come
. In God's out-of-doors. Natural history. Therefore are they welcome. The elms have the earliest cloud of green bloom visiting my woods except the willow. Willows are first comers with their leaves. They come first, the elms follow, and later the buckeye and hickory and walnut and sycamore. Gooseberries leaf early and have a vivid green. The oak-trees are tardier than anybody. They are late sleepers. Even the blue jay's voice does not wake this drowsy sleeper, although it clings in his branches. Nobody but the sun can wake the oak. He is thick-skinned and impervious to hints. The sun must come and spill flame on his face or ever the oak-tree wakes, and long after all other trees are green the oak's brown leaves with a dogged tenacity hang to their year-long home till the new buds thrust them from their hold. Only new life will loose the grip of death; and when peach and cherry and apple and pear and blackberry take their turn at blooming, O! we have royal mornings on my farm. And then comes the late snowfall of ' falling petals of blooms from apple-trees, and the bees drone and take my honey paying no royalty (like a foreign publisher), and the cooing dove makes lamentation without cause, and the bluebirds chatter so as to warm the heart, and the blue violets make a man wonder at the dainty doings of the fingers of the God of beauty, and the Mayapples hold their parasols to keep the sun from their faces white as fresh snows, and the Sweet Williams hold their blue flowers up like a rustic lad presenting a nosegay to a woman, and the wild crabapple pours its delicious odors on the springtime wind and spring is come to my farm, and April rain drips from the eaves of the glowing leaves, and clouds and sun- light play hide-and-seek over my plowed fields, and young lovers hunt four-leaf clover in my cloverfield, and the birds woo and get married with never the in- tervention of justice or minister, and the frogs sing with melodious voices through the sweet 215 1*^. Please
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectnatural, bookyear1902
