Then, besides, to an American, May-day is usually a surprise in itself.
You never can tell what it will bring, for it is by no means the
amiable and guileless child of the poets, breathing perfumed south wind
and followed by young lambs through meadows knee deep in grass and
flowers.

In the course of fifteen years I have seen four May-days when there was
enough grass to blow in the wind and frost had wholly left for the
season; to balance this there have been two brief snow squalls, three
deluges that washed even big beans out of ground, and a scorching
drought that reduced the brooks, unsheltered by leafage, to August
shallowness. But to-day has been entirely lovable and full of the
promise that after all makes May the garden month of the year, the time
of perfect faith, hope, and charity when we may believe all things!

This morning I took a stroll in the woods, partly to please the dogs,
for though they always run free, they smile and wag furiously when they
see the symptoms that tell that I am going beyond the garden. What a
difference there is between the north and south side of things! On the
south slope the hepaticas have gone and the columbines show a trace of
red blood, while on the north, one is in perfection and the other only
as yet making leaves. This is a point to be remembered in the garden, by
which the season of blooming can be lengthened for almost all plants
that do not demand full, unalloyed sun, like the rose and pink families.

Every year I am more and more surprised at the hints that can be carried
from the wild to the cultivated. For instance, the local soil in which
the native plants of a given family nourish is almost always sure to
agree better with its cultivated, and perhaps tropical, cousin than the