myriads of short, stiff catkins, one which has lengthened and softened
until it is ready to pour its golden pollen into our palms. We find
neither this nor the crimson stars of the fertile flowers, but the
chirp of a white-throated sparrow directs our eyes to a young aspen
tree from whose every flower-bud spring is peeping.

Nature's first flowers are those of the amentaceous trees, and the
earliest of these are the pussy willow, the quaking asp, and the
hazel. All of them are quick to respond to the kindly influences of a
vase of water and a sunny window and we may have all three of these
first blossoms in a spring bouquet at home by the first of March.
Towards the last of February the catkins of the pussy willows and the
aspens are creeping from beneath their budscales to meet the goddess
of spring half way, and every warm day in March coaxes them a little
farther. Meanwhile the staminate catkins of the hazel are lengthening
and the pistillate buds are swelling, as the sun presses farther
northward at the dawn and the dusk of each day, pushing back the gray
walls of the cañon of night, that the river of day may flow full and
free.

* * * * *

This year some of the aspens heralded the spring. They grew at the
head of a little creek which traversed a long, sunny, sheltered swamp.
Their gray green trunks were in the foreground of the Master Planter's
color design, the darker and taller background being a mixture of wild
cherry, red oak, linden, and white ash. The high notes were given by
the rose purple of the raspberry, the dark maroon of the blackberry,
and the orange varnished budscales of the aspens themselves,--Nature
never forgets her color accents. In the earliest warm days of February