ach us? Yellow loose-strifes and rattle-box are in the swamp, and a
patch of swamp milkweed with brilliant fritillaries sipping nectar
from its purple blossoms. White wands of meadow-sweet, clusters of
sensitive fern, a big shrub of pussy willow with cool green leaves as
grateful now as the white and gold blossoms were in April; white
trunks and fluttering leaves of small aspens where the grosbeak has
just finished nesting; bushy willows and withes of young poplar;
nodding wool-grasses and various headed sedges; all these are between
the roadside and the fence. There the elder puts out blossoms of spicy
snow big as dinner-plates and the Maryland yellow-throat who has four
babies in the bulky nest at the foot of the black-berry bush sits and
sings his "witchity, witchity, witchity." The lark sparrow has her
nest at the foot of a thistle and her mate has perched so often on a
small elm near-by that he has worn several of the leaves from a
topmost twig. In the late afternoons and evenings he sits there and
vies with the indigo bunting who sits on the bare branches at the top
of a tall red oak, throwing back his little head and pouring out sweet
rills of melody. Near him is the dickcissel, incessantly singing from
the twig of a crab-apple; these three make a tireless trio, singing
each hour of the day. The bunting's nest is in a low elm bush close to
the fence where a wee brown bird sits listening to the strains of the
bright little bird above and the little dickcissels have just
hatched out in the nest at the base of a tussock not very far away.

Now the evening primrose at the side of the road has folded all its
yellow petals, marking the near approach of noon. Growing near it on
this rise of the road are lavender-flowered bergamot, blue and gold
spiderwort, milkweeds in a purple glory, black-eyed Susans basking in
the sun, cone-flowers with brown disks and purple petals, like gypsy
maidens with gaudy summer shawls. Closer to the fence are lemon-yellow
coreopsis with quaint, three-cleft leaves; thimble weeds with fruit
columns half a finger's length; orange-flowered milkweed, like the
color of an oriole's back, made doubly gay by brilliant butterflies
and beetles. On the sandy bank which makes the background for this
scene of splendor, the New Jersey tea, known better as the red-root,
lifts its feathery white plumes above restful, gray-green leaves. Just
at the fence the prairie willow has a beauty all its own, with a
wea