MANDARIN, May 28, 1872.
The month of May in Florida corresponds to July and August at the north.
Strawberries, early peaches, blackberries, huckleberries, blueberries,
and two species of wild plums, are the fruits of this month, and make us
forget to want the departing oranges. Still, however, some of these
cling to the bough; and it is astonishing how juicy and refreshing they
still are. The blueberries are larger and sweeter, and less given to
hard seeds, than any we have ever tasted. In the way of
garden-vegetables, summer squashes, string-beans, and tomatoes are fully
in season.
This year, for the most part, the month has been most delightful
weather.
With all the pomp and glory of Nature in full view; beholding in the
wet, low lands red, succulent shoots, which, under the moist, fiery
breath of the season, seem really to grow an inch at a time, and to
shoot up as by magic; hearing bird-songs filling the air from morning to
night,--we feel a sort of tropical exultation, as if great, succulent
shoots of passion or poetry might spring up within us from out this
growing dream-life.
The birds!--who can describe their jubilees, their exultations, their
never-ending, still beginning babble and jargon of sweet sounds? All day
the air rings with sweet fanciful trills and melodies, as if there were
a thousand little vibrating bells. They iterate and reiterate one sweet
sound after another; they call to one another, and answer from thicket
to thicket; they pipe; they whistle; they chatter and mock at each other
with airy defiance: and sometimes it seems as if the very air broke into
rollicking bird-laughter. A naturalist, who, like Thoreau, has sojourned
for months in the Florida forests to study and observe Nature, has told
us that no true idea of the birds' plumage can be got till the hot
months come on. Then the sun pours light and color, and makes feathers
like steely armor.
The birds love the sun: they adore him. Our own Phoebus, when his cage
is hung on the shady side of the veranda, hangs sulky and silent; but
put him in the full blaze of the sun, and while the thermometer is going
up to the nineties, he rackets in a perfectly crazy abandon of bird
babblement, singing all he ever heard before, and trying his bill at new
notes, and, as a climax, ending each outburst with a purr of
satisfaction like an overgrown cat. Several pairs of family
mocking-birds have their nests somewhere in our orange-trees; and there
is no end of amusement in watching their dainty evolutions. Sometimes,
for an hour at a time, one of them, perched high and dry on a topmost
twig, where he gets the full blaze of the sun, will make the air ring
with so many notes and noises, that it would seem as if he were forty
birds instead of one. Then, again, you will see him stealing silently
about as if on some mysterious mission, perching here and there with a
peculiar nervous jerk of his long tail, and a silent little lift of his
wings, as if he were fanning himself. What this motion is for, we have
never been able to determine.
Our plantation, at present, is entirely given over to the domestic
affairs of the mocking-birds, dozens of whom have built their nests in
the green, inaccessible fastnesses of the orange-trees, and been rearing
families in security. Now, however, the young birds are to be taught to
fly; and the air resounds with the bustle and chatter of the operation.
Take, for example, one scene which is going on as we write. Down on the
little wharf which passes through the swamp in front of our house, three
or four juvenile mocking-birds are running up and down like chickens,
uttering plaintive cries of distress. On either side, perched on a tall,
dry, last-year's coffee-bean-stalk, sit "papa and mamma," chattering,
scolding, exhorting, and coaxing. The little ones run from side to side,
and say in plaintive squeaks, "I can't," "I daren't," as plain as birds
can say it. There! now they spread their little wings; and--oh,
joy!--they find to their delight that they do not fall: they exult in
the possession of a new-born sense of existence. As we look at this
pantomime, graver thoughts come over us, and we think how poor, timid
little souls moan, and hang back, and tremble, when the time comes to
leave this nest of earth, and trust themselves to the free air of the
world they were made for. As the little bird's moans and cries end in
delight and rapture in finding himself in a new, glorious, free life;
so, just beyond the dark step of death, will come a buoyant, exulting
sense of new existence. Our life here is in intimate communion with
bird-life. Their singing all day comes in bursts and snatches; and one
awakes to a sort of wondering consciousness of the many airy dialects
with which the blue heavens are filled. At night a whippoorwill or two,
perched in the cypress-trees, make a plaintive and familiar music. When
the nights are hot, and the moon bright, the mocking-birds burst into
gushes of song at any hour. At midnight we have risen to listen to
them. Birds are as plenty about us as chickens in a barnyard; and one
wonders at their incessant activity and motion, and studies what their
quaint little fanciful ways may mean, half inclined to say with
Cowper,--
"But I, whatever powers were mine,
Would cheerfully those gifts resign
For such a pair of wings as thine,
And such a head between 'em."
Speaking of birds reminds us of a little pastoral which is being enacted
in the neighborhood of St. Augustine. A young man from Massachusetts,
driven to seek health in a milder climate, has bought a spot of land for
a nursery-garden in the neighborhood of St. Augustine. We visited his
place, and found him and his mother in a neat little cottage, adorned
only with grasses and flowers picked in the wild woods, and living in
perfect familiarity with the birds, which they have learned to call in
from the neighboring forests. It has become one of the fashionable
amusements in the season for strangers to drive out to this cottage and
see the birds fed. At a cry from the inmates of the cottage, the
blue-jays and mocking-birds will come in flocks, settle on their
shoulders, eat out of their hands, or out of the hands of any one who
chooses to hold food to them. When we drove out, however, the birds were
mostly dispersed about their domestic affairs; this being the nesting
season. Moreover, the ample supply of fresh wild berries in the woods
makes them less anxious for such dry food as contented them in winter.
Only one pet mocking-bird had established himself in a neighboring tree,
and came at their call. Pic sat aloft, switching his long tail with a
jerky air of indifference, like an _enfant gate_. When raisins were
thrown up, he caught them once or twice; but at last, with an evident
bird-yawn, declared that it was no go, and he didn't care for raisins.
Ungrateful Pic! Next winter, eager and hungry, he will be grateful; and
so with all the rest of them.
One of the charms of May not to be forgotten is the blossoming of the
great Cape jessamine that stands at the end of the veranda, which has
certainly had as many as three or four hundred great, white, fragrant
flowers at once.
As near as possible, this is the most perfect of flowers. It is as pure
as the white camellia, with the added gift of exquisite perfume. It is a
camellia with a soul! Its leaves are of most brilliant varnished green;
its buds are lovely; and its expanded flower is of a thick, waxen
texture, and as large as a large camellia. We have sat moonlight nights
at the end of the veranda, and enjoyed it. It wraps one in an atmosphere
of perfume. Only one fault has this bush: it blossoms only once a
season; not, like the ever-springing oleander, for months. One feels a
sense of hurry to enjoy and appropriate a bloom so rare, that lasts only
a few weeks.
Here in Florida, flowers form a large item of thought and conversation
wherever one goes; and the reason of it is the transcendent beauty and
variety that are here presented. We have just returned from St.
Augustine, and seen some gardens where wealth and leisure have expended
themselves on flowers; and in our next chapter we will tell of some of
these beauties.
[Illustration]