Sing ho! for the hilltop bold and bare,
Where the bracing breezes blow!
There’s a frosty edge on the wintry air,
Exhilaration keen and rare
That sets the heart aglow.
Over the crest the snow lies deep,
Over the brow of the hill.
Down below the woodlands sleep,
Blanketed well on the sloping steep
’Neath a snow sheet white and chill.
Sing ho, sing ho, for the galloping gale
That sweeps the summit clear,
And drives the mass of icy shale
Into the pines, whose eery wail
Fills timid souls with fear!
There’s that in the winter’s whistling wind
That stirs dead hearts to life,
And energy and health you’ll find
In the breath of the breeze that’s rough yet kind,
That’s keen as a surgeon’s knife.
—Frank Farrington.
BUDS OF PROMISE.
COLD WEATHER NOTES FROM NATURE.
It has become a conventional habit with us to look upon the winter
season as unproductive of artistic interest so far as Nature’s
decorations are concerned. And we note it as a period of rest from the
exhaustion of seed time and harvest. But to the initiated and observant,
it is now that the change worketh fast, and barely has the network of
fretted branches, looming up so purple against an autumnal sky, become a
realization, before the winter progress of the budding forest has
changed the dreamy violet to a rich ruddy brown, in promise of a future
fulfillment of a rich verdure of living greens.
In winter, we are, as it were, behind the scenes in the green-room of
some vast forest auditorium, and the closely locked buds are become the
dressing rooms of thousands upon thousands of gaily decked flower-folk,
who are preparing their multi-colored wardrobe of gorgeous petals, with
which to entrance and delight our mortal eyes when the golden key of the
sun shall have unlocked their doors, and are melted the barriers of ice
and snow that now reign supreme in the great foyers of the forest. But
if at present we are barred from the scene, the work of preparation is
being rushed forward, and on every swelling twig there is evidence of a
glorious drama of delight which shall be uncurtained at the clarion
voice of Spring. How many shades and colors are outlined against the
wintry sky! The bronze points of the oaks, in contrast with the gray of
the pale ash buds, whose color indicates the advent of some demure
debutant in Quaker costume, while the ruddy buds of the whitewood or
tulip tree, which steal their rich color from the furrowed red of its
bark, give promise of some gorgeous result that is later realized in the
magnolia-like bloom of rich, creamy green, girdled with a crimson sash,
and which within the last few years has become such a fad among nature’s
devotees. But all of our fads are but a continuing in the universal
circle from which, according to Lord Beaconsfield, we never evolve
beyond, and it is written that the tulip tree was so esteemed by the
ancients that they poured libations of wine about its roots. We put our
wine to other uses in these twentieth century days, but we worship at
the same tree, pro tempore.
The highly polished buds of the June berry or shad bush shine forth in
evidence of a future of bewildering bloom that shall envelop its now
dull branches in a robe of fairy whiteness when “the shad come down.”
Break open the tightly sealed, varnished bud of the lilac tree, and out
pours that incomparable fragrance of Spring, an odor that challenges all
of the arts and sciences or alchemy to produce. One of the most notable
trees in winter is the plane-tree or buttonwood, wrongly called
sycamore, a term which can only be applied correctly to the Ficus
sycamorus, or true sycamore, a tree closely allied to the fig, and a
native of the far East. It is the ragged appearance of the buttonwood
that makes it so conspicuous a tree in winter, the white trunk gleaming
so distinctly through its shattered habiliments of bark. It is said that
this disastrous state of its covering is due to the inelasticity of the
bark, which does not expand to meet the requirements of the tree’s
growth, as does the bark of other trees, hence the impoverished
condition of its outer garment. But when we see this sad state of
conditions repeated on its human prototype, we feel that we have more
cause for sympathy than ridicule, so why not accord the tree the same
commiseration? But I am sure there is some legendary tale extant to the
effect that in mythological days the tree was a derelict from duty in
some line or another, and for this was condemned to pass the rest of its
days in a tattered coat, for so was sentenced the white Birch, who
arrived late at an important wedding of the gods, hence doomed to wear
her wedding garment of snowy bark throughout all ages in penance for her
dilatoriness. But if the buttonwood wears the coat of poverty, it is
more than abundantly supplied with buttons, which are so tightly sewed
on that it is no easy task to secure a bunch of these drooping balls for
decorative purposes, and for which they are so effective when hung among
clusters of the scarlet berries of the bitter-sweet. Their secure hold
on the parent stem has thus aroused the interest of John Burroughs:
“Why has Nature taken such particular pains to keep these balls hanging
to the parent tree intact till spring? What secret of hers has she
buttoned in so securely? for these buttons will not come off. The wind
can not twist them off, nor warm nor wet hasten or retard them. The
stem, or penduncle, by which the ball is held in the fall and winter,
breaks up into a dozen or more threads or strands, that are stronger
than those of hemp. When twisted tightly they make a little cord that I
find it impossible to break with my hands. Had they been longer the
Indian would surely have used them to make his bow strings and all other
strings he required. One could hang himself with a small cord of them.
Nature has determined that these buttons should stay on. In order that
the needs of this tree may germinate, it is probably necessary that they
be kept dry during the winter, and reach the ground after the season of
warmth and moisture is fully established. In May, just as the leaves and
the new balls are emerging, at the touch of a warm, moist south wind,
these spherical packages suddenly go to pieces—explode, in fact, like
tiny bombshells that were fused to carry to this point—and scatter their
seeds to the four winds. They yield at the same time a fine pollen-like
dust that one would suspect played some part in fertilizing the new
balls, did not botany teach him otherwise. At any rate, it is the only
deciduous tree I know of that does not let go the old seed till the new
is well on the way.”
Next to the cedar tree, this tree is the strongest power in mythology
and was, by the ancients, consecrated to Genius, and who knows what
mighty stores of intelligence is buttoned under its tattered coat? and I
myself can bear witness to its strong will and determination under
adverse circumstances, for a huge tree that has fallen from a high bank
into the river below, has floated down stream to a lodgment, and there
put forth a vigorous growth of foliage, and is thriving well under these
abnormal conditions. The maple bloom is now closely housed, with but
little show of promise, but if one were favored with a specially alert
ear, I am sure that he could hear the rush of the ascending sap blood,
hurrying upward in answer to the call of the quickening Spirit of
Spring. In many of the creepers, the lilies and the gourd, a kind of
fever heat is perceptible at the time of inflorescence, and the heat has
been observed to increase daily from sixty to one hundred and ten or
even one hundred and twenty degrees, and without doubt the forest
temperament rises accordingly.
As yet the birds have not taken all of the scarlet berries of the
bitter-sweet vine, which clings lovingly, but with a somewhat
parasitical clasp about the hospitable boles of the great trees. In
color rivalry looms up the dark red panicles of the sumach, whose acrid
fruit, which is a last resort for hungry birds, must prove a pungent
pill to the feathered folk. But it is a line of beauty across the
hillside:
Like glowing lava streams the sumach crawls
Upon the mountain’s granite walls.
Peeping out from the sheltered crannies are numerous long, slender
fronds of the Christmas fern, Polystichum acrostichoides, gleaming like
emerald bars against the white of the snow bank. Outlining against the
sky are the aristocratic hemlocks which belong to the regal pine family,
and which have established a social precedence by wearing their holiday
clothes all the year round, in opposition to their more humble,
deciduous kin, who are now in working habiliments, and they flaunt their
heads haughtily, but their thickly clothed branches form a warm shelter
for snow bound birds, so that their distinction is not without its
advantages. In a sheltered nook still flourish a few plants of “Life
Everlastin’,” so dear to the hearts of Mary Wilkin’s quaint New England
characters as an allayer of rheumatic ills, and it still exhales its
aromatic fragrance in the air. Here and there a witch-hazel waves its
scraggy branches, still laden with their velvety seed capsules, which
have but now bursted open and shot forth their glistening seeds, and
whose inconsequent yellow bloom has only just shed its slender petals to
the winds. A few lingering wild rose haws are withering upon the parent
stem, yet glowing like cherries against the wintry sky, but break off a
tiny branch and a whiff of Richard Jefferies’ “sweet briar wind” is
wafted across one’s nostrils, filling one’s brain with visions of the
gladdening spring time. A gaily plumaged jay dashes his brilliant blue
through the branches of a thickly needled pine, and a scarlet crowned
“downie” taps diligently up and around the worm-infested trunk of an old
apple tree, in search of an unwary morsel, and one comes to the
conclusion that after all, winter is not all gloom and grayness, but
filled with bits of glowing color and vitality, if only one’s eye is set
for its beauty, instead of its bleakness.
Alberta Field.