all have flower or
catkin--even the pine, whose fructification is very interesting. The
pines or Scotch firs by the Long Ditton road hang their sweeping
branches to the verge of the footpath, and the new cones, the sulphur
farina, and the fresh shoots are easily seen. The very earliest oak to
put forth its flowers is in a garden on Oak Hill; it is green with them,
while yet the bitter winds have left a sense of winter in the air.

There is a broad streak of bright-yellow charlock--in the open arable
field beyond the Common. It lights up the level landscape; the glance
falls on it immediately. Field beans are in flower, and their scent
comes sweet even through the dust of the Derby Day. Red heads of
trifolium dot the ground; the vetches have long since been out, and are
so still; along the hedges parsley forms a white fringe. The charlock
seems late this year; it is generally up well before June--the first
flowers by the roadside or rickyard, in a waste dry corner. Such dry
waste places send up plants to flower, such as charlock and poppy,
quicker than happens in better soil, but they do not reach nearly the
height or size. The field beans are short from lack of rain; there are
some reeds in the ditch by them, and these too are short; they have not
half shot up yet, for the same reason. On the sward by the Long Ditton
road the goat's-beard is up; it grows to some size there every season,
but is not very common elsewhere. It is said to close its sepals at
noon, and was therefore called "Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon," but in fact it
shuts much earlier, and often does not open at all, and you may pass
twenty times and not see it open. Its head is like that of the
dandelion, and children blow it to see what's o'clock in the same way.
It forms a large ball, and browner; dandelion seed-balls are white. The
grass is dotted with them now; they give a glossy, silky appearance to
the meadows. Tiny pink geranium flowers show on bunches of dusty grass;
silver weed lays its yellow buttercup-like flower on the ground, placing
it in the angle of the road and the sward, where the sward makes a
ridge. Cockspur grass--three claws and a spur like a cock's foot--is
already whitened with pollen; already in comparison, for the grasses are
late to lift their heads this summer. As the petals of the May fall the
young leaves appear, small and green, to gradually enlarge through the
hay-time.

A slight movement of the leaves on a branch of birch show