ng unnoticeably, then one, two, or three strong suns, and from tip
to tip one soft fiery glow, whispering with bees as a singing flame. A
twig of finger size will be furred to the thickness of one's wrist by
pink five-petaled bloom, so close that only the blunt-faced wild bees
find their way in it. In this latitude late frosts cut off the hope of
fruit too often for the wild almond to multiply greatly, but the spiny,
tap-rooted shrubs are resistant to most plant evils.

It is not easy always to be attentive to the maturing of wild fruit.
Plants are so unobtrusive in their material processes, and always at the
significant moment some other bloom has reached its perfect hour. One
can never fix the precise moment when the rosy tint the field has from
the wild almond passes into the inspiring blue of lupines. One notices
here and there a spike of bloom, and a day later the whole field royal
and ruffling lightly to the wind. Part of the charm of the lupine is the
continual stir of its plumes to airs not suspected otherwhere. Go and
stand by any crown of bloom and the tall stalks do but rock a little as
for drowsiness, but look off across the field, and on the stillest days
there is always a trepidation in the purple patches.

From midsummer until frost the prevailing note of the field is clear
gold, passing into the rusty tone of bigelovia going into a decline, a
succession of color schemes more admirably managed than the
transformation scene at the theatre. Under my window a colony of cleome
made a soft web of bloom that drew me every morning for a long still
time; and one day I discovered that I was looking into a rare fretwork
of fawn and straw colored twigs from which both bloom and leaf had gone,
and I could not say if it had been for a matter of weeks or days. The
time to plant cucumbers and set out cabbages may be set down in the
almanac, but never seed-time nor blossom in Naboth's field.

Certain winged and mailed denizens of the field seem to reach their
heyday along with the plants they most affect. In June the leaning
towers of the white milkweed are jeweled over with red and gold beetles,
climbing dizzily. This is that milkweed from whose stems the Indians
flayed fibre to make snares for small game, but what use the beetles put
it to except for a displaying ground for their gay coats, I could never
discover. The white butterfly crop comes on with the bigelovia bloom,
and on warm mornings makes an airy twinkling