er and a sunny window and we may have all three of these
first blossoms in a spring bouquet at home by the first of March.
Towards the last of February the catkins of the pussy willows and the
aspens are creeping from beneath their budscales to meet the goddess
of spring half way, and every warm day in March coaxes them a little
farther. Meanwhile the staminate catkins of the hazel are lengthening
and the pistillate buds are swelling, as the sun presses farther
northward at the dawn and the dusk of each day, pushing back the gray
walls of the canon of night, that the river of day may flow full and
free.

* * * * *

This year some of the aspens heralded the spring. They grew at the
head of a little creek which traversed a long, sunny, sheltered swamp.
Their gray green trunks were in the foreground of the Master Planter's
color design, the darker and taller background being a mixture of wild
cherry, red oak, linden, and white ash. The high notes were given by
the rose purple of the raspberry, the dark maroon of the blackberry,
and the orange varnished budscales of the aspens themselves,--Nature
never forgets her color accents. In the earliest warm days of February
the catkins of the aspens were peeping from their imprisoning scales,
and by the first of March they were half out, their white silken
fringes and tiny clusters of rose-pink stamens glistening in the
sunlight as if spring's pink cheeks were sheltered by soft, gray fur.
We look up at these fleecy clusters, freed from the brownish
budscales, with a far background of bluest sky, and think that it must
have been such a grove as this to which the Princess Nausicca sent
Ulysses to wait for her, described by Homer as "a beautiful grove of
aspen poplars, a fountain and a meadow."

Only an aspen tree in an Iowa slough! Yes, but more than that. This is
the first sign of the resurrection which we call spring. When the
pilgrims to the Eleusinian mysteries were ridiculed because of the
commonplace nature of their symbols, they rightly replied that more
than that which met the eye existed in the sacred things; that
whosoever entered the temple of Lindus, to do honor to Demeter, the
productive and nourishing power of the earth, must be pure in heart if
he would gain reward. The square, the flag, the cross, the swelling
bud of spring, what are they all but symbols of the realities?

We shall forget these first humble flowers of spring by-and-b