United States or Antigua and Barbuda ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Here you shall come upon the cat-bird at her morning bath, and hear her sing, in a clump of pussy-willows, that low, tender, confidential song which she keeps for the hours of domestic intimacy. The spotted sandpiper will run along the stones before you, crying, "wet-feet, wet-feet!" and bowing and teetering in the friendliest manner, as if to show you the way to the best pools.
It had been a late spring and therefore although the buds were swelling and a few pussy-willows venturing from their houses the country was still in the grip of winter; great drifts buried roadside and valley and continued to obstruct those highways where travel was infrequent.
Isn't there any foolish natural thing that unbends you a trifle and makes you feel gay?" "I like to go fishing." "To see how many fish you can catch?" "No, I like the woods and the weather. I like to play a fish and work hard for him. I like the pussy-willows and the cold; and the sky, whether it's blue or grey night coming on, every thing about it."
To me spring begins when the catkins on the alders and the pussy-willows begin to swell; when the ice breaks up on the river and the first sea-gulls come prospecting northward. Whatever the date the first or the middle or the last of March when these signs appear, then I know spring is at hand.
The rabbit-foot clover takes kindly to the sandy soil, and, as it flowers from late May well into September, and holds its little furry tails like autumn pussy-willows until freezing weather, makes a very interesting sort of bed all by itself, and massed close to it, as if recognizing the family relationship, is the little creeping bush clover with its purplish flowers.
Get your hat, and come over to Long Island City with me, and see the pussy-willows along the railroad-banks. The mosquitoes are beginning to sing in the ditches already." The other day one of those convertible familiars of the Easy Chair, who "Change and pass and come again," looked in upon it, after some months' absence, with the effect of having aged considerably in the interval.
Rain had fallen the night before, a cold March rain, freezing as it fell, and clothing every object of the landscape in an icy coat that glittered and blazed in the morning light. But the sun and the fresh wind, dancing up from the south and bringing a fragrant hint of pussy-willows from the creek banks, were causing this fairy world of glass to dissolve.
Alders and pussy-willows, viburnums, clethras, chokecherries, swamp maples, red birches, and all sorts of trees and shrubs that are water-loving, made an intricate labyrinth for the stream to thread; and through the tangle, cat-briers, blackberries, fox grapes, and poison ivy were interlaced.
"What do you suppose she will say?" inquired Edna settling herself well content to continue this sort of talk, though thinking it was scarcely the season for Pussy-willows. "She will say: 'The elder Berry? My dear boy, any dog ought to know the way there. You see she knows I am a Barker." Edna laughed. "Go on." "And I will say, 'Yes, madam, but that sassy Fras always tries to get in my path.
The bee is abroad in the air, finding her first honey in the flower by your side and her first pollen in the pussy-willows by the watercourses below you. The tender, plaintive love-note of the chickadee is heard here and there in the woods. He utters it while busy on the catkins of the poplars, from which he seems to be extracting some kind of food.
Word Of The Day