Daily capital journal. (Salem, Oregon) 1903-1919, 1910-08-01
THE NOT BOOK.

Never was there a richer beauty
in July fields than this year makes
New England paradise enow."
The whole gamut of eXultant green is
still victorious over the strident yell
lowing tones of midsummer. The
sumac is massive in a fairly spring
time freshness, al set with the rubies
and garnets of it's jeweled spear
heads. The grass is everywhere lush
and tall, translucent where the sun
strikes through. Nothing looks sere.
/ Though the ripening of fruit appears
here and there, everything is still
burgeoning and blowing as if from
exhaustless sources. The reeds in a
marshy meadow are as sharply green
as their edges are sword-like, yet
| there are the warm brown cat-tails
among them and the tops of low
lier sort filing off most exquisite
! tangle of brown filaments strung
with tiniest brown seeds-the dain-
! tiest member of this classic family
who claim to have been the earliest
of music makers.
Rare Arethusa stands rose-hued,
slender and sought for int occasional,
groups where the fences cross !
marshy patch. One may almost call
them hedgerows in New England,
after old England, for the thick tan
gle of common meadow things that
luXuriates along the fences makes
truly a hedge and more variegation
formal man-made sort. They are lit
tie sportive garden patches run wild,
not in any orderly fashion of align
ment, either, but massing at certain
points, scattering sparsely elsewhere,
wandering, bending as if the Old
time fences of New England like the
streets of Boston followed some
easily ambling COW path along the
line of least resistance.
From the train as one flashes back
to the city after a happy weekend
one may watch the changing flora of
the railroads right of way. The
chicory is much in evidence, Dorches-
ter way and it breaks like blue tide
over the bare reaches of the railway
lands where not even grass will grow
The blue, starry-eyed flower has the
most fragile of blossoms, daintily
qrfp rfY,Ir nIA hn|
clumsy stems. If 1t is a weed and a
pest in the farmers eyes there is no
more exotic a blossom anywhere
among the wildings. 1t is strange
how rarely nature gives us blue flow
ers purely, truly blue, One would
think that the flowers who look
straight up to the sky, would take on
the skyey color. The blue of the
chicory is a more truly cerulean hue
than one recalls in other flowers,
Even the gentian mantles with pur-
pie, and If the humble chicory were
far to seek one is certain that its
delicate beauty would be as far
famed.
The pink-purple of the milkweed
is also much in evidence now, though
some of it's massed flowers are white.
The wild roses persist. They were
the wonder of June, fairly rioting
everywhere. The usually so modest
sweetbriar came boldly to public no.
tice, reaching eagerly out of every
possible nook and corner, hanging
forwardly, albeit with deeper bushes,
over the gulleys where the train
scatters it's hopeless showering of
cinder seed-from which now and
again, however, the flame flowers
spring.
The wild lilies lurk in the wood
land jungles, a flashing brightness
as we pass. They are very deep
colored this year, red rather than
orange. One would like to name
them otherwise for the word lily
stand for triumphant whiteness,
whether in the humble bells of the
valley flower or the creamy gorgeous
ness of the calla lily
One is wandering away into the
tidy garden paths now, set with the
tall sheen Of day lilies But the
gardens are not always far away
from the railroads downward flight,