After Decoration Day, I had all I could do to keep pace with the
unfolding flowers in the woods on Mount Œta. In the Chestnut Woods and
Rattlesnake Swamp region, near Lloyd Spring, and along the mountain
sides of the Knubble and Domelet, I found beautiful azalea shrubs laden
with luxuriant clusters of fragrant pink flowers. These open woodlands
become brilliant with these rose-colored blossoms. The Large Yellow
Moccasin-Flower was here too, with violets, Stars-of-Bethlehem, and
innumerable pink blossoms of _Cypripedium acaule_ growing along the side
hill, shining out from every corner. All at once, these nearer woodlands
had unfurled their banners of spring, and now, “With blossom, and birds,
and wild bees’ hum,” they held me from the more distant Bogs of Etchowog.
On the 14th of June, however, I decided to take old Bonny and the buggy,
and drive to these bogs to see if any Pogonias and Limodorums were budded
as yet amid the grasses of the open cranberry marsh.
Bonny hitched to the old buggy, my faithful old Major at my side, and I,
with my vasculum for rare flowers, a basket containing drinking glass,
carving knife, and bog-hoe for gathering special roots, started down the
hill on an easy trot toward Pownal Pond. As I passed School Fourteen, I
was cheered and hailed by the children, who shouted, “Going a-flowering?”
I nodded “Yes,” with a “Get-ty up” to old Bonny, who had thought I wished
to visit along the way.
[Illustration: =The Small White Moccasin-Flower.= (_Cypripedium
candidum._)
This species is especially an orchid of the damp swells of the prairie,
growing in company with the Painted Cup and Iris.
“_There, I think, on that lonely grave,_
_Violets spring in the soft May shower;_
_There, in the summer breezes, wave_
_Crimson phlox and moccasin flower._”
BRYANT.]
It was warm and dusty, and whenever I could, I drove through the streams
which crossed the road, in order to swell the felly, and thus tighten
the tires to my rattling wheels. Although I felt that by driving along
the highway I was losing much beauty that was unfolding in the fields and
fence corners, I found this method of progress quite comfortable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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