Many a hardy little spring plant blooms first, not in April as we are apt to think, but more likely in January, though it may be two feet deep beneath the snow and ice and unseen by any living creature. To go no farther than my own garden, I have known a late January thaw, rapidly carrying off deep snow, to reveal the “ladies’ delights” in bloom beneath an overarching crust of ice. The warm snow blankets had effectually insulated the autumn grown buds from the zero temperature two feet above, and the warmth of the earth beneath had not only passed through the frost but melted a little cavern beneath the snow, and there the hardy plants had responded to the impulse of the spring that was already with them. In this wise the chickweed blooms the year round though rarely are circumstances such that we note it in the winter months. Now and then the hepatica opens shy blue eyes beneath the enfolding snow and it is common in times of open weather in midwinter to read newspaper reports of the blooming of dandelions in December, or January. These are just as much in bloom on other winters but the snow covers them from sight and it takes a thaw which sweeps the ground clear of snow to reveal them. It is good now and then to get a green Christmas such as we have just had, for in it we may go forth into the fields and realize that the spring has not retreated to the Bahamas, but merely to the subsoil, whence it slips, full of warmth and thrill, on any sunshiny day. If we will but seek the right places we need not search long to find April all about us, though they may be cutting ten-inch ice on the pond and winter overcoats be the prevailing wear. To-day I found young and thrifty plants, green and succulent, of two varieties of fern that are not common in my neighborhood and that I had never suspected in that location. I had passed them amid the universal green of summer without noticing them, but now their color stood out among the prevailing browns and grays as vividly as yellow blossoms do in a June meadow. Yet I sought the greater ferns of my acquaintance in vain in many an accustomed place. Down by the fountain head is a spot where the black muck, cushioned with yielding sphagnum, slopes gently upward to firmer ground beneath the maples till these give way to the birches on the drier hillside. Here the ostrich fern waved its seven-foot fronds in feathery beauty amid the musky twilight of the swamp all summer long.