There is the vigorous stem and the leaves as green as they will ever be
again, indeed I think greener. The whole thing, which will be a perfect
shoot a foot long, is compacted into a solid club less than an inch in
length. Enclosing this is a fibrous husk which wraps it from all cold.
Howsoever bitter the weather the life warmth of the young shoots is most
carefully protected by this wrapping. But there is more than this. An
air-tight, waterproof coating of hardened pitch is outside of the whole,
completing an exceedingly neat, tasteful, and effective seal.
The pitch-pine mother trees have completed their preserving and now sit
back and radiate perfume in satisfaction and kindly good will toward the
whole world, for this slightly resinous sweetness does not come at all
from the pitch-covered buds on the branch tips as I first thought. It
seems to emanate from the whole tree. Cut a branch and take it home with
you. Strip leaves and buds from it if you will; then smell the wood. It
is there. But more than from anywhere else it seems to come from the
mature leaves,--those which have borne the burden and the heat of the
summer, and now are losing their rich green in a ripening which befits
maturity and work well done.
All the evergreens take on this slight tendency to a mellow yellow as
the autumn waxes. It is due, no doubt, to the lessening of the sap in
the leaves. All winter they will hold it, and when the joy of spring
sends his lifeblood bounding back again, it will fade and leave them
vigorously green once more.
Crossing the glade again on my homeward way I plucked branches of
juniper so thickly studded with blue berries that there seemed scarcely
room for the scaly-pointed leaves, and in so doing I stumbled upon the
real secret of the dainty odor left by the goddess and her train. For
the matured shoots and leaves of the juniper give off a fragrance that
is as much more dainty than that of the pitch pine as that is more
dainty than the strongly resinous odor of the white pine when cut or
bruised.
Cytherea must have smiled upon the humbler juniper as she passed, and
the dwarfed and stunted shrub must have caught the warmth of her eyes
full in the heart, for it sits snug as the days shorten and radiates a
happiness that is perfume, and sends the thought of the goddess to all
who pass that way. The stronger odor of the pitch pine carries it far
on the soft south wind across the glade and down the path through the
pasture, but this is only the vehicle. The dainty essence of perfume
which stops you as if a soft hand fell upon your arm floats from the
loving heart of the rough and lowly juniper.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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