All this year’s shoots of the swamp blueberry bushes are a restful green, but at the tips these, too, ripen into red, while on the higher ground the black huckleberries and the birches show the same color till the landscape rolls away from you in a warm and cuddley glow that takes the nip out of the wind. Looking on these you know that the pasture cannot be cold, however deep the snows to come or however low the mercury in the thermometer may fall. As the winter comes on this blanket of warm red, spread all over the bare trees and shrubs, will deepen in hue and with the first promise of spring flush into a lively pink that melts again into slender green with the passing of frost from the roots and the first soft rains of April. Herein is the better half of the harvest of the year,--a harvest not of fruition but of promise. The out-door world ripens hope in the same crop that has given us fulfilment. How full of hope, of promises, of matured plans and energy these rosy buds are you may not know till you step down among them and test their virility and perfection. Here is the azalia, its pinky twigs tipped with swollen, soft green buds as big as your little finger tip. Till the leaves fell nobody thought the azalia had been doing anything since its rich-scented white flowers fell last July. Here is the proof of its labors and foresight. In the hearts of these buds are next July’s blossoms, in miniature it is true, but perfect in every appointment. About them are the green young leaves, vividly colored already, both only waiting for the mysterious thrill of spring sap to push forward to maturity, promising the leaves softly green, the blossoms vividly white, sticky with sweetness, and adorably fragrant. If you will pull one of the larger of the azalia buds apart you may easily see all this, and as you do it, be haunted by the ghost of a perfume, an infinitesimally faint promise of the rich odor yet to be. So, in large or small, it is with all the shrubs and trees. Each is loaded and primed and waits but the touch of the match in the crescent warmth of the spring sun. Then will come the yearly explosion. It is hard to say which of these next-year promises shows most vigor, yet I think on the whole I would give the prize to the sapling pines. Each central shoot of these will go up in the season from fifteen to thirty inches, and send out four or five laterals. Yet each young tree has from eight to a dozen brown buds prepared for this, at least two centrals which you will recognize as being larger and standing more erect. One of these will get the start and continue the main trunk of the tree. The other will fall back and be a lateral branch. Yet if, as often happens, the central shoot is disabled the next strongest will take its place and so on, if need be, till the last of the dozen buds has stepped into the place of the lost leader.