How unlike the tender, delicate fragrant flowers of spring are these strong flowers of the coming fall! They make a high bank along the stream--milkweed, boneset, peppermint, turtle-head, joe-pye-weed, jewel-weed, smartweed, and budding goldenrod! Life has grown lusty and lazy and rank.
But life has to grow lusty and rank, for the winter is coming; and as the woodchucks are eating and eating, enough to last them until spring comes again, so the plants are storing fat in their tap-roots, and ripening millions of seeds, to carry them safely through the long dead months of winter.
The autumn is the great planting time out of doors. Every autumn wind is a sower going forth to sow. And he must have seeds and to spare--seeds for the waysides for the winter birds to eat, seeds for the stony places where there is no depth of soil for them, seeds for the ploughed fields where they are not allowed to grow, seeds for every nook and corner, in order that somewhere each plant may find a place to live, and so continue its kind from year to year.
Look at the seeds of the boneset, joe-pye-weed, milkweed, and goldenrod! Seeds with wings and plumes and parachutes that go floating and flying and ballooning.
"Over the fields where the daisies grow, Over the flushing clover, A host of the tiniest fairies go-- Dancing, balancing to and fro, Rolling and tumbling over.
"Quivering, balancing, drifting by, Floating in sun and shadow-- Maybe the souls of the flowers that die Wander, like this, to the summer sky Over a happy meadow."
So they do. They wander away to the sky, but they come down again to the meadow to make it happy next summer with new flowers; for these are the seed-souls of thistles and daisies and fall dandelions seeking new bodies for themselves in the warm soil of Mother Earth.
Mother Earth! How tender and warm and abundant she is! As I lie here under the oak, a child in her arms, I see the thistle-down go floating by, and on the same laggard breeze comes up from the maple swamp the odor of the sweet pepper-bush. A little flock of chickadees stop in the white birches and quiz me. "Who are you?" "Who are you-you-you?" they ask, dropping down closer and closer to get a peek into my face.