plants only added to the green of the leaves. The purple notes in the riot of yellow were given by the royal heads of the thistles, the reddish purple spikes of the iron weed, and the violet and lavender ray-flowered clusters of wild asters.
For several days the children were puzzled by an odor as sweet as that of lilies of the valley. It could be smelled only at night, when the garden lay dim and dewy under the moonlight. The perfume was traced to weedy stalks with small green-sheathed buds. They were not noticed by day, but opened pale, yellow, five-petaled rose-shaped flowers, after night fall. It was the evening primrose that grew in the shelter of dense thickets of golden-rod and asters. Big moths visited the primrose' by night. In the day time the shrivelled blooms held drops of honey so sweet that wasps with steel blue wings passed all the open flowers by, to drink that nectar.
Above the whole field insects were always on the wing. A little white butterfly was fond of the purple thistle. Bumble bees visited the thistles, the field clover and the butter and eggs. It was very funny to see a heavy, buzzing black and yellow bumble bee drop on the lower lip of a butter and eggs blossom, tip it down and force its greedy head into the long honey-filled spur. Little honey bees liked the white clover best. The golden-rod plumes, when in full blossom and gold-dusty with pollen, were always spotted with little black beetles that could scarcely be shaken off. This same little jetty beetle liked the dandelion pollen, too.
Gauze winged dragon flies darted here and there; grasshoppers by hundreds leaped and clicked their wings, and robins and jay birds from a nearby park made raids on the grasshoppers. A dozen varieties of butterflies were seen by day, and many a moth by night. On every dewy morning the webs of spiders were strung, with diamonds. The caterpillars had spun their cocoons on the stoutest of the weed-stalks, and flies grew sluggish in the cool nights. In dry places, and between the cracks of the walks, were little domes of sand, honey-combed with tiny holes. These were doors to underground houses of red and black ants.
Soon there were many seeds flying about—seeds of the dandelion, the thistle, the golden-rod, the milkweed. There were seeds with tails and wings and gauzy sails, and hooks and bursting pods. Every breeze loosened and scattered them. When frost came and killed the blossoms, the garden was a feeding ground for birds that ate the scarlet hips of the wild roses and the seeds of weeds.
