daily waterings could lure them out in the fierce unusual heat of spring.
June should be as full of Irises as of rain. Honeysuckle, coral and white, lap over from May; and Spiræa in varying shades, from untinged white to nearly a crimson—so deep is the pink froth of flower, and so red the intricate pattern of branch and stem—are seen all the summer, and even into the early autumn. I sprained a shoulder gathering it, and nearly broke my neck besides, climbing up a slippery, friable, red hill-side after it at Ashinoyu. Under any name I love it—its proper botanical nomenclature, its stately lady-name ‘Veronica’; or as the homely ‘Meadow Sweet’ I called it as a child. Another home flower decks this full time of the year—Clematis. There is a big-bloomed purple kind, much like our New England south-porch favourite, which is called Clematis florida; and another, the wild sort, except for a difference in the shape of the leaves is almost exactly the same as that which clambers so gracefully over stone walls and grey fences, whose starry white blooms mingle so happily with the deep red berries of the Choke-cherry in Massachusetts. Its fluffy seed-vessels, which give it the ugly name of ‘Old Man’s Beard,’ have rather longer filaments than at home, however.
The Bignonia blazes brightest at mid-summer, the epitome of the summer’s sunshine,
