too cold to get up and look at a mother-o’-pearl Fuji, rising from and repeated in the lake, but draws over one the heavy wadded futon instead.
The flowers are at first the same. Lilies linger, the sharp little red tongues of Nerine are not yet stuck out mockingly from the brown earth. They await the time of the equinox, when, like goblin fires, they may burst wickedly from the dark soil. Campanulas, which all through August have rung their bells as constantly as church chimes I wot of in Cuba, peal on in fairy joy into September, and even October. Spiræa is never done fringing the roadsides, it would seem, and Hydrangeas go on heroically, with almost a Spartan stoicism. And there are still Orchids, a dainty little pink one (Spiranthes australis), which sets its tiny flowers in a spiral around its stalks, wreathed like a maypole. Crape Myrtle, or the Monkey Box shrub (Lagerstrœmia indica) still blooms, white and a deep old rose, on its trim little trees;[1] while Bignonia, with orange trumpets, which is the true flower of August, bugles long into September. Even Spider Wort, whose blue is so easily extracted that it is used for dyeing, and to symbolize fickle love, is constant in the mountains to the season, and has to be driven away by autumn’s chilliest looks.
- ↑ A small specimen of this may be seen in the Hakone Garden in Chapter VI. page 82.
