Page:Letters from an Oregon Ranch.djvu/159

 Foreseeing a torrent of reminiscences, I hastily remarked, “We don’t need poultices now; but the stuff looks nourishing,—I wonder how it would do for greens?”

This happened in our starvation days.

“Let’s try a dash at it, Katharine; the Chinese eat plantain, and this looks a mighty sight more fattening.”

Our culinary works were reticent on the subject of “live forever;” otherwise, goaded on by hunger, I should probably have stewed a little just for sauce.

Sheltering this benefactor of bruised boyish feet was a very bushy tree, with a curious leaf, which we watched anxiously until early May, when it suddenly hung out hundreds of long drooping racemes, much like locust blooms, only of bright canary color. Flashing in the sunlight, it was like a shower of gold, and worth “coming miles to see.” We now think it a Scotch laburnum.

Here, too, was the wreck of a honeysuckle, carefully staked about, hinting of something choice; but the omnivorous Angora (goat, not cat) had reached over the barricade and eaten it off almost to the ground. Tom dug about its roots, enriched the soil, and encouraged it with a trellis, which it gratefully climbed and now covers luxuriantly, though it has not yet seen fit to reward him with a blossom. Under one of the windows was the remains of an English ivy; given special treatment, to-day its dark glossy leaves cover the lower part of the house and peep inquisitively in at the window.