Page:Rural Hours.djvu/129

Rh our fears, the plants reviving and yielding a portion of their fruits, if not a full crop. Happily, this year we have had nothing of the kind—the cool moment came earlier—before vegetation was sufficiently advanced to be injured. To-day the air is very pleasant and summer-like.

Walked on Hannah's Height; gathered azaleas in abundance; they are in their prime now, and very beautiful; we have known them, however, to blossom three weeks earlier. Our Dutch ancestors used to call these flowers Pinxter Blumejies, from their being usually in bloom about Whit-Sunday; under this name, they figured annually at the great holyday of the negroes, held in old colonial times at Albany and New Amsterdam. The blacks were allowed full liberty to frolic, for several days in Whitsunweek, and they used to hold a fair, building booths, which they never failed to ornament with the Pinxter Blumejies. The flowers are very abundant this year, and their deep rose-colored clusters seem to light up the shady woods.

We were in good luck, for we found also a little troop of moccasin plants in flower; frequently, the season has passed without our seeing one, but this afternoon we gathered no less than eighteen of the purple kind, the Cyprepedium acaule of botanists. The small yellow, the large yellow, and the showy ladyslipper have also been found here, but they are all becoming more rare.

Friday, 8th.—Rainy morning. It appears that yesterday we missed a fine sight: about dawn it was foggy; a large flock of wild pigeons passing over the valley, became bewildered in the mist, and actually alighted in the heart of the village, which we have never known them to do before. The trees in the churchyard, those in our own grounds, and several other gardens, were