Next, a dozen shrubs were planted in the eastern corner of the bit of ground where it rolled up toward the brush-lot and the earth was deep and good. They were varieties that would flower in May and June, before the closing of school. Syringa, Weigela, Yellow Forsythia, Purple and White Lilac, Snowballs, Spireas, Scarlet Flowering Quince, Strawberry Shrub, and Deutzia. Between this shrubbery a little strip along the north fence had been made into a long bed of about thirty feet, and the girls had been asked to collect enough hardy plants from about the farm gardens to fill it; for there is little use in planting bedding or annual flowers in school yards, for these are later in starting and are killed by early frost.
The girls had been very successful in their task, and a goodly assortment of old-fashioned, hardy plants, that many a gardener would envy, was the result: Iris of several shades, Peonies, Sweet Williams, Larkspur, Foxgloves, Honesty, May Pinks, Lemon Lilies, Johnny-jumpers, and several good roots of Cinnamon and Damask Roses were among the collection, while Sarah Barnes’ grandmother sent a basket of the roots of hardy button Chrysanthemums—pink, white, crimson, yellow, and tawny—that she said would hold out from October to Thanksgiving if they had “bushes between them and the north.” It was quite eleven o’clock when, the planting over and the benches that the boys had made during the winter set in place, the children, whose hands were washed under very difficult conditions, gathered in the school.
But those parents who cared to come had meanwhile had a chance to go into the little building, see the pictures, charts, and books on the shelf behind the desk, and chat with Miss Wilde in a friendly, informal way that was helpful to all concerned.
Goldilocks had been there all the morning, but when Gray Lady arrived she brought with her a friend of “the General’s,” who was also a Wise Man in one of the chief agricultural colleges of the country, who had promised to talk to the children. Gray Lady herself was to read them some bird poetry, and Miss Wilde a little story of her own invention, while as a finale the children themselves were to recite some verses where ten familiar birds were represented each by a child who wore a cap and shoulder cape, cleverly made of crêpe paper, that would give a clew, at least, to the bird he or she represented.
These costumes had been made at the last Saturday meeting of the Kind Hearts’ Club, in the playroom at “the General’s,” and had caused no little fun, the idea of them having come from the caps in the mottoes at that orchard party, in September, eight months before, when the children first entered Birdland.
This is the poem that Gray Lady read. She had a voice that sang even in speaking, and as Goldilocks often said, “When mother reads bird poetry you don’t hear the words, but the birds themselves.”
BIRDS IN SPRING
What time the rose of dawn is laid across the lips of night,
And all the drowsy little stars have fallen asleep in light,
’Tis then a wandering wind awakes, and runs from tree to tree,