THE RED FLOWERING CURRENT.

In the lower valleys the warm sunny days which we have enjoyed of late has brought the red current into bloom. Soon it will be adding a touch of brilliant red to the greening roadsides of the park. When the red of the current is first noticeable along the roads we may look for the trillium and the yellow violets in the woods and the skunk cabbage will begin to unroll its yellow leaves in the swamps. With the passing of the current later in the spring the lower valleys will not know such flaming colors again until the frost paints the leaves of the vine maple and mountain ash in the fall.

MORE SIGNS OF SPRING.

As you look about you at Longmire Springs there is little besides the calendar to tell you that spring is here, but a thousand feet lower down on sunny afternoons you do not need your calendar, or your eyes either, to tell you that the balmy days are near. Your nose knows! Perhaps you wonder at first just what is the sweetly aromatic odor which prevades the air. It is the balsm covered buds of the black cottonwood and I know no smell so characteristic of spring in the lower valleys.