By the end of January four species of plants were in flower, and five or
six mosses had already adjusted their hoods and were in the prime of
life; but the flowers were not sufficiently numerous as yet to affect
greatly the general green of the young leaves. Violets made their
appearance in the first week of February, and toward the end of this
month the warmer portions of the plain were already golden with myriads
of the flowers of rayed composite.
This was the full springtime. The sunshine grew warmer and richer, new
plants bloomed every day; the air became more tuneful with humming
wings, and sweeter with the fragrance of the opening flowers. Ants and
ground squirrels were getting ready for their summer work, rubbing their
benumbed limbs, and sunning themselves on the husk-piles before their
doors, and spiders were busy mending their old webs, or weaving new
ones.
In March, the vegetation was more than doubled in depth and color;
claytonia, calandrinia, a large white gilia, and two nemophilas were in
bloom, together with a host of yellow composite, tall enough now to bend
in the wind and show wavering ripples of shade.
In April, plant-life, as a whole, reached its greatest height, and the
plain, over all its varied surface, was mantled with a close, furred
plush of purple and golden corollas.
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