There is no floral spectacle in all the land so fine as this march of
the composites over the Iowa prairies and fields in September. That is
the judgment of those who have travelled and observed. In the swamps
and along the ditches the blue lobelias flourish and the companies of
blue gentians are bringing up the rear to end the floral review,
begging the summer to wait until they pass by.
The little creek near which I live rises in a little swale between two
rolling ridges of the pasture. When it leaves the pasture only a
narrow box culvert is necessary to take it across the road, but before
it reaches the river, twenty miles away, a double-spanned bridge is
required to carry the road over it. In the pasture where it rises it
fails to furnish enough water for the cattle, but half way along its
course it sometimes washes out bridges in the springtime and farther
down it often floods the lowlands. Slipping silently among the feet of
the long grasses in the meadows it is scarcely seen at first; but
by-and-by it attains the dignity of a stream, winding through meadows
and bordering orchards and grain-fields. Now the willows begin to
mark its course, then elms and oaks and walnuts with little thickets
of panicled dogwood and wild plum, where the wild grape and the
bittersweet display their fruit and the wild duck sometimes makes her
nest.
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