Jack-in-the-pulpits show club-shaped bunches of scarlet berries here and there among the grasses.  On the wooded slopes there are the white fruits of the baneberry on its quaintly-shaped red stalks, the pretty fruit clusters of the moonseed and the smilax.  The scattered berries of the green-brier will be black in winter, but their September hue is a bronze green of a delicate shade which artists might envy.  It will take another month to ripen the drupes of the black-haw into their blue-black beauty; now they are green on one side and red on the other, like a ripening apple.  It’s a fine education to know just which fruits you may nibble and which you must not eat.  Red-stalked clusters of black berries hang from the vines of the Virginia creeper among leaves just touched with the hectic flame that tells of their passing, all too soon.  At the sign of the sumac, tall torches of garnet berries rise.  Down the bank, the bittersweet sends trailing arms jeweled with orange-colored pods just opening to display the scarlet arils within.  Crimsoning capsules give the burning bush its name; this may well have been the bush at which Moses was directed to take off his sandals because he was treading on holy ground.  Large, triangular membranaceous pods hang thickly from the white-lined branches of the bladdernut.  Cup-like leaves of the honeysuckle hold bunches of scarlet berries.  So on and on the creek leads to new beauties of color and form, new delights for taste and smell.  Every plant has some excuse for its being, something of the loveliness and fragrance of the summer stored in its fruits.  There is a lesson for the mind and the soul to be gathered with the fruit of these shrubs and vines.  Summer still works with tireless energy.  She has done with the leaf and the bud and the blossom; all her remaining strength is being spent in filling the fruits before the night of the white death comes.

* * * * *

Since the first of the month the little catkins have been creeping from the twigs of the hazel, and their tender, spring-like green is quite as interesting as the ripening bunches of nuts.  These little catkins will hang short and stiff all winter, but when the ice goes out of the rivers and the first frog croaks in the springtime, they will lengthen, soften and grow yellow with their abundant pollen.  Squirrels are busy among the acorns and the hickory nuts; the split husks and shells are thickly strewn beneath the trees.  Red-headed woodpeckers are gathering acorns and pushing them behind the flaky bark of the wild cherry for use during the late fall; sometimes a little family of the redheads remains all winter.  Chipmunks are carrying acorns to their granaries; they dash into their holes with a squeak as if in derision at your slow-footed manner of walking.

* * * * *