If the wind blows cold and rainy they will close, and open again to the sunshine.
At the outside of the withies, where the earth is drier, stand tall horse-chestnut trees, aspen, and beech.

The leaflets of the horse-chestnut are already opening; but on the ground, half-hidden under beech leaves not yet decayed, and sycamore leaves reduced to imperfect grey skeletons, there lies a chestnut shell.

It is sodden, and has lost its original green--the prickles, too, have decayed and disappeared; yet at a touch it falls apart, and discloses two chestnuts, still of a rich, deep polished brown.
On the very bank of the brook there grows a beech whose bare boughs droop over, almost dipping in the water, where it comes with a swift rush from the narrow arches of a small bridge whose bricks are green with moss.

The current is still slightly turbid, for the floods have not long subsided, and the soaked meadows and ploughed fields send their rills to swell the brook and stain it with sand and earth.

On the surface float down twigs and small branches forced from the trees by the gales: sometimes an entangled mass of aquatic weeds--long, slender green filaments twisted and matted together--comes more slowly because heavy and deep in the water.
A little bird comes flitting silently from the willows and perches on the drooping beech branch.