The Countryside in Summer

　　Summer has come, with its warm sunny days, making us thing of all sorts of nice things, such as holidays in the country, picnics and haymaking①parties.

　　When Spring came, she found the earth cold and bare, but she soon changed all that, and by the time Summer arrives, the world is a very different place. It is a green world now, green leaves on the trees, green grass in the fields, green plants crowding in the hedges②， and flowers opening everywhere.

　　The days are long and the nights are short, for the sun gets up early and goes to bed late in sunny June. It is one of the best and brightest months in the year. Birds sing from sunrise till long after sunset.

　　As night falls, one after another the birds stop their singing, and after a few last sleepy sounds, put their heads under their wings to rest for an hour or two before beginning again. They do not all sleep, however. When other birds are silent, comes a soft cry, then, after a few moments, another, louder this time; and soon the nightingale③ pouring out his wonderful song.

　　Not only at night does the nightingale sing. On almost every warm day in early June, the little brown bird sings away in the roads and woods, but, as all the other birds are also singing at the same time, we do not notice his voice so much. It is at night, when he has the field all to himself, that we hear the nightingale at his best.