1935

The summer was a beautiful one. From early spring when the first rain had brought out the grass, the fields had been green, and even now in mid-summer, the lawn surrounding their little farm home was verdant as ever in the spring. The trees along the road and fences looked as fresh as they did when they first showed color in May. In the garden Sara could see how the beans, and carrots, and tomatoes grew each day. One week the lettuce was ready to eat, and the next week the radishes were in their prime. Before long there were delicious green peas and dark red beets for the table.

Then came haying time, too. The grass stood tall and rank and green. After it was cut, one could only hope for clear weather until the cutting had been dried and stored in the mows of the big red barn.

One day had been particularly busy. One load of hay after the other had been stowed away in rapid succession, It had been hot that day; it had been very hot for several days with no rain. Horses pulling the hay loader had been drenched with their sweat and a white rim of foam edged their collars. There had hardly been a breeze - only once in a while there had been a whiff of air to refresh the workers, then it was gone. The sky was a clear blue with only a few woolly clouds moving imperceptibly about the vast dome.

After the dishes were done that night, Sara brought her mending out on the lawn to rest after the hard day of canning strawberries. But now the day's work was finished, and she laid her sewing aside when Harris dropped down beside her on the soft thick grass. They sat without talking, watching the sun as it set in a blaze of light, a brilliant ball of fire sinking rapidly now in the painted sky, a sky of gorgeous colors shading from deep red to orange and cerise, then blending off into purple and dull blue. The air was quiet, but enough breeze stirred to turn the windmill over in slow rhythm. All else was quiet, save now and then a car hummed by on the white ribbon which passed the house, or the soft murmuring of a car re-echoing from a near-by road.

The elms gracefully drooping, cone-shaped outlines were silhouetted sharply against the bright sky. As twilight crept up, mute as a passing cloud, the western horizon's wall of fire diminished to a line of soft rose, and the cows in the pasture after the milking lost their shapes and became indistinguishable except as motley patterns in black and white against a dark green background, while the trees blended with the earth and were lost.

Then thunder rumbled in the distance, and a breeze struck up; the windmill's lazy whir was changed to a raucous clang.

"We need the water, but the wind is getting pretty stiff, I think I should shut it off." said Harris. But still he tarried for a while; but as the wind gained velocity, reluctantly he left Sara's side on the soft ground. "Looks like rain tonight."

"Yes" agreed Sara. "More rain, more rain," she said softly to herself in meditation. One year so little, and the next too much. It's a gambler's chance on the farm. Then, she, too, rose and went to the house, for a few drops were beginning to fall.