Planting Corn
The bluebird was out today; out in his glossiest plumage, his throat gurgling with song.
For the sunlight was warm and radiant in all the South, and the coming spring had laid its benediction on every field and hedge and forest.
The smell of newly plowed ground mingled with the subtle incense of the yellow jasmine; and from every orchard a shower of the blossoms of peach and apple and pear was wafted into the yard and hung lovingly on the eaves and in the piazzas of the old homestead—the old and faded homestead.
Was there a cloud in all the sky? Not one, not one.
“Gee! Mule!!!”
“Dad blast your hide, why don’t you gee-e-EE!!”
Co-whack! goes the plowline on the back of the patient mule—the dignified upholder of mortgages, “time price” accounts, and the family credit generally.
Down the furrow, and up the furrow; down to the woods, and up to the fence—there they go, the sturdy plowman and his much-enduring but indispensable mule.
For the poplar leaves are now as big as squirrel-ears and it’s “time to plant corn.”