Index to this volume
Jepson Field Book Transcriptions · Jepson Herbarium
Index to all books
|
66_44 Lodged Grain Sometimes in late May or in June would come an untimely shower _ a shower of rain heavy enough to weight the stalks of grain where the grain stands thickest. Usually, perhaps always indeed I think there is, must be - wind with the rain and under this double influence the grain falls in swaths _ broad swaths making heavy patterns through the wheat fields _ not as if it had been trampled _ but as if a great roller had touched it from above, had rolled across the wheat in fantastic waves. Where the grain stands heavy in a field, the whole field goes down but not uniformly, swaths lodging against other swaths as the wind currents veered or the weight of water |
66_45 chanced, thus making strange patterns of destruction all across the land. The Wheat Fields The months of the maturing of the grain fields exerted an influence on the mental outlook of a lad. Our living depended mainly on the wheat crop and the chances of flood or drought were carefully weighed and debated. By the middle of May it was pretty well known what the harvest would be, although there was still chances of an extremely drying north wind which might catch the plants in the _milk_ stage of their development. Best of all was to see the fields, rippling under the southwest trades, turn from green to gold and to the straw-color of late July. The slender culms, standing so close, -cont. p. 107.- |
ms. | Copyright © 2007 Regents of the University of California | Credits: |
ms.