February has come and gone with its mild and balmy air and it's abominable mud. March has come in like a lion and given us a running assortment of rain, snow, sleet, sunshine, fog, mud, and ice, but appears to be straightening around for a settled spring. February quite lost its senses this year. The air was so invigorating the temperature so comforting that one's pulses went bounding, and one soul went soaring, and all that, but two or 3 pounds of mud on each foot was sufficient to hold ambition down to earth, and nothing much was accomplished in the farming and gardening line.
The frost is out of the ground now, so that walking is not quite so treacherous. We hear once more of the music of bang boards in the land, for some of the corn has stood, unhusked, all winter, in the midst of snow and mud. Not till that is finished will much be done toward the new seasons work.
It is customary hereabouts to do the main butchering in February, but the weather was so warm that we had to look sharp to find a suitable spell. When we chose our time, we had to rush the work to get it done before the temperature rose again. Daddy and the children and I cut up lard in the basement after supper one night until Sonny cut a finger, and after that, the youngsters perched on the celler steps and conversed briskly, hoping I suppose to make us forget it was bedtime. They outlined their life ambitions to us at some length. Ruth hopes to be a farmers wife, Sonny plans to be an engineer, and Wilbert has set his heart and becoming a millionaire.
Settle Community Problems
After they were finally tucked away for the night, Daddy and I settled the problems with the community and the universe while we finished up cutting the meat and eventually the butchering was completed for this year.
The farm sales are practically over and they never was a season in these parts were there were so many. It really has been quite festive. The men had somewhere to go nearly all winter.
The annual meetings of most local organizations are safely over, and we all know who's who in every club in association. Our home talent Lyceum course, sadly delayed by bad roads and storms of January and February, is being rushed through this month, date crowding date. The last of the home talent plays are being whipped into shape, the farewell parties for departing neighbors have been held, and all in all we are settling down to work.
First Taste of Tragedy
Our little parent teachers association is hanging together loyally though our teacher is quite ill and the school is almost broken up. It is hard to find a substitute this time of year and our youngsters may have to be "farmed out" to adjoining districts. Daughter Ruth has had her first taste of real tragedy this spring, first, in the illness of the beloved teacher, and then in the departure of favorite playmates from the school. "Isn't it awful to have to be separated from the ones you like the best," she asked with quivering lips, on the last, fatal day. "Seems like the last minute is the worst. We were never so happy all day, singing the songs they like the best and playing the games they chose, and then, at the last, it seemed as though we couldn't stand to say goodbye." The little girls are just moving a few miles away, but to the children it is as hard a parting as though they were going overseas forever. We are prone to be untouched by such apparently slight, childish, grief, but who shall say that they are not as deep and painful as any experiences we ever meet in life?
"Friend after friend departs,
Who has not lost a friend?
There is no friendship here on earth.
That has not come here and in."
And now comes the last of the sewing, in the house, cleaning, in the gardening, in the chicken raising. It is the turn of the year, when there comes a fresh inspiration. From now on, there is a little more poetry in the wash day, a little less bleakness on the farm.