The Chrysanthemums
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The high gray-flannel fog of winter clod off the Salinas Valley from the sky and from all the rest of the world. On every side
it sat like a lid on the mountains and made of the great valley a clod pot. On the broad, level land floor the gang plows bit deep
and left the black earth shining like metal where the shares had cut. On the foothill ranches across the Salinas 1~iver, the yellow 粤语土味情话
stubble fields emed to be bathed in pale cold sunshine, but there was no sunshine in the valley now in December. The thick
willow scrub along the river flamed with sharp and positive yellow leaves.
It was a time of quiet and of waiting. The air was cold and tender. A light wind blew up from the southwest so that the farmers
were mildly hopeful of a good rain before long; but fog and rain did not go together.
Across the river, on Henry Allen's foothill ranch there was little work to be done, for the hay was cut and stored and the
orchards were plowed up to receive the rain deeply when it should come. The cattle on the higher slopes were becoming shaggy
and rough-coated.
Elisa Allen, working in her flower garden, looked down across the yard and saw Henry, her husband, talking to two men in
怎么学习化妆business suits. The three of them stood by the tractor shed, each man with one foot on the side of the little Ford-son. They smoked
cigarettes and studied the machine as they talked.
Elisa watched them for a moment and then went back to her work. She was thirty-five. Her face was lean and strong and her
eyes were as clear as water. Her figure looked blocked and heavy in her gardening costume, a man's black hat pulled low down
over her eyes, clod-hopper shoes, a figured print dress almost completely covered by a big corduroy apron with four big pockets
to hold the snips, the trowel and scratcher, the eds and the knife she worked with. She wore heavy leather gloves to protect her
hands while she worked.
She was cutting down the old year's chrysanthemum stalks with a pair of short and powerful scissors. She looked down toward
the men by the tractor shed now and then. Her face was eager and mature and handsom
e; even her work with the scissors was
over-eager, over-powerful. The chrysanthemum stems emed too small and easy for her energy.
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She brushed a cloud of hair out of her eyes with the back of her glove, and left a smudge of earth on her cheek in doing it.
Behind her stood the neat white farm hou with red geraniums clo-banked around it as high as the windows. It was a hard-
传统腊八粥的8种材料swept looking little hou, with hard-polished windows, and a clean mud-mat on the front steps.
Elisa cast another glance toward the tractor shed. The strangers were getting into their Ford coupe. She took off a glove and put
her strong fingers down into the forest of new green chrysanthemum sprouts that were growing around the old roots. She spread
the leaves and looked down among the clo-growing stems. No aphids were there, no sowbugs or snails or cutworms. Her terrier
fingers destroyed such pests before they could get started.
Elisa started at the sound of her husband's voice. He had come near quietly, and he leaned over the wire fence that protected her
幼儿诗歌朗诵flower garden from cattle and dogs and chickens.
"At it again," he said. "You've got a strong new crop coming.
Elisa straightened her back and pulled on the gardening glove again. "Yes. They'll be strong this coming year." In her tone and
on her face there was a little smugness.
You've got a gift with things," Henry obrved. "Some of tho yellow chrysanthemums you had this year were ten inches
across. I wish you'd work out in the orchard and rai some apples that big."
Her eyes sharpened. "Maybe I could do it, too. I've a gift with things, all right. My mother had it. She could stick anything in
the ground and make it grow. She said it was having planters' hands that knew how to do it."
"Well, it sure works with flowers," he said. "Henry, who were tho men you were talking to?"
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"Why, sure, that's what I came to tell you. They were from the Western Meat Company. I sold tho thirty head of three-year-
old steers. Got nearly my own price, too."
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"Good," she said. "Good for you.
"And I thought," he continued, "I thought how it's Saturday afternoon, and we might go into Salinas for dinner at a restaurant,
