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8 years ago
Saturday, 7 February 2009
The thunder over head is mighty loud; It's shaking my apartment
We are having a mild winter. Spring is not a-bluster, but winter's not putting up a fight. Still, the locals say it's not over. The ricefields are brown with the severed broom-heads of harvested crops. Sprinkled with green. Encroaching green. Mosquitoes circle under train station lights. The locals say that snow is needed to kill them off so that they don't become a plague at the time of planting and in the summer months. Wind blows across a puddle, a careless ruffling of hair. A train in the distance as I ride home. First the fields, then the barriers, then the car-beam swept road. Four carriages warmly curving into the night.
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2 comments:
What a lovely word picture. I'm going to crash in on it with the prosaical pronouncement that, for Wisconsin mosquitos at least, what determines the size of the crop is not the winter snow but the level of the spring thaw. The more water, the more eggs which were laid throughout the previous years are moistened and hatch, the more mosquitos flying around. Little snow and a dry spring is better than lots of snow to turn into lots of meltwater.
Ah, maybe that applies here, too. I'm just repeating the stories I'm told. But, farmers actually need the meltwater, too (naturally)for their crops, which they aren't going to get much of this year. It might be a very dry harvest.
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