37 8 Next to the Ground 



the flower borders and honeysuckle trellises 

 all through June, hovering momently to 

 rifle roses and lilies, but in the end returning 

 to the long-throated blossoms whose sweets 

 the bees could not reach. Joe and Patsy 

 also haunted the flowers of evenings. The 

 flies came out after sundown, and the children 

 grabbed at them until it was pitch dark, or 

 long after, if the moon shone. They pulled 

 off and strung the flyheads, and there was 

 sharp rivalry as to which should show the 

 most. They got double price for these 

 early heads, since each of them meant many 

 thousand fewer worms in the dreaded "August 

 glut." Eggs for the August glut are laid by 

 flies hatched from June or July worms. The 

 full moon of August is the really trying time. 

 Flies are plentiest then, also most active, and 

 forsake the garden blossoms for those of field 

 and waste. 



To destroy these fine summer-hatched 

 legions was the end of jimson weed plantingo 

 Books make it Jamestown weed, or datura 

 stramonium, but the farmlands know it only 

 as jimson weed. The weeds were planted 

 along the turn rows, also in convenient 

 clumps about the fields. They must have 

 felt the world a bit upside down, at finding 

 themselves, the weediest of weeds, neither 

 plucked up, nor hewn down, but tended and 



