The Muskrats are Building 
sparrow and junco, feed upon the weeds and grasses 
that ripen unmolested along the roadsides and waste 
places. A mixed flock of these small birds lived 
several days last winter upon the seeds of the rag- 
weed in my mowing. The weeds came up in the 
early fall after the field was laid down to clover and 
timothy. They threatened to choke out the grass. I 
looked at them, rising shoulder-high and seedy over 
the greening field, and thought with dismay of how 
they would cover it by the next fall. After a time 
the snow came, a foot and a half of it, till only the 
tops of the seedy ragweeds showed above the level 
white; then the juncos, goldfinches, and tree spar- 
rows came, and there was a five-day shucking of 
ragweed-seed in the mowing, and five days of life 
and plenty. 
Then I looked and thought again — that, perhaps, 
into the original divine scheme of things were put 
even ragweeds. But then, perhaps, there was no 
original divine scheme of things. I don’t know. As 
I watch the changing seasons, however, across the 
changeless years, I seem to find a scheme, a plan, a 
purpose, and there are weeds and winters in it, and 
it seems divine. 
17 
