August 
1922 
29 
RAIN 
BEFORE 
SEVEN 
T O people who live in cities the weather is a factor that 
makes but little difference in their lives' except when it 
runs to extremes. Rain or shine we rise, go to an office, 
work and return home. If it is clear and pleasant, perhaps our 
heels hit the pavement with a quicker ring; if it is raining, we 
have the bother of carrying an umbrella. When it snows, the 
city man finds peculiar delight in seeing such huge machines as 
trolley cars and trucks being incapacitated. Snow seems to give 
him more exhilaration than any other form of weather. 
These may seem broad statements. If you doubt them, listen 
to city folks talking about weather. When the day is hot they 
say, “Well, is it hot enough for you?” When it rains they say, 
“Well, is it wet enough for you?” Rather banal and unimagina¬ 
tive. Somehow, weather doesn't seem to get under the hides of 
people who live in cities, except to depress them when it rains 
incessantly. But in the country—- 
To the man who lives in the country, to the man who has a 
garden, the weather is a constant and inexorable influence. All 
his labors depend upon it. Too much or too little rain, sudden 
frosts, destructive winds are big and deciding factors in his life. 
He soon finds himself, as his interest in gardening deepens, con¬ 
sulting thermometers and barometers and reading weather prog¬ 
nostications. He will also learn queer countryside weather 
legends, and come to depend upon them, such as— 
Rain before seven 
Sun before eleven. 
These old country weather jingles may not be highly scientific, 
but the most of them are amazingly true. Suspect rain, and what 
do you observe? That the leaves of the trees turn back. That 
the crickets’ song is sharp and clear. That frogs seem to change 
color before a storm, turning from green to brown. That the 
down blows off the dandelion even though there is no wind. That 
the fireflies are very bright. That marigolds close their petals. 
O NE of these days, when I’ve nothing else to do, I’d like 
to make a collection of these old weather rhymes. Doubt¬ 
less, they would all be about alike irrespective of country 
or time, for the observations of people who live close to the soil 
have an eternal sameness. Perhaps each in his own way and 
tongue—wheat farmers in Kansas and Siberia, cotton raisers in 
Georgia and Egypt—agree that 
A mackerel sky 
Is very wet, or very dry. 
Which is a commendably cautious attitude to take. Or this 
Between twelve and two 
You’ll see what the day will do. 
Likewise cautious. For caution, be it remembered, is the country 
man’s prime virtue. He doesn’t make rash promises. The 
weather has deceived him too often. Still, however disillusioned 
he may have been at times, he clings to his jingles and will quote 
them as gospel truth whenever the occasion offers. Your weather 
man, reading sky signs from a tall city building and broadcasting 
the country with weather reports and promises, has never made 
a truer—certainly never a more poetic—observation than the 
farm wife at the foot of my hill, who assures me that 
When the wind is in the south 
’Tis in the rain’s mouth, 
When the wind is in the east 
’Tis neither good for man nor beast. 
N OW all this chatter about rain and shine has been 
brought up by the fact that we’ve been haying. 
Along in March, when we plowed the garden, my old 
Swede remarked that we were going to have a wet summer. “It'll 
make the hay grow,” he said, “but we will have the devil’s own 
time getting it in.” 
If you've never helped take in hay, all this is lost on you. 
Hay, you must know, is cut, and left in the meadow a day or so 
to be cured by the sun. If there is rain, it becomes sodden and 
is apt to mold. It can’t be placed into the barn while wet, because 
it would rot and might catch fire from internal combustion. So 
the farmer prays for plenty of rain to make a big hay crop and 
bright sunshine when haying time comes. 
We had the rain—and we needed it—but the skies were im¬ 
moderate. They gushed water like the Anti-Saloon League. 
The meadow became a jungle, so high the grass . . . Then one 
morning we awoke to hear the click of the mower and the abrupt 
remarks of the farmer to his horse, as he pulled her up to clear 
the knives. All day the mown grass scented the air. We prayed 
for another clear day. But the wind was wrong, and the leaves 
of the trees warned us, and so did the crickets’ sharp cries and 
the sparkle of the fireflies. Sure enough, it came down, a deluge 
of rain. Only after three days were we vouchsafed sunshine and 
the hay could be cured and hauled to the barn. 
T HE gardener soon finds that his sport is a gamble against 
big odds. If he wins, he wins big; if he loses—well, he 
has to be a good looser. He will work for a year raising, 
as I have done, some superb delphiniums. The best of his efforts 
have gone into those plants. He has dreamed of the vision that 
will greet his eye when those blue spikes are lifted up toward the 
sky. He fights for them against blight and slugs. He feeds them 
delicious plant foods. He waters and mulches them when it is 
dry. He stakes them against destructive winds. Then of a 
sudden comes a storm that uproots huge trees and lifts roofs 
from barns. It passes, and he goes out to see his flowers. The 
tall spikes, that but an hour ago gave such promise, lie broken 
and bedraggled in the mud. Next year he’ll have better luck. 
I have a notion (I may be wrong) that many of our folk 
legends and jingles have been produced as antidotes to dis¬ 
couragement and fear. Just as small boys keep tbeir courage up 
while passing a cemetery by whistling, so do gardeners and farm¬ 
ers put their trust in simple rhymes and homely sayings in the 
hour of their defeat. They arise, after a night of rain, hopeful 
for a sunny day. It is still pouring. A glance at the clock on 
the bureau. There’s still an hour to go before seven. That’s good! 
Rain before seven, 
Sun before eleven! 
