Read Online Little Town On The Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder - Free Book Online Page A

had never seen one.
    But Pa had earned nearly a hundred dollars that spring; the garden and the oats and the corn were growing marvelously; and Mary really could go to college.
    Coming back from their walk one morning, Laura noticed several grasses sticking to Mary's skirt. She tried to pull them off, but they would not come loose.
    “Ma!” she called. “Come look at this funny grass.”
    Ma had never seen a grass like it. The grass heads were like barley beards, except that they were twisted, and they ended in a seed pod an inch long, with a point as fine and hard as a needle, and a shaft covered with stiff hairs pointing backward. Like real needles, the points had sewed themselves into Mary's dress. The stiff hair followed the needle-point easily, but kept it from being pulled back, and the four-inch-long, screw-like beard followed, twisting and pushing the needle-point farther in.
    “Ouch! something bit me!” Mary exclaimed. Just above her shoetop, one of the strange grasses had pierced her stocking and was screwing itself into her flesh.
    “I declare this beats all,” said Ma. “What next will we encounter on this homestead?”
    When Pa came in at noon, they showed him the strange grass. He said it was Spanish needle grass.
    When it got in the mouths of horses or cattle, it must be cut out of their lips and tongues. It worked through sheep's wool and into the sheep's bodies, often killing them.
    “Where did you girls find it?” he asked, and he was glad that Laura could not tell him. “If you didn't notice it, there can't be much of it. It grows in patches, and spreads. Exactly where did you go walking?”
    Laura could tell him that. He said he would attend to that grass. “Some say it can be killed by burning it over, green,” he told them. “I'll burn it now, to kill as many seeds as I can, and next spring I'll be on the lookout and burn it, green.”
    There were little new potatoes for dinner, creamed with green peas, and there were string beans and green onions. And by every plate was a saucer full of sliced tomatoes, to be eaten with sugar and cream.
    “Well, we've got good things to eat, and plenty of them,” said Pa, taking a second helping of potatoes and peas.
    “Yes,” Ma said happily; “nowadays we can all eat enough to make up for what we couldn't have last winter.”
    She was proud of the garden; it was growing so well.
    “I shall begin salting down cucumbers tomorrow, little ones are thick under all those vines. And the potato tops are thriving so, I can hardly find the hills underneath them, to scrabble.”
    “If nothing happens to them, we'll have plenty of potatoes this winter!” Pa rejoiced.
    “We'll have roasting ears soon, too,” Ma announced.
    "I noticed, this morning, some of the corn silks are beginning to darken."
    “I never saw a better corn crop,” said Pa. “We've got that to depend on.”
    “And the oats,” said Ma. The n she asked, “What's wrong with the oats, Charles?”
    “Well, blackbirds are getting most of them,” Pa told her. “I no sooner set up a shock than it's covered thick with the pests. They're eating all the grain they can get at, and not leaving much but the straw.”
    Ma's cheerful face dimmed, but Pa went on. “Never mind, there's a good crop of straw, and soon as I get the oats cut and shocked I'll clear out the blackbirds with a shotgun.”
    That afternoon, looking up from her sewing to thread her needle, Laura saw a wisp of smoke waver-ing in the heat waves from the prairie. Pa had taken time from his work in the oatfield to cut a swath around the patch of Spanish needles and set fire to those vicious grasses.
    “The prairie looks so beautiful and gentle,” she said. “But I wonder what it will do next. Seems like we have to fight it all the time.”
    “This earthly life is a battle,” said Ma. “If it isn't one thing to contend with, it's another. It always has been so, and it always will be. The sooner you make up your mind to that,