Hello, God. It's me, Mara.

You know, Lord, September is the month of a whole lot of things from grapes to lovely skies, crows cawing diligently, sunshine and winds and Summer clouds, besides, putting up the hay. Who could not deny that this same putting up of hay is something besides fun; but for all that, haying on the prairie has its poetry and its fun. No fragrance of haying is to be compared to the fragrance of prairie hay.

Grapes — ah, the grape shape, the hoar frost wherewith God has seen fit to cloud the purple of His grape cluster, the way clusters hang with indolence luxuriously graceful, the mild fragrance which give to every vineyard its own atmosphere.

And the sky! It is half summer and half fall; the clouds blown and scattered and very high and lovely and wistful, as someone mentioned, as wistful as a woman’s eyes looking for him she loves. The sunshine is growing a trifle dreamy while the winds seem to hang about the clustering grapes as seen through lattices of leaves.

In September, the sweat of growth is ended. Summer clouds are departed. September days, by their clouds, note on the dial, summer is ended. Clouds are grown translucent. The clouds make your heart ache. They seem so fragile as if a glance of the eye would dissipate them though they are actually more stable than the clouds of summer.

September seems to be a time to lie by moonlight on the prairie hay — someone said that to lie on hay is better than to lie down on beds of down! When prairie winds blow free, you are drenched with grass odor; while some of us would rather nibble on a handful of grapes. Thank You, Lord. Ecclesiastes 3:3: “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”

Love, Mara