| #9 Barbed wire
“I see life from the working side of the fence, and not from the buggy of the visiting city novelist. . . . The beauty of the scene is there truly enough, but beneath it all are pain and squalor. I aim to put all there is in the scene, on the surface and beneath, into my pictures.” [Garland interview, 1894] |
#10 Wet grasses
"The grass in rustling ripple, cleaves
to left and right in emerald flow"
["Prairie Memories," Prairie
Songs, 1893]
Garland authored many poems featuring native grasses, including one entitled "A Tribute of Grasses," dedicated to Walt Whitman:
"I bring a handful of grass to thee --
The prairie grasses I know the best;
Type of the wealth and width of the plan,
Strong of the strength of the wind and sleet,
Fragrant with sunlight and cool with rain,
I bring it and lay it low at thy feet,
Here by the eastern sea.25
| #11 Timothy at the field's edge
"The temptation to sit on the corner of the harrow and dream the moments away was very great, and sometimes as I laid my tired body down on the tawny, sunlit grass at the edge of the field, and gazed up at the beautiful clouds sailing by, I wished for leisure to explore purple valleys." [A Son of the Middle Border, 1917] |
| #12 Windmill
“No open prairie could be found. Every quarter-section, every acre, was ploughed. The very air seemed tamed and set to work at the windmills which rose high above every barn, like great sunflowers.” [Boy Life on the Prairie, 1899] |
