verbs…all of them tiring

the second block for my cold mountain quilt (no official name as of yet) is one that many can certainly relate to.  ada was raised to be a ‘proper’ woman of the 1860’s.  her time was spent playing piano, writing poems and reading fine literature…until her father died and left her with a large farm to try and run.  things didn’t go well for her for several months, until ruby shows up at her doorstep, cuts a deal with her and puts her to work.

“to ada, ruby’s monolgues seemed composed mainly of verbs, all of them tiring.  plow, plant, hoe, cut, can, feed, kill.  when ada remarked that at least they could rest when winter came, ruby said, ‘oh, when winter comes we’ll mend fence and piece quilts and fix what’s broken around here, which is a lot.’  simply living had never struck ada as such tiresome business.”