"I will knock off," I said, so I used my spade as a ladder and climbed
out of the ditch. Being very thirsty, I walked down through the marshy
valley to the clump of alders which grows along the creek. I followed a
cow-path through the thicket and came to the creek side, where I knelt
on a log and took a good long drink. Then I soused my head in the cool
stream, dashed the water upon my arms and came up dripping and gasping!
Oh, but it was fine!

So I came back to the hawthorn tree, where I sat down comfortably and
stretched my legs. There is a poem in stretched legs--after hard
digging--but I can't write it, though I can feel it! I got my bag and
took out a half loaf of Harriet's bread. Breaking off big crude pieces,
I ate it there in the shade. How rarely we taste the real taste of
bread! We disguise it with butter, we toast it, we eat it with milk or
fruit. We even soak it with gravy (here in the country where we aren't
at all polite--but very comfortable), so that we never get the downright
delicious taste of the bread itself. I was hungry this morning and I ate
my half loaf to the last crumb--and wanted more. Then I lay down for a
moment in the shade and looked up into the sky through the thin outer
branches of the hawthorn. A turkey buzzard was lazily circling
cloud-high above me: a frog boomed intermittently from the little marsh,
and there were bees at work in the blossoms.

--I had another drink at the creek and went back somewhat reluctantly,
I confess, to the work. It was hot, and the first joy of effort had worn
off. But the ditch was to be dug and I went at it again. One becomes a
sort of machine--unthinking, mechanical: and yet intense physical work,
though making no immediate impression on the mind, often lingers in the
consciousness. I find that sometimes I can remember and enjoy for long