wild flowers are beginning to come out on the prairie, small
bushes of wild roses are all over; there are also very pretty
sunflowers, a tree maiden-hair, several different vetches,
sisters, yellow-daisies, &c.; many we cannot name, indigenous to
this country we conclude.

* * * * *

June 26.

We quite feel as if we had been here years instead of about five
weeks; and though it was prophesied before we left England that,
after turning the house up-side down and making the men very
uncomfortable with our cleanings, we should then go on strike, it
has not been altogether fulfilled. We certainly did try to clean
up a bit, but we still help in housework, and have to do as the
servants at home. If we expect visitors, or on a Sunday, put on a
tidy gown; otherwise we generally live in the oldest of frocks
(which are more or less stained with either mud or the red paint
with which we have been painting the roofs of both the stable and
the labourers' house), very big aprons, sleeves to match, and our
sun-bonnets. E---- has concocted for herself a thin blue-and-white
shirt, and as she generally lives with her sleeves tucked up, her
arms are getting quite brown and sunburnt. Our boots are the only
things we do not much like cleaning, they get so soon dirty again;
and we have come to the happy conclusion that unblacked boots have
a "cachet" that blacked boots have not. When we first arrived the
men promised to do them for us every Sunday; which promises, like
so many, have partaken of the nature of pie-crusts.