Are you looking for John Steinbeck’s 1938 short story The Chrysanthemums? Apparently a lot of people are because I posted an excerpt and an online link late last night then deleted the posted early in the morning. But a view of the stats here at Carver’s Dog reveals that traffic continues to flow for the Steinbeck tale:

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The high gray-flannel fog of winter closed off the Salinas Valley from the sky and from all the rest of the world. On every side it sat like a lid on the mountains and made of the great valley a closed pot. On the broad, level land floor the gang plows bit deep and left the black earth shining like metal where the shares had cut. On the foothill ranches across the Salinas River, the yellow stubble fields seemed to be bathed in pale cold sunshine, but there was no sunshine in the valley now in December. The thick willow scrub along the river flamed with sharp and positive yellow leaves.

    It was a time of quiet and of waiting. The air was cold and tender. A light wind blew up from the southwest so that the farmers were mildly hopeful of a good rain before long; but fog and rain did not go together.

    Across the river, on Henry Allen’s foothill ranch there was little work to be done, for the hay was cut and stored and the orchards were plowed up to receive the rain deeply when it should come. The cattle on the higher slopes were becoming shaggy and rough-coated.

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You can read the full text of the story here. And I apologize to all who came here looking for the story and received a Page Unavailable prompt for their literary hunting efforts.

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