Springtime in the Eifel

(Don Dale photo, 1967)

Earlier I showed you the view out of my barracks room window in the dark of winter. Here's what it looked like in the spring of 1967. The farmer's field has been plowed, and after the short days of winter the longer daylight hours of spring seemed to cheer us all up. (In the winter, the sun didn't rise until about 8 a.m. and dusk was at 4:30. By the height of summer, daylight would last until past 9 p.m.)

I didn't grow up on a farm, but my mother did. I was curious about what the farmer would be planting, so I asked her in one of my letters home what kinds of crops she might expect in Bitburg's climate. My mother wrote back and told me that I could always take a picture of the crop as it emerged and send it to her: she'd be able to identify it.

I began by taking this picture to show her what the field looked like just after it had been plowed. The rainbow was a serendipitous element.