I'm not familiar with Montgomery, but I was a teenager before I realized tarbaby was supposed to be perjorative. Does Anne take place in a rural community?

Harvest time is the both the busiest part of the year, and the most financially important - and in one of those cosmic jokes on farmers, it arrives as daylight starts to be severely constricted.

To misquote Macdonald Carey, "As sands through an hourglass, these are the long-come-shorts of our lives."

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Words fail me
(Turnabout is fair play.)

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Words fail me. (Turnabout is fair play.)