Seeding Oats Fit For Ceres

It's cool and windy, but sunny today. This morning I spent pushing my big Rubbermaid cart around the lawn, gathering up stray branches and corn husks that keep blowing in from the fields. I haven't mowed the grass yet----that can wait until next week when hopefully the days will be warmer. I've been fighting a raw throat and cough for almost three weeks. The doctor did a strep test which was negative, and told me to take allergy medicine and be patient. Great. I've been trying to stay warm and get enough rest, but I feel like a microwave oven whose power level has been lowered from 10 to around 6. The normal energy is just not there, and I feel achy and chilly in the evenings.

On Tuesday, Husband seeded oats. He uses a grain drill which plants the oats and alfalfa seed into the ground in close-knit rows. When I was a kid we planted oats by "sowing" them from a sowing apparatus attached to the back end of a flare-box wagon. It threw the seeds out, broadcasting them onto the top of the ground. My sister and I would ride in the wagon and keep the hoppers filled with oats and grass seed. I can still hear the sound of the sower chains starting up as we headed across the field. The wagon would jerk ahead and we would fall backwards into the pile of oats which would cushion us during the bumpy ride. Probably no farmers, except maybe the Amish, use an oat sower like that anymore. Actually, not many farmers plant oats, period. We do because Husband uses oats in livestock feed, plus we make straw bales every summer for livestock bedding.

On a calendar website that I look at everyday, it said that today is the last day of the ancient Roman celebration of "Cerealia", in honor of Ceres. She was the goddess of grain plants and motherly love. She was depicted in art with a sceptre, a basket of flowers and fruit, and wearing a garland made of wheat ears.
Also, the Romans used an expression, "fit for Ceres", which meant splendid.

May everyone's day today be "fit for Ceres"!