Pining for Spring

I should make like a farmwife and blog about the farm. Well, there's not much exciting to say about it right now. The farm fields continue to slumber under their blankets of snow and ice. Let's see......today is MARCH 7, and at that late date we should NOT still be experiencing temperatures of zero and below. Some years we drill oats the first week of March, for crying out loud! What is going on?? Do you suppose the seasons are being thrown off course because of the oddly early Easter??

As you can see in the above photo, even the pine needles are shedding tears over the obstinate weather. They are "PINING" for the gentle warmth of spring to put an end to their chilly misery.

As I said, the fields sleep, but never do the cows, it seems. They are forever in need of being fed, milked, cleaned up after, and fed, milked, cleaned up after......on and on, ad infinitum.

Husband ran out of shelled corn the other day......meaning he's used up all the corn we combined last fall......meaning the livestock has eaten all of it!! So, he had to persuade the old grain truck to start and make a rumbly trip to town to buy a load of corn at the elevator. Due to the ethanol boom, corn prices are very high right now.....which is good if you have corn to sell, but not if you need to purchase corn. Farm issues can be so convoluted sometimes. What's a boon for one subset of farmers is a bust for another......the agriculture economy's warped sense of balance!

Tonight, we've had the TV tuned to the Iowa boys' basketball tournament. The 1A final was won by a local team, Northern University High of Cedar Falls. Congrats, Little Panthers!! They are the "little" ones as opposed to the "big" Panthers of the University of Northern Iowa, which operates NU High as part of its laboratory K-12 school, where many student teachers learn to teach.

My son's high school basketball team went down to Des Moines yesterday to watch two sessions of tournament games......that would amount to four games. Before he left, I sternly reminded him to be sure and buy a souvenir program for us to look at. When he arrived home last night, he handed the program to me and said he almost forgot to buy it, but on the way out of the Events Center, he saw a man holding some and quickly bought one. Whew.

Its fun to have a program to look at, to see the participating teams' info and photos. I bought a program there when, as a freshman, I attended the tournament in the BARN as a spectator with the rest of my teammates. That tournament program became one of my prized possessions for a few years. Many times I would page through it, studying the players' photos and reading the stats and historical info.....and dreaming the impossible dream of being a great basketball player. Eventually, I lost track of the program.....and the dream!!

So, last night I immediately began poring over the program my son had dutifully brought home. He was talking about his experiences of the day, and suddenly he said, "We guys STOLE these water bottles from a booth.......". My head jerked up at the word "stole", but he explained that the bottles were being given away free, anyway. Ho-hum, whatever....I returned to my absorption in the pages of the program.

This morning, while washing dishes, I reached for the "stolen" water bottle, and saw the logo on it, which says, "I am strong! I am. Iowa's Abstinence Mission." I had to chuckle that my son had "stolen" something from an abstinence booth. Then I decided I was glad the boys had grabbed these bottles, and have this message in view. I've never heard of the "Iowa Abstinence Mission", but they have every right to be there at the tournament, for I've seen Planned Parenthood there, too. Its OK.....things should be balanced. I believe abstinence is the best policy for high-schoolers, and that is certainly what Husband and I have tried to teach our kids, but reality is that not all high-schoolers will abstain, so there you go.......a balance of information is called for.

How the subject evolved from teary pine needles to abstinence in the course of one blog post, I'll never know. Good night!!....and good night.