Corn Planted!

The guy who plants our corn showed up yesterday afternoon. See how he steers his tractor to follow the dark line etched in the soil by the arm which extends from the side of the planter. That’s the secret to creating straight corn rows!

With his 12-row planter it took about 5 hours to plant our 73 acres of corn. There must be a math story problem in there somewhere.

He finished right about sunset, as a bank of clouds was invading the sky from the west. Rain is in the forecast…..hopefully not the gullywasher type which would wreak havoc in newly-planted fields.

Though blue-and-green is my favorite color combination, purple-and-green runs a close second. Yeah, it surely is the season for violets right now. Though they display lovely, delicate flowers for a time……we should not be deceived…….they are actually very aggressive weeds.

My son has had a fever, aches, and coughing for a few days, so he saw the doctor yesterday morning. After my son described the course of his symptoms, the first thing the doctor asked was if he’d been out of the U.S. lately! It must have sounded like flu, and possibly the notorious H1N1.

It was determined that he has the next thing to pneumonia; the doctor prescribed an antibiotic and sent him home for the day, with instructions against track practice or meets for a few days. What does my son do then but send texts and a Facebook message to his friends saying, “I have pneumonia!” Nothing like stretching the truth in an attempt to fish for sympathy.

He studied and watched TV off and on all day, and coughed, coughed, coughed. Golly, that grated on my nerves after awhile. The doctor had advised him to stay well-hydrated, so I kept vigil over his water glass, filling it regularly and pestering him to keep drinking.

Other than the excitement of corn planting and having a child stay home from school, yesterday was my day to work on paying bills…..fun, fun. The encouraging thing is that milk prices apparently hit bottom in April and are just now beginning to inch up a bit.

My goal for this day is to bite the bullet and attempt to psyche myself up to mow the lawn for the first time. For some reason, I always dread that first mowing. Its like breaking a new trail or something, and then once the mowing begins it lasts until October. Hip-hip-hooray. Its becomes my main focus all summer long. Each mowing takes several hours, that’s what’s especially exciting about it. Of course, if the rain materializes today, it will provide a reprieve of one more day……and the grass will grow even shaggier!

Happy day to you!

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