Other factors enter in

Regarding that last entry, it isn't just politics that has me in this slump; there are several factors.  For instance, this record rainfall we've had this year.  It's no use to complain about the weather, but I have to admit it's been getting on my nerves.

Everyone who has watched me blog about my gardening efforts for several years knows that in my garden, tomatoes are the priority.  Everything else can fail, and if I have tomatoes I will be happy.  I only ask for enough tomatoes to eat fresh, although in most years I have lots left over to can.  This year, I will be very surprised if I get enough for a BLT.  The plants are all blighty, and the green tomatoes, while plentiful, have spots all over them.  Some of them are rotting on the vine when they are no bigger than a walnut.  Someone asked if I had any green tomatoes to spare recently and I had to tell her no; there aren't any green tomatoes out there big enough to use for anything. 

Potatoes and corn have done well.  The only problem with the sweet corn has been the earworms, and they should be less with subsequent plantings, since I've been dusting the silks with Sevin.  I'd trade all the corn for a few tomatoes, though.

I can afford to buy tomatoes, but I've yet to find anyone selling home-grown tomatoes that actually taste home-grown.  The local peach orchard guy is in our tractor club, so I guess I should go down there and harass him, just to see if his tomatoes are decent.  In fact, I think I'll go see what Cliff is doing as soon as I finish this entry.

I long ago stopped expecting any zucchini, since the squash bugs kill my efforts before I can harvest more than a couple of zucchinis.  I hear legends all the time of people who give away so much zucchini that people run from them when they approach.  Alas, nobody has ever offered to share their produce with me.  Every year I plant a few seeds, every year the bugs have a feast.  

Here's another thing, and it's my own doing:  I have painted myself into a corner with the cows.  The timing of their freshenings and pregnancies has made it impossible for me to leave home for over twelve hours at a time.  I am considering perhaps selling one, but I need the wisdom of Solomon to help me decide on which one!  I love them both, you see.  Grace is a wonderful nurse cow, so she is very handy to have around for raising calves.  I don't even have to milk her, as long as there are calves to take her milk.  She is the one, by rights, that I should keep, because that would allow me some freedom.

I force Penny to accept calves, but she has hated the idea from the first; although if she ever has her own calf that survives, that might change.  She is the one that gives the good milk and rich cream and she is gentle and easy to hand-milk.  However, she is timid, and I'm pretty sure I would never get her to accept anybody else's presence in the barn lot, even if I found someone who was able to do chores when I'm gone.  All the time I'm outside choring after the cows, I struggle over this problem, but even as I type these words I know that Penny is the one that needs to go.  

The thing is, I am past seventy, and if there is someplace I want to go, I need to be able to do it.  We can't do a huge amount of traveling because Cliff has a hip that bothers him if he does a lot of driving, but if we could only go to Arkansas for a night, it would be nice.  We might be able to make it to Colorado one more time, who knows?  I can always get another cow in the future.  In fact, I have a five-month-old Jersey/Holstein heifer right here, waiting in the wings.

All this mental turmoil that I've caused for myself adds to my cloudy mood.

If I ever make a decision, I will be letting my readers know.

By the way, life is good.  I won't be doing any more of these "woe-is-me" entries.  When I look around and see people with real problems, I realize how blessed I am.  If I so desire, I can sell every cow and calf on the place; there is nothing and nobody to keep me from doing that!  I need to wake up and smell the roses; I do believe the very act of creating this entry has helped me with a decision.

I still want a good tomato, though.  



 

I have the blogging blahs

Ennui has overtaken me.  Don't you love that word, "ennui"?  It was a vocabulary word I learned in my senior year at good old North Kansas City High School.  Because our school mascot was Henry Hornet, our vocabulary words were called Henry Hornet words.  Childish, I know.  I was a senior, for pete's sake!  Anyway.  When I learned that word I seized it as mine, because it described my day-to-day life:  A feeling of utter weariness and discontent resulting from satiety or lack of interest.  Come on, hasn't every teenager felt that way during certain periods of her life?

Or, in the words of Ecclesiastes, "Vanity of vanities.  All is vanity."

To a person of my age... by the way, I had a birthday July 7th... the changes in the world are difficult to take in, and while I often try to insulate myself here on my own little piece of land, sometimes the magnitude of it all overtakes me.  A baseball team changing its name because it's offensive?  A piece of cloth suddenly being banned from everyplace in the country because it represents bigotry?  It's a piece of cloth, people!  I'm not saying all this is wrong, I'm simply saying I don't understand it.

I just want to be five years old again and go back to Skinner School, where we said the Pledge of Allegiance every morning (without "under God" because they hadn't added that yet).  Sometimes the teacher, Mrs. Eighmy, would sit at the piano and we would sing songs.  Other times she would play records and we would sing along with those.  Lately I've been remembering a sort of hymn I learned in that one-room country school that resonated with me the first time I heard it, a song I had not heard at the Hepburn Church of Christ, but one that sank right down into my bones and became a part of me.

This Is My Father's World

The United Methodist Hymnal Number 144
Text: Maltbie D. Babcock
Music: Trad. English melody; adapt. by Franklin L. Sheppard
Tune: TERRA BEATA, Meter: SMD

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1. This is my Father's world, and to my listening ears all nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres. This is my Father's world: I rest me in the thought of rocks and trees, of skies and seas; his hand the wonders wrought. 2. This is my Father's world, the birds their carols raise, the morning light, the lily white, declare their maker's praise. This is my Father's world: he shines in all that's fair; in the rustling grass I hear him pass; he speaks to me everywhere. 3. This is my Father's world. O let me ne'er forget that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet. This is my Father's world: why should my heart be sad? The Lord is King; let the heavens ring! God reigns; let the earth be glad!

This was a song with which I could identify!  You start talking about skies and trees and birds and rocks and rustling grass, and you are talking about the world of my childhood.  

Anyway.  I am checking in, and maybe this will get me jump-started.  Or not.  Meanwhile, you will find my heart at Skinner School in Taylor County, Iowa.  Things seem so much simpler there.  I'll be sitting in the next desk from the back, learning what there was to learn in 1950.