Oh, gee, it’s nibbling my knee.
Oh, my, it’s up to my thigh.
Oh, fiddle, it’s up to my middle.
Oh, heck… it’s past my neck.
Is tasseling a verb?
The words are all a-jumble most of the day most days right now. When they arrange into a harmonic pattern, I listen and grab a pencil before the mirage shifts into sands again. Or something. You know. You know?
My youngest and I tested the size of the fingerlings last weekend. Adorable. Another week to this weekend and whatever size they are they’re coming out for Mother’s Day.
And would y’all tell the onions to hurry up? I don’t need the space but now I’m just worried they’ll cook or rot or dehydrate before the tops topple. (Toppling is definitely a verb.)
The popcorn is still shorter. It had a later start. It’s shading carrots and black-eyed peas.
The cherry tomatoes have started, the green beans have had their third harvest and we’re on about an every-other-day harvest there. No squash is making it larger than a pinky. It is pretty shady there… the cucumbers, too.
The Tiger Eye dry beans are setting but the mystery ones aren’t blooming yet.
Did you know you can eat cilantro flowers? They aren’t bitter like the leaves after the bolt. A little citrusy maybe.
I’m rambling. The calendula bloomed again. I’m drying the blossom. Maybe for tea. Along with the stevia, mint, and mullein for tea.
Ok ok. Back to your regularly scheduled scrolling.
plumdirt 
Yes, tasseling is a verb. So is ‘de-tasseling.’ When I was in high school, in Iowa, de-tasseling was one of the favored ways of making money in the summer. The hours were long and the work was hard, but it paid fifty cents an hour! We were rich!
Ha! Was that to create hybrid seeds by de-tasseling every other row so one variety of tassels (seeded every other row) was the only one creating ears?
I made fifty cents an hour twice before. Once was cooking food at a summer camp and the other was clearing land of scotch broom (with loppers.) I think country kid jobs have a combined requirement of long hours and hard work. Luckily we feel rich with not much before the world tries to give us other ideas.
Exactly. Those were the days when corn was planted in rows, with room to walk between, and you’d see those little DeKalb signs at the end of rows with the hybrid number on them.
A fun post and I learned about tasseling and de-tasseling. My day is complete!
I grew corn in my younger, less-shady days, but never successfully. I now get a bushel of veggies from a local CSA and that summer corn (and really, everything else) is just so delish. Still, there’s nothing like picking your own. And writing funny little ditties about the process.
I don’t always grow it. Usually when I do I’m reminded of the space it takes and the water for the little harvest based on the space. Then I take a break for door a few years until I find that one ear I saved as seeds and think, “I have extra room this year somehow.” (Usually in opposition years to remembering I don’t actually need twenty tomato plants…)
You’ve written a post that sounds exactly how my brain is working these days… I also now watch television shows and movies and two things happen… First, I criticize the characters for not being socially distant. Then, I begin to think their world is starting to look alien to me. Ugh.
I have been wondering when we’ll see the first Netflix/Something Original show/movie that is set in this current event. And when masks will have fashion trends to try and monetize and consumer-ize the need for them to be more than functional and long-lasting.
I hope something, just one thing, can escape that path, but I doubt this is that thing.