Wednesday witter and wumble

I kinda liked the concept last Tuesday of letting laziness take over and allowing myself some flexibility with my posting. So, on this rainy Wednesday, I'll witter and wumble again.

I'm sitting in Annie's bedroom looking out onto the front lawn where I can see a clump of baby pink hyacinths standing out among the darker shrubs in the middle flower bed. The lawn is almost a solid green with slight hints of quickly disappearing dead grass. Bill annually observes that the grass is always greenest during the second week of May.

The flowering shrub next to the driveway entrance is gradually letting a few yellow blossoms pop open. Last year the blossoms came on gradually too. I wish they'd get their timing down cuz to see the whole bush alive with yellow would be pretty impressive this morning when everything is so clean thanks to the rain.

There's a solitary daffodil enjoying its independence just below the shrub, just like this sentence, which will stand alone.

Regular readers will guess that I'm happy this morning. My guy did okay yesterday. My disdain for Hillary will soften a bit if she shows the good manners to step aside and let the political show go on without her. I guess time will tell on that one, but I am glad that the electorate generally saw past the political ploys in this week's elections.

Some of the tactics I've watched in this Democratic primary have seemed grossly unfair and in some cases downright disgusting. They say it's the game of politics, but there are still a few of us old fogeys with notions toward the ideal rather than a continual negative and often unsavory cloud over every aspect of getting elected.

It would be so nice if the rest of the Presidential election could be limited to spirited, thoughtful discussion of philosophies and the issues that do affect every aspect of our American way of life. I've been amazed at how frivolous statements can be thrown out in the air, gobbled up, digested, spit out, gobbled up again, spit out again and regurgitated, regurgitated, regurgitated, vomited, barfed. Sick of that yet?

Well, that's how one gets to feel after hearing the same burps of bad wording worked to death. I hope Sen. McCain and Sen. Obama tune in to this and keep a high bar as they claw their way toward the Presidency. It would be refreshing. Of course, we have the media who depend of advertising dollars to blame for a lot of what's dished out, so I might be tilting at some tall windmills.

Yesterday I played Farmer Love again. This time the Kubota and I dragged the dry parts of the hayfield. We doubled its size last fall by taking out a fence. If all goes well with hay harvest weather this summer, we should not have to buy hay. That will be nice.

There's a great feeling sitting on top of a tractor, an even greater one when I don't feel like I'm sneaking to do so, like I used to do as a kid. My most famous tractor incident took place one day when Mother and Harold were gone for the afternoon, and I was home alone.

Of course, that old Ford (the one we now own) sat there inviting me to give it a spin. So, I fired it up. Like my experience with the old Ford sedan, I still didn't know much about shifting gears. The tractor had the side hay mower on it. When I got it to move, it went backward really fast.

Knowing right away, that I probably shouldn't stay on board too long with my lack of skills, I shifted, and it moved forward. Only problem was the more I moved forward, the more those blades in the mower dug into the wooden gate where the tractor had been parked. This was not good.

My dad guarded his equipment with his life. For him to find that mower deeply ground into a gate would not be a pretty sight. I tried a couple of times to dislodge the mower, but failed. My only recourse was to run to the road and flag down whatever farmer man happened to drive by.

A red pickup came. It had two men with no facial expressions. I summoned them into the driveway and directly to the tractor. Still, they said very little, got out of their pickup, and sized up the situation. They must've been twins, both wearing dark green work ensembles and fedoras. While one watched, the other got on the tractor and began to move it carefully so those mower blades wouldn't break.

The job was just about finished and I was about to feel a wave of relief as I looked out to the road and saw Mother and Harold turning into the driveway. Their eyes were intent. Who were these strange men fiddling with Harold's tractor? The men didn't stay long. Harold thanked them for helping his daughter out of another fix, but he sure didn't thank me for anything.

I was banished from driving tractors for life.

Well, until we bought our own. Still, I feel a tinge of guilt every time I push that starter or turn that ignition key on the old Ford and the Kubota, respectively. Yesterday, the tinge was momentary. I had received Bill's blessing to get out there and drag those fields, and that made all the difference in a totally carefree Farmer Love experience.

Today I'll go to Co-Op, buy some more timothy seed and scatter it about in a few bare areas out there. With the rain and upcoming warm weather, we should have hay aplenty.

Well, that's enough twitter. It's a rainy day in May, and all is well.