it's about the corn

Even if your workspace is a beautiful porch and you're there on a beautiful day, with beautiful views to the sheep shed, the barn, the old orchard and raspberry patch...

...you need to get up and out every once in a while.

To play tennis maybe. Or to go to your local market, where your wonderful and thankfully still local farmer takes veggies off her table and sticks them in your bag, refusing to take the dollars you hand her.

Without hesitation, Ed and I will tell you that the truck farmers who came to work the fields around us some half dozen years ago, have added a greater excitement and beauty to the landscape. Still, this is perhaps the one week when it's hard to complain about the (otherwise) omnipresence of corn and soy in this region. If yesterday's photo showed off the golden patchwork of soy, today, it's all about the corn. From the seat of Ed's motorbike:

And speaking of the guy's motorbike, this afternoon he affixed this to the back crate:

Where did you get it? -- I ask, knowing damn well what the answer would be. A discarded Santa, lying in the gutter somewhere...
Ed's not a Santa fan, of course. So why this?
Whimsey! -- he says, grinning.


In the evening, after a supper of leftover chili, I take the bike out on the country roads around us. Fields of corn, at their evening best:

Not for long, maybe just this week, but surely they, too, can take your breath away.






We talk about travel, Ed and I, late into the night. And even as he sleeps, I grab some sale fares to head out somewhere when the semester ends. I can't think about anything beyond December right now. But I can surely think about December.

I left the windows wide open for the night, forgetting that we're beginning the night time dip in temperatures. Mid forties! Soon it will be time to bring the potted guys in for the winter. Soon.

In the meantime -- breakfast is in the sun room.





So long as the days stay this bright, nothing seems difficult. Not even the work that's going to fill this day and the one after and the one after.