Nurse, Fetch the Patient a Bud.

So I decided maybe I should find out why shaking someone's hands with my left hand is so incredibly painful. Turns out there is a reason. Today, they are cutting my finger open to remove whatever is growing there ("almost certainly a benign tumor.") Merry Christmas!

Name That Tune: The Answer

Thanks for playing!

Name That Tune (reprise.)

((awkward whispering) This is the part of the blog, where you, the reader, utilizing the "comments" feature, attempt to name the not so random song (and artist) that I am thinking of. I then reward the correct response with some sort of "prize" which you will, in all likelihood, never receive.)

Name That Tune.

Alternate Titles for My Next Post.

In Which God Answers jmlo's Question. (Ans: "Much, Much More Creative, Thanks For Asking.")

I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of soybeans suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

George: That's a lie! Harry Bailey went to war - he got the Congressional Medal of Honor, he saved the lives of every soybean in that field.
Clarence: Every soybean in that field died! Harry wasn't there to save them, because you weren't there to save Harry.

Who is the mole?

From outside in the fields came a sickening smack of an axe on a soybean. Then we heard the soybean fall. The very last soybean plant of them all!

Jack: Hey, don't tell me how to run the 4720 sprayer, all right? They brought me in here to do a job, they asked me to spray the durned soybeans, and I sprayed the soybeans!
Fred: All I'm asking is what did the gauge read before you sprayed the field? And you don't know!
Jim: Look, if I'm in the left hand seat when the call comes up and they say "Spray the field" I spray the field.

Ben: Jack! I know you think you're saving the soybeans. But you need to stop this. It's a mistake.
Jack: The mistake was listening to you.
Ben: This'll be your last chance, Jack. I'm telling you, spraying that field is the beginning of the end.

("Don't Screw Up. Don't Screw Up. Don't Screw Up.") Gary Screws Up.

Fun at Boots's

I had to take up some wheat to Chris. The first thing I did was to take the side-chute-extenders off of my trailer. They would be really handy if we unloaded wheat into holes in the ground like they do in primitive cultures such as Oklahoma, but they don't work so well unloading into hoppers.

It all went pretty good through the unloading of the front hopper. Chris even volunteered to scoop out the remainder ('cause we used the side chutes) even though I didn't have any kind of foreign object attached to my kidney this year.


But then the auger quit. Really quit. In a spectacular fashion. We even drove to Dodge City just to see if anyone had an auger like we needed for sale. But then Chris remembered his baby augers.
It was pretty slow going.

Chris was not amused.


Back home to get another load, and I returned the following morning. Chris had borrowed Toby's tractor and auger. It was NICE. We were done very quickly.



Hmmm... Chris needs an auger. And a tractor quite frankly. That sure is a nice auger. The (Case) tractor wasn't so bad either. Hmmm...

Name That Phenomenon.

I'm going to go with fungal fruiting bodies. Feel free to share your own explanation.

Baseball TEXtravaganza Part III: Postgame

So Anna spent most of the game with her cousins and Linda, as Daddy was too busy bleeding and taking pictures. She had a GOOD time.

Here you can see Luke taking full responsibility for the team's loss. A little harsh, Luke, but who am I to argue?


Then we went to the Olive Garden with the fam and with Mr. Parker, Missy and their kids. Here's Anna puttin' the Olive in Olive Garden.



Mr. Parker decided to let Anna try a lemon.

Lauren knows the key to a toddler's heart: Simultaneous ice cream cones and Popsicles.

Here Luke demonstrates what it means to be a teenager in the late oughts.
Anna was a very competent navigator.

Fun with feet in the car:



And now a special treat. On the banks of the Canadian River, T. Boone Pickens (pictured) is creating his own personal Palm Island (pictured,) except in reverse.

And Then a Miracle Occurs...(Desperate Times Part 5)

See Part 4

Well! Not only has the majority of the Groundhog wheat emerged, it has jointed. This is big news because the difference between winter wheat, (which we grow in Kansas) and spring wheat, (grown farther north) is the need to vernalize. The plant has to go through X amount of cold weather for X amount of time before it will make the physiological changes necessary to produce a seed head. The only way to tell if this has happened for sure is if the wheat plant joints, or starts to push up a stalk. So a big danger in planting wheat in February is that it won't get quite enough cold weather to vernalize. Looking East

Looking west. You can also see that the wheat that was planted in October which DID sprout, pretty much sprouted at the same time as the February planted wheat. I should also point out that I took these pictures from the worst spot in the field, so most of the stand is actually better than what you can see here.

Here is an example of the wheat close up. Behind this row you can see pretty good examples of the damage blowing sand does to baby wheat plants, as well as one seed which never had a chance. That seed was planted about a little over an inch and a half deep, so you can imagine the amount of wind erosion which has taken place just since February. Hopefully the wheat will be able to hold its ground (literally) from here on out.

In this picture I have pointed out the leaf collars which indicate that the plant has jointed. I tried to take a picture of the whole plant pulled out of the ground for you to see, but they were blurry.

15 points if you can identify the source of this post title.

I'll be watching you.

(congratulations!)

The Beaver State, Part Three

Annafish and Matthewshark on the beach.


This is why Annafish is wearing different pants in the next post. (Thanks, JEO!) If only someone had brought her a change of shoes...