Beautiful morning*

It was the first day of school.

Like most kids I did not want to get up.

But then I thought, "this is my last first day of the school year."

I laughed as I prepared the melted cheese to wrap around the dogs' medicine. Scruffy takes his like a champ, but Paddy always fights (she can spit out a pill faster than the brattiest 4 year old). I remember my sweet kiddos lining up in the kitchen for their "Pink Panther" medicine or fighting with me as I struggled to drop liquid antibiotic into their blinking pink eyes.**

Dogs don't take "Pink Panther" medicine (nasty sticky pink amoxicillin). They take the capsules. 

I spend more money on meds for the 4-leggers than for me...fortunate...really.

 
My mornings have not changed that much over the years. They have not gotten any better organized or complete. I still end up skipping something - the walk, an errand, makeup - before I give the dogs one last treat and head to work. But change is coming.***

All summer I have watched the fields of corn.The plants started as tiny sprouts of green and I wondered what kind of grain had been planted. I am not a farmer (although I come from farmers). Young sorghum and corn plants look the same to me. The surprise rains made the plants shoot up quickly - inches a day. This year the corn was indeed "as high as an elephant's eye."**** Ears formed and filled-out and then everything started to get dry and crispy.*****

Morning farm rush.

I know harvest has started when I find the dry leaves in my yard. We are miles from a cornfield, but the hot summer winds spin and scatter the husks everywhere. We see them on the walk. They are sprinkled through the park.

Sun shines golden on the dry corn stalks.

My drive to work disclosed some fields waiting. Then I passed those which sent the drive leaves floating through the area - almost empty fields with skeletal stalks waiting to be tilled under. Corn-filled trucks waited to be driven to storehouses. One harvester parked nearby as if exhausted by its work. One tractor was fitted with a disc harrow.******

Tractor fitted with a disc harrow.******

The harvest has been abundant. 

It is the end of summer.

Change is coming.


NOTES:

*I know you are reading this because of the drug picture...got you! These are doggy amoxicillin capsules.

** I knew my job was done in some respects - that  MC was all (mostly?) grown up - when I saw him at basic training. His eyes were bright red - a raging case of pink eye. I held back - saying nothing when I saw him. Then, as if reading my mind, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small clear plastic dropper bottle. "Yes. I have pink eye, but I am taking my medicine and it is already better," he said.

***Next August I will be walking dogs past kids waiting for the bus...I will not worry about getting breakfast and a shower and DH's lunch made in time to fight traffic and get to work almost on time. I may even sleep late.

****Rodgers and Hammerstein
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh,_What_a_Beautiful_Mornin%27
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVbQqtymsTI (nice version by James Taylor)

*****I enjoy eating field corn much more than sweet corn. Every year I think, "I should come out here and lift a few ears. No one will miss them." Of course I always talk myself out of it...but it doesn't prevent the thought returning as the corn ripens.

******Or is it a disk harrow? Or is it something else? [I thought it was called a "disc-er."] It is one of those pieces of farm equipment that seems ominous and powerful, cutting and turning the soil. Then again, I am reminded of the time my sweet baby brother took a disc (or disk) and made a bird feeder for our Dad. Dad would fill it with birdseed and then the thieving squirrels would ride that feeder like the bell merry-go-round in the old park at home (it could be that the feeder provided a clear view for Dad to use his squirrel gun to dispose of some of those rascals).