Terrific Tuesday

I’m going to do pretend this entry is a version of “Explain that gram” from the hit YouTube show Hot Ones by First we Feast via Complex. I’m going to rely on just a caption under the photos to mostly guide the day.

Breakfast wasn’t overly exciting but it was delightful. These ones were quite hot off the press, I’m not sure why they seemed hotter than normal. I did some reading and enjoyed a pretty relaxed start of the day.

As I was finishing up eating and about to transition to the cleaning stage I noticed a cat boldly approaching my back deck. It was a cocky little thing. I walked toward the door to fight it off and it approached expecting food. Someone is feeding it. No collar or fear, this was a stray. I banged on the glass and it came closer. Not wanting it to scratch the screen I peeled out. I guess I know who was eating all those chicken fingers last winter. After cleaning up breakfast I packed my bags and hit the road.

I went down into the southwest of the province to walk some later day corn. There was a serious outbreak of a disease called tar spot in the corn in this part of the world. This was a photo depicting the difference between a susceptible hybrid and a tolerant hybrid. Night and day isn’t it. The plot on the left was essentially dead and the one on the right was still rocking along. It’s a pretty devastating disease. I’m not sure why the end effect is going to be but you can bet your biscuits it is going to mean lighter corn and probably more lodging.

A few more ranges up and that lodging theory was proven true. What happens is that the plant is dead set on reproducing and to ensure it’s gametes survival it will start to pull resources from other parts of the plant to make sure enough starch or carbohydrate, dry matter really, gets into the seed. Because the factory of the plant, the leaves, has been destroyed now, it’s switched to desperation mode. It can’t pull from the dead leaves so it pulls from the stalk, cannabalizing it. The dead stalks break much easier which leads to the plants falling over. In nature that is fine cause the ear would end up on the ground and would eventually get close enough to the soil to start sprouting and viola, propagation. But in a field setting, it makes harvest a nightmare and some seed remains behind, to become a weed issue for the next crop. The other thing I hate about this picture is that some of the big heavy plants fell on to the neighbouring plot wrecking it. The neighbour is going to get labeled as a weak legged coward simply for associating with the bad influence next door. Turn out corn and people, not that different when you think about it.

Somewhere in the noon hour I hit the halfway point and decided to shoot up into town to grab some grub. I knew the subway was relatively close to the edge of town and would be quick and easy. Plus it has been many moons since I had had the urge to eat froosh. They were trying out crispy chicken chunks in their samidges so I obliged to their marketing crew and took it on. I stuck to basic accourement, tomato, minimal lettuce, green pepper, hot peppers and a ranch and spice sauce. Mozzerlla cheese for simplicity. It was a tasty morsel. I had them toast it, since that seems to be the guiding preference of society now. I think Quizno’s lost the toasted sub war. That was definitely their thing and Subway ripped it off. I was a Quizno’s loyalist for years, refusing to toast Subway but I’ve decided that I don’t care enough anymore. I’m finding that about things more and more. Lunch was good though, cookies and a Mountain Dew rounded out the squadron. I consumed it in my truck back at the corn.

After about six hours of rating the same trial I was starting to get mush brain. I thought it would be funny to pull a bunch of silks off and cram them in my crotch to make a joke about the pandemic being the rise of pubes. I was right, it was funny. Looking at the photo after, I’m surprised how orange these show up. Most of the hybrids were very dark brown, you can see some of that at the top of my corn silk pube mane. I sent this photo around with mixed results. I also did a re-take of an old classic with a partially cleaned off ear of corn but it’s not as PG. I sent it to a very select audience to uproarious results.

I finished the trial around five and drove the ninety plus minutes back home. I elected to drink some water in lieu of dinner and I washed up to get all the corn grossness off me. I spent the very short evening looking at personal screens and accomplishing nothing of note. It was a nice quiet, low stress Tuesday. Those don’t come along that often so I’m marking this one. I was able to take the time to be in the present and enjoy it.