I'm so glad I can still hear

There's always some life lesson to learn. And, if you're like me, life has to teach the same lessons over and over and over....fortunately, life is patient with me.

Gardening is such a learning opportunity - so many things to learn and re-learn. Our carrots never get very long because we can't bring ourselves to "thin the herd" when the sprouts appear. After staring at the dirt for so long, the green sprouts are just too exciting. We simply can't bring ourselves to get rid of good crops - especially when there are still so many threats to the harvest (slugs, moles, deer, bear, rain, you name it!). So, we know we should thin but we simply can't. We just can't. Turns out you need to thin corn too. Especially when you plant like we did: cut a row in the dirt and just dump the seeds out in a continuous line. (Remember that we'd started corn 3 times in the house, transplanted it and watched it wither and die. We were getting a little calloused and turned to the tough love method of gardening - we'll plant you in good soil and it's up to you, little seed, what you make of it.) Turns out the little seeds made a LOT out of it. We had a totally rockin' crop of corn. Like 'envy of the neighborhood' crop of corn. Oh yeah. That good. We were so pleased with ourselves that we were actually thinking about calling ourselves 'gardeners'. Ha!

So you can imagine our shock and despair when we looked out the window to find half - maybe more than half - of our corn crop was laying on the ground. (Or is it "lying" on the ground?) All I could think was that some friendly deer had decided to graze on our generous salad bar, gotten 'stuck' and scared and had trampled the corn in it's speedy exit. Turns out it was a less springy culprit. A soft breeze had come through, tugged on our corn and it layed down like a pup looking for a belly rub. This was the day it was 110F and Butch and I were climbing through the overgrown zucchini, the overgrown beans (three colors), the overgrown summer squash to tie this poor corn up and give it some stability. We did our best but I think it's destined to just be 'organic matter' for our compost pile (oh, yeah, the neighbors are going to LOVE that!). And, we learned again why it's so important to 'thin the heard'. The corn was too cramped and didn't grow strong stalk - likely competing for space and nutrients. The excitement over the new corn sprouts and our fear of loss kept us from yanking the good (but not great) plants and now, half our crop is compromised. Life lesson learned. Again.

But that's not why I was almost deaf. It's because when we were stringing up the corn (seriously, I was in the middle of this corn field) a bug went in my right ear and a corn bud-thingy went in my left ear. Not too concerned about that corn bud-thingy but in the five minutes that this bug/spider was buzzing/flapping/wiggling in my right ear I thought I was going to go INSANE! Stop the buzzing!!!! Butch told me to clean my ear with a Q-Tip but I wasn't eager to push whatever it was deeper into my ear. But the buzzing/digging was making me completely mad and I was worried it was going to burrow into my eardrum anyhow so I crossed my finger that it was soft enough to smash with a Q-Tip without causing any damage. It was, thank goodness, and it only took 3 Q-Tips to fully clean that little bugger out of my ear. A quick shower took care of the corn bud-thingy in my left ear and I was my fine, hearing self again. Whew! Who knew that not thinning your corn could leave you deaf?

PS: The analytic in me isn't convinced that thinning would have changed the outcome at all. If we'd pulled every other sprout, we would have lost half the crop anyhow. :)