Birds, bugs, beans and beer

It's so hot here in my office this afternoon but I elect to leave the doors and windows open and the air conditioning off in favor of the birdsong.

Pepper and I walked west across the prairie this morning. I'm glad that Pepper is just exactly as speedy as she is - and no more. She gives birds and bunnies and little mice a run for their money but never catches one. We scared up a couple of larks from the grass, and a few smaller birds. Were they sleeping down their or just hunting for bugs?

The soy beans we planted for cover crop are doing so well that we can't bear mow them down now, before they go to seed, which would, I think, be the usual way of treating a cover crop - we've decided to let them seed and do the work of harvesting. We'll have a freezer full of edemame in a couple of weeks.

Flies are a problem these days. The other night I was sipping iced white wine, enjoying the view from the front of the bunkhouse, when I looked down to see two of the little bastards dead in my glass. Knowing that it was 17 miles to another glass of wine I picked them out and kept right on drinking, only slightly disgusted. It reminded me of the time Bill heard Sue, the bartender/owner/cook at the Hitchin' Post here in Matfield, regaling the locals with the story of the woman who had come in the night before and requested a glass of chardonnay. Sue laughed and the regulars joined her as she proclaimed, "Around here we spell chardonnay 'B-U-D'"

I wasn't there, so I'm not sure if Sue was making fun of the outsider for her high-falutin tastes or of the Kansas liquor laws that allow only 3.2 beer to be sold in bars. Probably a bit of both.