THE THINNING OF THE CORN

First a little explanation for those of you who, like me, did not know this chore existed: When you plant corn, you put two kernels in each hole. Once the plants reach a certain height, you pluck out the corn plant that is the smaller and weaker of the two. I guess it's just a little assurance that you'll get at least one corn stalk from each place you plant. I do the thinning for Big Daddy, because he finds it extremely painful to pluck up plants that he has loved and nurtured.

Corn grows best in clay (says the all-knowing Internet). Since clay is abundant here in the South, we picked a particularly clay-y area to plant our corn. Thinking it would be easier to thin the corn if the ground were wet and soft (as opposed to hard and dry), I put the sprinklers on for 20 minutes before beginning the thinning process.

That was a mistake.

Here are my footprints in the clay:

Here are the flip-flops (yes, I garden in flip-flops; I do everything in flip-flops) that were wrenched from my feet by the suction of the clay (apparently clay is a distant relative of quicksand):

And here are my feet after I finished the thinning barefoot and digging out my dismal flip-flops (I even got married in flip-flops):

It's like Bigfoot! I had to peel the clay off with the help of a strong-spraying hose.

By the way, those little feet next to mine belong to Cakes. Note the shoes are on the wrong feet. She was very proud of putting on her own shoes. What you don't see in the picture is Bean, very proud of putting on her own pants, which were backwards. And yes, I let them in public like that. Like I said before, I like to encourage creativity and freedom of expression. I also like to encourage self-reliance and pride in accomplishments.

But back to the point of this whole post ... I will be thinning the remainder of the corn pre-sprinkler.