Grandparenting

"Grand parenting" is the grandest thing you can imagine! I love children but interacting with our children's children is the grandest thing I have come across in life. Like the word grand, it is larger than life!

Last night we went to Madison's ballet recital. I wish I had a video to show you. Those children all spiffed up for ballet were the prettiest and happiest little kids you ever saw. The teacher and helped did a really good job putting on a "grand show." It was well worth the $6 for a ticket to support the program.

Madison has a friend who looks a lot like her also named Madison so I called it the Madison to Madison Show. They did great! The oldest student did a dance to Wizards of Winter, one of my favorite songs and group of older children danced to Edelweiss from the Sound of Music. They were both excellent for children that age.

We all went for ice cream after the program, it was a "grand time." Even grandchild number 10 got to go and number 11 wasn't too far away. I will get to hug number 11 today when the baby's brothers come by while the girls all go to number 10's baby shower. It all makes for a happy time!

The Canadian cold front blew the hot weather away and brought some nice moisture with it. Local farmers ought to be really happy to have that on their newly planted soybeans this week! Mother Nature really tricked a lot of us this year and we have corn in V-10 to just coming out of the ground and soybeans shin high to not emerged yet in southern Ohio! Wheat harvest will be next and has already started just souoth of here in Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois, record early for that crop.

We were discussing "bleacher" herbicides on Crop Talk this morning. One of my long time friends in Western Ohio asked if Impact herbicide would take out the grass and broadleaf weeds in his corn so we started discussing the different pigment inhibitors called bleacher herbicides.

Capreno by Bayer is one of the most broad spectrum products that can be safely sprayed on corn. Status by BASF is a different one that is also safe on corn but harder on difficult to control perennial weeds like bindweed, and that is why I sprayed both behind our house. The corn all looked about the same color of green before spraying but the day after spraying you can distinctly see the two different hybrids I planted.

Another popular observation this year is "why does my corn look better planted into cereal rye cover crop?" I thought that was supposed to be a no-no? It is good to see farmers discover the benefits and challenges of cover cropping. I really need to get down to Pleasant Plain and see how those crops look in all those radishes that were planted last summer.

Next week I want to get everything side dressed, tissue and soil samples pulled and keep addressing each little problem that "crops up." Lots of problems crop up in crops and life in general but that rain sure helped some of the crop "problems."

As our good friend and blog reader Bill says, "have a grand and glorius day" as I will be doing that with my "grands!"

Ed Winkle