I Grew It Myself!

Day 312: I'm not the only horticulturist on the block. My kids have graduated from growing their own sunflowers to cultivating a plot of proso millet beneath one of the feeder trays. They're a bit lazy, though, leaving the weeding to me, but thanks to them, I shipped a specimen of Buffalobur off to the Burke Herbarium. It's not the only invasive which has come to me by way of birdseed, unfortunately. "Clean crops" are pretty much a thing of the past, what with supply running neck and neck with demand. That said, I am enjoying the birds' horticultural experiments. It will be interesting to see if the millet ripens.

Mystery Grain

Day 36: Brace yourself, because this post is going to have very little to do with the above photograph.

I seem to be in one of those pockets of mishap which occur in all our lives, and three days of it is quite enough, thank you. I want out! It started with a flat tire which wound up with the purchase of four new ones due to wear, and has been accompanied by nosebleeds (a function of dry weather), errors in simple knitting, and now as the final straw, the demise of my photo-processing software where, as you know, I just learned to add curved text. Oh, I have an older version on a half-dead computer in my back bedroom, but it's not nearly as powerful as the one I've become used to using over the last several years.

And there's the rub. Apparently an update overwrote something in the software, figuring that if it was no longer supported (and it's that old, yes), the space could be better used for something else. I've tried every trick I know to bring it back to life, but it seems to be well and truly dead. And I am ... well, "peeved" would be a polite word. My readers should therefore not expect my usual standard in these posts because it will be a while before I can replace it.

I don't want to tempt fate by asking what else can go wrong because I can imagine a wealth of answers. I just hope a few of them miss me because I feel like I'm the prime target at this point.

So what's the mystery grain? The birds planted it in my flowerbed, something they scattered out of the feeder. I pulled most of it but let a few sprays go to maturity. The stalk resembles corn, but stands less than three feet high. I could not find any seeds in the head which might have given me a clue as to its identity.

Footnote: the Mystery Grain is proso millet, and I suspect the birds figured that out before I did, which accounts for the lack of seeds in the heads. Gee, they grew their own food this year!