13: Needles in Haystacks
1. What we have most abundantly in the garden right now: Mud
2. Last year around this time I had a Thirteen Thursday titled “The Latest Dirt is Mud.” It was about last year’s epic Floydfest rain and mud, complete with pictures. See HERE.
3. I’ve been calling this summer “The Summer of the Nerf Gun,” because my grandsons are big into them right now, along with wearing camo and playing army games.
4. The picture posted above made the front page of the local paper. I pulled over for the wildflowers and got the farmer in the bargain.
5. I only just recently figured out why English women wear hats when I attended a wedding in which we were encouraged to wear hats and it was drizzling rain. “It’s the next best thing to a wig. You put it on and forgot about your hair-do,” I said to a friend. And you know how much it rains in England. More HERE.
6. As someone who is 5 foot 1 inch, I sometimes wonder what I might have done with all the time I’ve spent hemming pants and skirts if I didn’t have to. Maybe if I was taller, I would have read more classics. –From a 2008 Thirteen Thursday
7. I call the picture below “In My Own Backyard.” I named the two little ones after my sons Josh and Dylan, and sometimes I call them Bryce and Liam (grandsons). You can see them playing HERE.
8. Lately I like to call my short poems (like THIS) “Itty Bitty Ditties.” 
9. I used to call them Mutant Haiku.
10. Seen on Facebook: R.I.P. “Death. To die. To expire. To pass on. To perish. To peg out. To push up daisies. To push up posies. To become extinct. Curtains, deceased, Demised, departed And defunct. Dead as a doornail. Dead as a herring. Dead as a mutton. Dead as nits. The last breath. Paying a debt to nature. The big sleep. God’s way of saying, Slow down.” – Robin Williams in “Patch Adams”
11. I like to touch on our human commonality and tell the back story of life. When I’m writing a story about someone, I’m not looking to know what they don’t want to tell me, but I am interested in the inner life that drives their outer story.
12. Nerf is just one letter change away from nerd and rhymes with smurf. My curiosity about the word caused me to look it up, and I discovered that it stands for “Non-expanding Recreational Foam.”
13. THIS is even cuter than # 6, and below are the haystacks I brake for.
__________Thirteen Thursday
August 14th, 2014 5:31 am
Your pictures always make me feel home again
August 14th, 2014 6:00 am
Such a peaceful landscape and then mud ! Here too it’s wet and muddy on the countryside !
August 14th, 2014 7:45 am
Your farm looks lovely.The picture of the flowers in the hey field makes me wish I was there regardless of the mud. 🙂 Thanks for sharing.
http://otherworlddiner.blogspot.com/2014/08/have-youever-glanced-at-book-blurb-and.html
August 14th, 2014 9:20 am
It’s not my farm but only about a mile or so from my house.
August 14th, 2014 10:58 am
Love the riot of wild chicory in that top photo! My T13
August 14th, 2014 1:02 pm
Beautiful shots. I have always tended to just let my pants be too long. I’m rather on the short side, also. Petite is too short, though, and regular too long. I usually just go with the regular and wear them too long.
August 14th, 2014 1:44 pm
More lately, I wear capris for pants!
August 14th, 2014 3:14 pm
I don’t know which one I like the best! Maybe all of them, but The Patch Adams sure makes me miss the humor of Robin Williams. I remember that in the movie as I read it!!!
August 14th, 2014 5:58 pm
1. What we have abuntanly in our garden right now is cucumbers. We just picked 30 today.
I’m sorry for the mud situation.
2. I do remember the pictures of the mud at Floydfest.
3. They sure are boy boys. I’m getting a taste of that watching 9 month old Desmond. He already has a preference to play with cars, and trucks.
It’s funny how that happens.
4. Great picture with the flowers in the foreground and the two fields; one cut and one uncut.
5. I’ve worn both wigs and hats. They ARE great in the rain and or damp weather.
6. I’m even shorter than you (by 1 inch).
7. The deers, no matter their names, are special. Can you believe we’ve seen them in our yard too? Not often enough to name them though.
8. Or … itty bitty witties.
9. or … Teenage Mutant Haiku.
10. I just read that he was diagnosed with Parkinsons disease. No matter, he’ll be very missed. He made his mark.
11. I thought of this: “It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing…. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain…” by Oriah Mountain Dreamer
12. I’m glad they don’t expand. It might take over the turf.
13. Yes, pretty and way better than mud.
August 15th, 2014 12:03 am
Beautiful farm country …easier to say when I don’t have to deal with the mud. I am tall, so therefore I have no excuse for not having read more classics. Your grandsons sound like fun! And like they’ll keep you young.