Tag: Corn

Corn and More Corn

My corn lilies, as I call them, are in full bloom. I made up their name…to me it is a fitting name as they are tall and the flowers are yellow. I could look up the official name, but I don’t want to. 😉

A perspective as to how tall these lilies grow!

I have grown to really like my corn lilies, but I don’t remember planting them. I do believe they were planted by a bird or something (perhaps a squirrel?). I look forward to them blooming each summer, about this time when corn in the fields is growing tall too.

My beloved corn lilies….

And more corn…when I was a child in the 50’s & 60’s, we all knew the adage, “Knee high by the Fourth of July”. Even us city kids knew the saying. Back at that time, the saying had meaning to the farmers…it was an indication of how well their crops were doing. If not knee high by the the beginning of July they would start to be concerned. 

Gary, outstanding (!) in a cornfield on July 5, 2023.

But now-a-days… corn is much higher by July 4. Is it because of the hybrid seeds, new farming methods, more fertilizer? All possibilities. What I know is, the other day as we rode our bicycles past a cornfield we stopped and I took a picture of Gary in the cornfield. The stalks were already taller than him, and he’s 6 feet, 3 inches tall…way beyond “knee high by the Fourth of July”. It was July 5th!

A Corn Stalk

Recently, I wrote about front porches that included a photo of my neighbor’s lovely front porch with surrounding flowerpots. Earlier this spring, she noticed a corn sprout peeking out of the soil in one of her flowerpots. She feeds the squirrels, and finds some kernels fall to the ground and sprout, so she pulls them out of the grass. But, when she noticed a sprout in her flowerpot she decided, just for fun, to let it grow to see if an ear would grow off the lone stalk. I told her I was curious too, and to let me know.

She called me over the other night to show me. Indeed, not only one, but two ears were growing on the lone stalk in her flowerpot. One ear was growing strong, but the other, not so much.

Marveling at what nature does best…

doing what it’s created to do…

bloom where it’s planted!