Grain Day

Most of today I did hard physical work, and enjoyed every minute of it.
I put on my work clothes, the dirty ones from last week's trip, and went out to Edwin's place again to get more wet hay bales.
As I was driving out there in my dirty duds, I ate a homemade granola bar or two, and some of the oats and krispies fell onto my zipped jacket front. I looked down thinking I'd pick the crumbs up and eat them, but seeing them there on the fabric that was covered in hay bits from last week's work, I had to laugh, talk about "buy local, eat local"!! oats and hay, looking almost the same, golden brown bits... kinda pretty, but I held back my impulse to nibble at those crumbs, a little too earthy for me.
The bales were hay, not straw, as they're full of seeds, thus the 'grain' thing. A lot of those seeds are already sprouted, as the bales have been sitting in a wet meadow for a long time, so long that some of them we couldn't load up as the strings broke as soon as we tried lifting them. Heavy bales, making the truck's back end sink down and the front sway up, interesting driving on the highway home!
Anyway, my front yard is now totally covered with another layer of thick wet hay. Wonderful stuff. I saw quite a few woolly caterpillars tucked inside them as I broke them up to lay it out in books, paving the property. So now the east half is double thick hay books, and the west half is manure and coffee grounds with hay books too. The only part left in lawn is the 10' strip between the sidewalk and the street. (I'm thinking about how to change that too, as next year's project.)
The other grain of the day was when I was almost done unloading the truck at home, I cracked open a Guinness, 'liquid pork chop' beer, made of grains of some kind, at least it was a dark golden brown, pretty, like the wet bales.
Sitting on my front porch sipping, watching the red sun glowing in the hazy southwest sky, a good day done.