walking beans...

it rained somewhere around a tenth of an inch at five this morning and when i finished up at the supermarket and drove across the lot to the bean field there was still some morning mist hanging around..."walking beans" is a midwestern euphemism for hand weeding acres of soybean fields...it seems that with the advent of herbicide resistant "weeds" it is an old idea that is new again...i can testify that no one is "walking" this field...don't get the mistaken impression that there are no beans in this field...there are ( third photo ) however, at times, it is difficult to discern exactly where the rows are...i see beans...i also see barnyard grass, poke weed, japanese bottle grass ( fox tail to the locals )and the non-weed lamb's quarters out there...spraying isn't probably an option ( it is inside city limits ) and "walking beans" sounds like a tedious way to spend an afternoon...or an hour even...so it's not surprising no one is out here...i wouldn't want to be..i got wet enough just walking the rows, much less breaking a sweat...so here's hoping the combine can discern between bean pods and barnyard grass seed and that they don't have to stop every ten minutes to cleat the weeds out during harvest...perhaps they will leave that late enough into autumn that the "weeds" will have died back.