Guide Us, GPS

Perhaps you are familiar with Global Positioning (GPS) equipment. I'm not, but the other day was riding in someone else's vehicle in which a GPS system was being utilized. We passengers found the GPS gadget on the dash to be simultaneously fascinating and hilariously ridiculous........and, maybe a tiny bit useful for directional guidance!

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Here's the GPS unit, sitting on top of the dash in the vehicle. (The photos are really, really, really bad.......sorry about that.)

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Amazing it is (and rather frightening) to come to the realization that your whereabouts can be tracked so accurately and instantaneously from a satellite way up in space! In this photo below, our vehicle is the red blip on the green line........pulsing along in a westerly direction on U.S. 20.

Unconvinced I remain that this sort of constant directional guidance is at all necessary, but the technology exists.........so, why not go ahead and toss your paper maps out the window, train your eyes on the glowing GPS screen (possibly you should glance at the the road once in a while, too), and listen to the commands of the politely seductive female voice emanating from the GPS unit. If you actually followed her directions to a "T", you might occasionally experience the excitement of driving into a river, or through someone's house, or into a cow pasture!

The pleasant electronic female voice also immediately brings it to your attention when you have missed a turn that is on HER schedule for you to make! She then sweetly warbles, "Please make a legal U-turn......Please make a legal U-turn." (In other words: "Turn around, Idiot!") With the other noises going on in the vehicle we were in, her command instead sounded like, "Please made illegal U-turn. Please make illegal U-turn." For quite awhile we actually thought that's what she was saying!

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But, here's what really gave us all a good laugh: In this next photo, the red blip-----which was our vehicle-----was suddenly pulsing around without a directional line to follow........like a little boat caught up or down a creek without a paddle! The blurred words in the white box at the top flashed at us: "Proceed to a mapped road.......Proceed to a mapped road!" This command box materialized like a worried mother whenever our vehicle happened to take a turn to an "unmapped" location........such as our farm driveway------our HOME, mind you!!! It was then as if suddenly we were NOWHERE.......in a limbo area, lacking our bearings.......and the nebulous GPS entity struggled from afar with that confusing circumstance, fretfully pleading with us to return to SOMEWHERE.....a place it could recognize!!

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Heaven forbid that any of us should wander into an unmapped place! Please be certain to proceed only into "mapped" areas today as you blip and pulse down the road of life!!!

Wanted: Time Alone

Here's a killdeer photo for no reason other than that we two crossed paths just a few minutes ago out on the road. He or she scolded me in that trademark high-pitched squeaky squawk that killdeer are known for. Apparently, I was venturing too close to a nest of young'uns.

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On Saturday I was a passenger for several hours in someone else's vehicle, because we were moving my son's fiancee's furniture to the house they've just purchased in anticipation of their upcoming August wedding. The moving went smoothly; a large U-Haul truck was used, and we had plenty of helpers to do the heavy lifting. The couple is not living together, but they thought it a good idea to get the furniture moved to the house so the groom-to-be would be more comfortable living there. I'm relieved he's out of the sketchy apartment he was living in.........mothers tend to worry about such things, you know.

The newly-purchased house is near the Quad-Cities, about 150 miles from here. My son's fiancee's father was planning to drive the U-Haul truck and he wished to avoid the heavy semi traffic of I-80, so we took Hwy.20 to near Dubuque and then by-passed on county roads to catch Hwy. 61 heading south toward Davenport. What a very nice, scenic drive it was!! I will probably never take I-80 to the Quad-Cities again, for this other way is much less stressful, and the route goes past many dairy farms, plus interesting places like New Melleray Abbey and the Hurstville Lime Kilns, both places I would like to stop and visit someday.

At any rate, I'm not used to being a passenger, and there I was a captive in someone else's van for several hours, but the scenery and conversation were very pleasant. During quiet times, I read the Saturday newspaper which we had grabbed out of the mailbox when we left. Normally, I don't read the "Ask Amy" advice column, but did so this time and was intrigued by the first letter of the day's column, from a wife concerned about her depressive husband's desire to be alone for awhile.

As a depressive myself, I can definitely empathize with the husband's plight.......more so than the wife's. There have been many, many times in my years of marriage and childrearing that I so desperately wished to be alone for a few days. And, of course, that was always completely out of the question, and how terrible of me to even consider such a thing. There must surely be a pill for a problem like that.....right? Depressives, and maybe even nondepressives, DO need time alone occasionally, and its too bad that so often their spouses have no comprehension of that.

This morning at our church, there was a young father and his two children at the service........they had been visiting his parents here in our area for several days. He grew up in our church, but now lives in a city farther away. His vehicle happened to be parked next to ours, and after the church service he was buckling his kids into carseats as I was walking by. I said to him, "Do you mean to tell me that you are actually giving your wife some days to herself......some time of peace and quiet?" (She's a stay-at-home mom.) He nodded and replied, "Yes........she puts up with me going to night classes, so she deserves some time to herself, and I wish I could do it more often."

Wow! That about blew me away. How refreshing to meet a husband with such an attitude, and it helps to restore my hope and confidence in the younger generation!

St. Luke Window

Here's St. Luke's window, which stands sentinel over the sanctuary of the LCMS Lutheran church I attend:

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Here's a site with info on why St. Luke was bestowed with the symbol of a bull or ox.

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Click for an excerpt from The Gentlemans' Magazine , from 1851, which discusses the symbolism of the four winged creatures from Ezekiel and Revelation, and their ancient connection to The Four Evangelists-----Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

State Flower: Wild Rose

Ta-da........may I present........the state flower of Iowa: The Wild Rose........bless its little heart........is currently in bloom in fields, ditches, and woodlands. This one was near the end of our driveway, hidden amongst ditch grasses and weeds.

Wikipedia has much more information about the Wild Rose.

What I can tell you firsthand is that these flowers are extremely delicate and fragile; in trying to take these photos, I barely touched a couple nearby rose blossoms and all the petals fell right off!! Sheesh. A less than strong breeze can come along and wipe them all out! Or the county roadside mowing machine can come along and mow them into oblivion........as happened yesterday!

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Whoops......this next photo uploaded sideways onto the blog for some unknown reason, but it doesn't matter much, for one can stand over a cluster of wild roses in the wild and gawk from any angle, anyway, so obviously they don't have a right or wrong side.

About the Wild Rose, my prairie flower book states, "Native Americans and pioneers ate the hips, flowers, leaves, and new shoots when other food was scarce. Three rose hips are said to contain as much vitamin C as an orange."

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Vacation Bible School has been fun, and thought-provoking.........as I observe the little children, each with their own unique personality and temperament, and us teachers expecting each one of those little people to conform to our expectations. I could say that some of the kids are totally bratty.......they don't want to sit and listen to a Bible story, or learn songs and actions. But.......are they actually brats?.......or, just being normal 3 and 4-year-olds, not possessing the attention spans needed for what we teachers are expecting of them. They'd be better off running around outdoors expending energy and using their imaginations........(possibly, that goes for the teachers, too.)

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Throughout my years of raising kids, and interacting with other parents, and observing parenting styles, I have come to some personal conclusions. One is that little kids need to be allowed to actively play.......alot.......it is their "work", and its how they learn to adjust to the world. Best of all, as little kids play, they use up energy which needs to be used up, so they can get tired enough to sleep for long periods.

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I've known parents who-----with all good intentions-----would struggle to make their kids sit and do homework after school, then eat supper and go to bed by 7:00 p.m.!! Often these were the kids who were classified "hyperactive". Well, no wonder......they never had a chance to be active and use up energy! Though I was sometimes frustrated with all the farm chores here over the years, at least we had something to keep the kids actively occupied. On a normal school day, they'd help with evening barn chores (with playing mixed in) from 5 to 7:00 p.m., or later. AFTER that, we'd eat supper, and AFTER that, they would do homework, and fall into bed, well tired out. There wasn't enough energy left in them to produce hyperactivity, or ADD, or whatever else. That is my uneducated guess, anyhow.

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Some of the kids at Bible School strive constantly to be the center of attention. Maybe their parents give them constant attention at home. In the past, during my childrearing years, I would notice that some other mothers would allow their kids to continually interrupt adult conversations, and the mother would never say, "Go away and play with the other kids; I'm talking to my friend." No, they would coddle the child, and the child would respond by getting whinier........and you could forget about our adult conversation.......it wasn't going to happen. No boundary was enforced between the parent and child, and the child was missing out on learning an important life lesson.......that the world is NOT all about ME!!

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I also knew parents who------with good intentions, I suppose------would tell me how awfully naughty their children were........sometimes within earshot of said children!! And, true to their parent's statement, the children did act bratty.......they lived "down" to their parent's expectations of them! That's one thing I never did.......say out loud that my children were naughty. I might have thought it many times......but, I would never verbalize it. I believe children will be whatever you say they are! (Probably, I'm not much of a Christian, either, for I balk at telling anyone, "You're a sinner", even though according to what I've been taught, everyone is a sinner.)

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And, my goodness, when I was a kid, if I heard them once from my mother, I heard them a thousand times.......these famous lines of hers (which I later would spout after becoming a mother myself..........it is said that we women "become our mothers", and, oh, horrors!.....it is so true!!!):

"GET OUTSIDE AND FIND SOMETHING TO DO!!!"

"STOP CRYING OR I'LL GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO REALLY CRY ABOUT!"

"I DON'T CARE WHO STARTED IT........GET OVER IT AND BE NICE TO EACH OTHER!"

Do parents say things like this anymore?? Or, maybe its just the meany parents that do......(and, I definitely was a meany parent.......just like my meany mother was!).

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Now to head in another direction........being at Bible School this week has brought me up-to-date on some of the strange first names little kids have nowadays. To avoid offending any readers, I won't mention any specific names, but I ask: Do parents ever stop and consider that future time when their darling baby will grow to be an adult saddled with a goofy name? (Goofy in my opinion, anyway.) There happens to be a little boy in the VBS class who actually has a good, solid, normal-sounding name, and the other day I told him I liked his name........(he's too young to comprehend the reason for my saying that, of course.)

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Oh, and while I'm at it........over on the right side of the blog is a parenting quote which hung on my refrigerator for years. Its by someone named Karen Heller, and includes the idea that "enlightenment and greater awareness" should be "honored over personal achievement". I think that's very important. Trophies in sports, or academics, or art, or whatever, don't mean a thing if the person winning them doesn't possess kindness, trustworthiness, respectfulness, courteousness, empathy, responsibleness------(alot of long "-ness" words, but you catch my drift, hopefully). Eyes to see and ears to hear. Life isn't about me, myself, and I......its about others. And, that's not saying my own life mirrors that very well, or at all, but I do believe its good to at least attempt to pass that ideal on to the young, impressionable people in our lives.

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Here's one more thing.......(although, I do need to bring this post to an end).......its a statement I used to hear my grandma say over the years, which would cut through our smug, prideful attitudes when we'd hear of some ne'er-do-well from our community who had gotten into trouble for drugs, or some other crime.........she'd say: "If we'd have been raised like they were raised, we might act that way, too." It would shut us all right up, and cut to the heart of the matter.......a person's childhood and the parenting they experience set the stage for the rest of life.

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Sorry for this critical rant about kids and parents.........its just that I haven't been around little kids for quite awhile, and many memories come flooding back as I observe the goings-on at VBS. I know what you're thinking........May Jeannelle be blessed with many whiny, bratty grandchildren who also have very goofy names!! (And, I probably wouldn't mind that a bit!)

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Popcorn Tree

Don't you hate it when people come by and strew popcorn all over your sidewalk and lawn!! I mean.......really........don't folks have anything better to do!!

Oh, but you aren't a bit fooled.........you know this littered scene is evidence of a Catalpa tree lurking overhead......right?!


This seemingly out-of-place-for-Iowa flowering tree has been shading my car each morning this week while I'm helping at Vacation Bible School.

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When I was a little bitty kid we had two big, tall Catalpa trees in our front yard, but by the time I was six or so, the trees had been cut down.........'cuz they were too "messy", according to my parents. The tree shown in these photos is very tall, too, and you can see the oddly large leaves-----large for a tree here in the north, anyway. It also boasts curly branches here and there. All in all, its quite a unique and interesting tree......but, I'm happy its not in my yard!!

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Happy Thursday! (Only one more day of VBS.......hooray!!.......OK, I'll admit it...... its been enjoyable, but I'm truly ready for it to be over with.)

Spiderwort

On display right now in our road ditch for the viewing pleasure of passers-by.........

SPIDERWORT!!

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The following info about "Spiderwort" is from the book Wildflowers of the Tallgrass Prairie of the Upper Midwest, by Sylvan T. Runkel and Dean M. Roosa, published by Iowa State University Press (1989):

------Other common names for Spiderwort: Blue Jackets, COW SLOBBERS!, Job's Tears, Widow Tears

------Scientific name: tradescantia ohiensis (The name "tradescantia" was given in honor of John Tradescant, gardener to Charles I, King of England in the early 17th century. "Ohiensis" means "or or from Ohio".)

------The flowers tend to open in the morning. When touched in the heat of the day, they shrivel to a fluid jelly that trickles like a tear.

------The plant was once thought to be a cure for spider bites.

------It is used in biology classes to study the movement of protoplasm in the hairs in the center of the flower.

------Flower color changes when exposed to nuclear or radioactive radiation.

------Melvin Gilmore wrote, in his book, Uses of Plants by the Indians of the Missouri River Region: "When a young Dakota brave is in love and when walking alone in the prairie and finding this flower in bloom, he sings a song to it in which he endows it with his sweetheart's characteristics and beauty." Part of the song may be translated as:

Wee little dewy flower

So blessed and so shy

You're dear to me, and

For my love for thee, I'd die

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I really like the name "Cow Slobbers"!! I must remember to tell Husband about that alternate name for Spiderwort!!

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The following story is not related to Spiderwort, but happened just last Sunday. Its involves a dream and a car accident, so if that will bother or annoy you, you'd better surf somewhere else.

Sunday morning, right as I was waking up, I was in dream scene.........first I was at a business establishment in our nearby town, gazing at the grain elevator across the street. Then I was in the shed below the tall grain elevator, and I was standing next to a person on a gurney, and the person's head was encased in what appeared to be a block of cement. [Update - 5:00 p.m., 6/25/08: I decided to look up the meaning of the injured boy's first name.......it is "solid, enduring"........(like cement??!] I was with the person to give them comfort during this ordeal they were going through, and I was saying to someone, "This must be like a torture chamber for this person......to have their head all covered up like that."

Back to reality.......I filed the dream scene away in my mind and went about the usual Sunday activities. Around 6 p.m., one of my daughter's friends phoned to say that another good friend of theirs had just been in a serious car accident near here, and had to be cut from his car with the Jaws of Life, and airlifted to the hospital. We had no idea what sort of injuries he sustained......one always worries about the head and neck, though.

My daughter was at her job, but someone notified her there, and she went straightaway to the hospital. Later that night, she phoned home with details about the accident. The injured boy had apparently fallen asleep while driving home from a friend's house (this friend's family owns the business establishment in the beginning of the dream), went into the ditch and hit a culvert. The front half of the car ended up perpendicular down to the ground, pinning the boy's ankles. Probably he survived the crash because he had his seatbelt on and the airbag deployed. The steering wheel was pushed into the dash......the boy's face has many cuts and bruises, a broken nose and teeth......and, in fact, he's been pulling pieces of steering wheel material out from between his teeth! Also, just two weeks ago, he had junked his old, compact car (with no air bag) and bought this larger, newer vehicle!

At the scene, he was put in a neck brace, his badly broken ankles were stabilized, and he was loaded onto the helicopter (a type of "elevator", if you will). Both ankles were crushed, with one being an open fracture. He's fortunate his feet weren't just cut right off. One ankle was operated on on Sunday night, and the other on Monday. Both ankles have multiple plates, pins, and screws in them.

My daughter was with him all day Monday, too. They aren't going together, but they were very good friends all through high school, and were prom dates one year.

Anyway........if you have a few seconds, just breath a quick prayer for his recovery, which will be a long one. Much patience and good humor will be needed. My impression of this boy has always been that he's exceptionally good-natured and cheerful, and my daughter states that he's been true to form so far in the midst of this unfortunate ordeal, even cracking jokes as he was being loaded onto the helicopter, according to witnesses.

This boy was a standout cross-country and track runner in high school, and had just finished a successful first year of college running. It appears God may have other plans for him.

When I told my daughter about the dream, she told me that another friend (the one who had called me about the accident) had dreamed about a car wreck that morning, too.

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[Update - 6/26/08: The boy who had the car accident didn't fall asleep while driving......his front driver's side tire blew out, causing his car to veer across the oncoming lane and into the ditch.]

Ragwort & Worts

Oh, I can't resist a post tonight, and it won't take long, for this Golden Ragwort photo has been waiting in the draft queue for a couple weeks, and almost disappeared to the next "older" page.

Other names for it are Prairie Groundsel and Squaw-weed. It is of the Asteraceae family, with scientific name of senecio plattensis. Click for the Wikipedia entry.

Two of my prairie flower books seem to give contradicting information about Ragwort. One says this plant is "poisonous to humans and livestock, but was used in folk medicines". The other says Ragwort "was used by Native American women for general health, hence the name Squaw-weed", and "was used by early European settlers as a diuretic and diaphoretic". There would have been a risk, though, for "plants of this genus senecio are known to cause liver damage to grazing livestock. Afflicted animals may stagger, walk continuously, and become disoriented". (Hm-m.......sounds like me in SuperWalmart!)

I wondered, also, where the "rag" in Ragwort originated........but maybe it has something to do with being a medicinal for females.......sorry to bring that up, guys.

At any rate, this Ragwort photo was taken a couple weeks ago, and the blooms are now long gone. It was along our gravel road, in the ditch.

Oh, and here's one more tidbit.......I was curious as to what "wort" means, and looked it up in the dictionary: "A plant, herb, or vegetable, used for food or medicine (used chiefly in combinations in various plant names, as in liverwort, figwort).....". Spiderwort is blooming in the ditch right now, and I hope to post a photo and info about that soon. St. John's Wort is another "wort" that sounds familiar.......it is sold as a herbal supplement which helps to counteract depressive moods. I took it for a time a few years ago, and did feel it was somewhat helpful, but it takes several weeks for the benefits to kick in.

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Here's a lonely, long-lost violet photo from early in May. It didn't want to be left out of the fun of being posted on the blog!

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Have a terrific Tuesday!!

Cultivating Corn

Um......yes.......that's right........the previous post stated I was planning to take a breather from blogging.......but Sunday afternoon I heard the "putta-putta-pop-pop-pop" of the old John Deere, and just had to run out and snap a photo of this scene, which is a rare one in modern American agriculture. A farmer cultivating his cornfield!!

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That term, "cultivating", means driving up and down the corn rows with a tractor that has a cultivator attached, an implement which simultaneously uproots the weeds and aereates the soil. Everyone's fields around here were pounded on by all that heavy rain in early June and the result is a hard crust on top, which needs to be broken up.

The yellow, spiked wheels serve as shields to prevent the corn plants from being damaged.

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If you click the photo below to make it larger, you perhaps will better see the narrow, curved shovels which cut through the soil to dig out the weeds and open things up. The best time to cultivate is when the sun is shining, for then the uprooted weeds will dry out quickly, with less chance of regrowth.

The more modern way to get rid of weeds is to spray herbicide on the field. That usually means hiring a big spraying rig to do the job.........they have tall wheels and really long extension arms covered with nozzles which apply herbicide to a wide area, meaning less trips back and forth across the field, meaning less soil compaction. Possibly, more farmers will dust the cobwebs off their cultivators this year due to the hard crust on the fields......although........that will mean more tractor fuel to buy, and we all know how high fuel prices are! Always, one has to weigh the positives against the negatives, to see which side will win out.

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In my years of doing tractor work, I've disked, dragged, plowed, chopped stalks, pulled the baler, and hauled lots of grain wagons here and there, but I never planted, combined........or cultivated, which is fine with me. Cultivating would be nerve-wracking because of the danger of steering the tractor one way or the other too far and digging out part of a row of corn. And, that shameful error would be so obvious.........there's no way you could hide it!

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Ok.......this may be it for posting for this week........besides wishing to visit other blogs, I also made the mistake of saying "yes" to helping with Bible School this coming week. It will be fun, but will mean the hassle of getting dressed up every morning and going somewhere after morning calf chores.......it will disrupt my usual routine, and as time goes by, I care less and less for disruptions like that.

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My Bible School duty is to assist in the preschool class, and thankfully, the teacher is very capable, a retired schoolteacher........I'm looking forward to simply following her orders. Tasks at home will slide, though.........you know how it goes........meals for the menfolk, dishes, laundry, lawn-mowing, etc., will still need doing when I get home. Gosh, don't I sound like a wimp! I'm so glad I never had a job outside the home to run off to everyday! But, then again........maybe a job would have helped me be more efficient, ambitious, and organized......but, we'll just never know, will we........

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Have a great week!!

Silkmoths on Sunday

This morning we attended a community church service in a small-town park near here, held each 3rd Sunday in June to conclude the town's annual celebration. Afterwards, we stopped at our son's fiancee's parents' home to gawk at a moth couple they had noticed earlier in the morning. As usual, my purse held a camera (I know, that's getting pretty bad......when a person carts a camera along to church!!).

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Yes.......its a somewhat graphic view of moths mating........at least, that's what we assumed they were up to. Click the photos to see the pair larger. Especially fascinating, I think, are the feathery antennae on the lower (female?) moth, and also the velvety texture of the red legs and striped bodies!

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After searching a bit on the internet, I think these moths may be Cecropia Silkmoths, hyalophora cecropia. Click to read more information about that particular species of moth. What do you think? Is this the right variety of moth?

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We think the wingspan was about 5 inches across:

Update: My son's fiancee sent me this link to another website with information about the Cecropia Silkmoth.

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I'm going to try to shut up and shutter the camera for a few days and visit other blogs. There are just SO MANY intriguing and beautiful ones out there. The blogging world is quite a subculture.........connections forged, opinions aired, thoughts exchanged, photo scenes shared.........its like new nerve pathways being formed in the cortex of the brain of earth.......who knows what benefits may result.........maybe a brighter consciousness in which to share, care, and be aware.

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St. Mark Window

Ahem.......have you ever seen St. Mark the Evangelist and author of the Gospel of Mark depicted in this manner? He looks like the lion from the Wizard of Oz......with wings. This is another stained-glass window from my church. Honestly, before I started blogging and taking photos, these unusual symbols just never registered in my mind at all, even though I sat beneath them almost every Sunday. These window images are situated way above normal eye level on each side of the church sanctuary.......maybe that's why I never took notice of them........it couldn't be that I was just plain non-observant.......yeah, sure. Also, it can be noted, that in 30 years of attending church here, I've never once heard a pastor offer an explanation of the symbols on these windows.

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At any rate, I don't wish to give away the characters used to represent St. Luke and St. John, but they are also of winged, non-human creatures. Of course, if you are curious enough, you can easily use an internet search engine to find the answer to why these four disciples of Jesus are depicted as winged creatures. Its from an ancient tradition based on descriptive imagery from the first chapter of Ezekiel in the Old Testament.

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On that note, here's a bit of info about Ezekiel.......excerpted from the introduction to his book in my NIV Bible:

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"Ezekiel was obviously a man of broad knowledge, not only of his own national traditions but also of international affairs and history. His acquaintance with general matters of culture, from shipbuilding to literature, is equally amazing. He was gifted with a powerful intellect and was capable of grasping large issues and of dealing with them in grand and compelling images."

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On the traditional church calendar, I believe today is The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost. A feast day is this week, The Nativity of St. John the Baptist, on June 24.

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May peace and contentment define your day!

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Update: Here is an interesting link concerning the four winged creatures which represent Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Iowa Mountain Range

Occasionally, when the conditions are just right, we see a mountain range here in Iowa! This evening brought such a sight, on the northern horizon:

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When I was six years old, I went on a trip to Colorado with my family. Oh, how I enjoyed gazing at the Rocky Mountain peaks! When we left there, I was turned around in the back seat, watching through the car's rear window as the mountains disappeared from sight, tears running down my face. After that, whenever I'd see clouds resembling mountains, I would imagine really, really hard that they were truly real!!

Chopping Hay

Yesterday went well........the longest day of the year was perfect for putting up hay.........low humidity, sunny skies, warm temps. Because of the bright sun, some of these photos are shadowy.......so, if you can't see them very well, remember, you can click on the photos to see them in a much larger size.

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The hay chopping process got started right after morning milking chores. Coming up over the hill in this photo is the tractor pulling the chopper and silage wagon. The tractor on the right, going in the opposite direction, is raking swaths of alfalfa hay into winrows to be baled later in the day when the dew has dried.

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Here's a closer, dustier view of the chopper moving along, gobbling up the swath of hay and blowing it backwards into the silage wagon. I love dust billowing in photos.........it indicates motion and noisy activity going on!

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The wagon became full before the end of the hay swath, so Husband had to pull away from the row and go to the end of the field to wait for an empty wagon.

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Here's the wagon full of chopped hay......or "haylage", which is a yummy delicacy for dairy cows!

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Husband and today's Birthday Boy are switching the empty wagon for the full one. B.B. will take the full wagon to the silo to unload it. (At some point today, Husband managed to slip off the chopper and fell hand-first onto the ground, wrenching his thumb backwards. Its very unusual for him get injured. His thumb is swelled up and painful; he's calling it a sprain.)

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Husband directs the chopper back to the next row of hay.

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Sometimes I can offer a tiny bit of assistance, by doing something as simple as putting the hitch pin in place. It saves the tractor driver a climb down from the cozy cab.

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Birthday Boy monitors the flow of haylage from the wagon into the blower which propells it up the chute into the top of the silo. The spinning PTO shaft is there in the lower foreground........every farm kid learns early on to be very careful when working around that dangerous piece of equipment.

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More green dust! Yippee!! I could probably gather some up and steep it in hot water to make alfalfa tea!! The chopped hay is moving out of the silage wagon, into the blower, and up the chute into the top of the silo. The silo stands next to the barn, and has an unloader which throws the haylage down another chute to be fed to the cows inside the barn as needed throughout the coming year.

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Here's a silly little thing that makes me chuckle.........we have two identical Meyer silage wagons, which we purchased in the same year. They each have trademark signs attached to them. On ONE of the wagons, the word "manufactured" is spelled wrong!! The sign on the other wagon has correct spelling! Trivial, I know........but, it makes me chuckle every time I see it!

"Manufacured"!!!

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Solstice Sunset

Well, there you have it..........the 2008 summer solstice sunset, as seen from my vantage point here in the northern hemisphere, in Iowa, U.S.A. And, right on time as officially predicted, at 8:51 p.m. CST.

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I couldn't have asked for more gorgeous birthday weather than we had today!! Actually, June 20 rarely turns out to be a bad weather day. Spring volatility has passed, and early summer takes over, warm and mellow.......in most years, anyway!!

Solstice Sunrise

Ok.......drum roll........(which I was able to do many years ago as a drummer in high school band)........here it is:

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Summer Solstice Sunrise - June 20, 2008

Klinger, Iowa, U.S.A.......or thereabouts:

Latitude 42.65667

Longitude -92.21917

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Click here to look up YOUR latitude and longitude!

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Officially, the sunrise today occurred at 5:32 a.m. CST. These photos were taken at approximately 5:50 and 6:00 a.m. CST, looking in a northeasterly direction. As you can see, the lucky ol' sun had to work its way through a blanket of clouds before breaking into open sky.

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If I survive turning 50 today I will try to snap a photo of this evening's sunset and post it forthwith.

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If you have a hankering to take a gander at many lovely sky scenes today, then visit Wiggers World blog from the U.K. for the weekly Sky Watch Friday, which contains links to sky scenes from around the world!

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Have super day!!

Sunny Birthday # 50

Yeah, today's the big day, June 20, 2008, my 50th birthday........I'm so excited, I can hardly contain myself !!

Speaking of containing.........I was quite a large container on my 34th birthday back in 1992, as this photo gives evidence of:

My dear, sweet children------who were ALWAYS just as angelic as they appear in this photo------had foraged in the ditch for a birthday bouquet of Prairie Phlox. I normally don't care much for posting current photos of people on my blog, but this one is so old and unreal, that all of us in it would be unrecognizable now, anyway. In particular, I no longer have the big, stylishly permed hairdo, and the very attractive oversized eyeglass frames......AND, my blimp belly magically disappeared less than 24 hours after this photo was taken. (By the way, I now also look MUCH younger.......yeah, right.)

That birthday in 1992 is probably one of my most memorable ones. That whole day long, it felt like I was in the early stages of labor........crampy backache and stomachache, and I couldn't find a comfortable position. All day, I kept thinking, "No, no.......please don't let me give birth on MY birthday! The poor child will have to go through life having the same birthday as his or her mother!! I don't wish that on anyone! (Right or wrong, that's what I was thinking that day, anyway.)

Well, midnight came, and June 21 rolled around, and I breathed a sigh of relief. At around 5 a.m., I was awakened by a huge kick from inside------my son evidently having had enough of being in a tight place------the waters broke, and off to the hospital we went, after Husband did cow chores, of course. Our son was born around 1 p.m. Thus, between he and I, our household has a good percentage of the "longest-days-of-the-year" covered by a family birthday! (That would be the summer solstice, of course......although, if any of you are reading from the Southern Hemisphere, then it would be your winter solstice.......right??)

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Today we will be chopping hay and blowing it into the silo and/or baling the hay. IF I could do exactly as I pleased on my birthday----- which I figure is every birthday celebrant's right, within reason------ I would go BY MYSELF to some scenic, peaceful spot like perhaps Pike's Peak at McGregor, on the high bluff over the Mississippi River, wander around and look at the Indian mounds, and soak in the view from the observation deck for awhile (and take some pictures!). Sigh.

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There are presently eight calendars in my house, and I did a poll of them yesterday. Six state that this year's summer solstice is June 20, and two of them say June 21, so I'm going to go with the former, meaning my 50th birthday lands on the summer solstice this year! COOL!

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Actually, earlier this week as I was raking hay on a hill near our farmstead, I suddenly recalled that on our county's elevation map, the field I was in is either the highest or second-highest area of elevation in the county. Now, granted, that's not really very impressive, since we're here in Iowa, where there's nothing remotely resembling mountains, anyway.......but, its a COOL fact about this farm!

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I was thinking then, that if I were an ancient person, I might build a monument-----like Stonehenge-----to the midsummer sun right there on that high spot in our field, where I could gaze out across many miles of rolling prairie. Then, yesterday, when I was waiting in the orthodontist's reception area for my son to get his mouth impressions done, I was tickled to, by coincidence, find a National Geographic Magazine that included an article about Stonehenge.

Theories about that mysterious place in England come and go. The article said that the Stonehenge site was first used ceremonially around 2500 B.C., and last used around 1500 B.C. That's a really long time, ago! (I wonder what biblical events were happening during that time period?) The large stones of Stonehenge, called "blue stones"-----because they appear blue when wet-----came from the Peseli Moutains, 250 miles to the east, in Wales, from a rough, stony, badland-like area. These rocks may have been considered sacred for some reason. The large stones were set into a formation called a "sarcen circle", made up of 30 worked stones, topped by lintels. Techniques from wood carpentry were used to fasten the stones together.

Stonehenge is aligned astronomically with the summer solstice sunlight, and might be connected in some ceremonial way to other "henges" in that area of England, forming possibly a large symbolic calendar on the landscape.

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The article mentioned that the following theories are being kicked around concerning the possible purpose of Stonehenge:

------Temple to the sun

------Temple to the moon

------Astronomical calendar

------City of ancestral dead

------Center of healing

------Stone representations of gods

------Symbol of status and power

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Were I to wish to build a somewhat similar-looking monument in our field, I could use hay bales for the construction, and call it "Hayhenge"! What do you say? Would anyone come and sit with me to watch the sunrise and sunset on the summer solstice? Not for religious reasons, not to worship the sun, but simply to observe a natural phenomenon, part of God's design of the world.

I think that ancient peoples were very observant of nature, much more so than we are today. We're taught about solstices and equinoxes in school, and we pretty much ignore them after that......at least, I know I did for many years. If we weren't taught about these seasonal sun rhythms, do you think we would even notice their occurrences?

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WISHING YOU A HAPPY SUMMER SOLSTICE!! HAVE FUN IN THE SUN!!

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(Posted at 6:20 on 6/20)

Gulf of Tiredness

The Gulf of Tiredness is where I go for vacations.......yesterday we baled small square bales, and there are photos of that to post, but not now.......I am completely exhausted after a day of driving the rake and the baler. While trudging to the house last evening, I quickly snapped a shot of these Golden Columbine, which are extra prolific in the blooming department this year.

The scientific----or whatever----name is Aquilegia "Denver Gold". Last year it had only a handful of blossoms.

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Husband is simply in his glory when baling is going smoothly, with good drying weather and properly-working machinery. Our farm is 200 acres, 80 of which is in hay this year. We have baled 27 acres of that 80, meaning 53 acres remain covered in hay swaths lying on the ground waiting to be chopped or baled. Husband says the plan for tomorrow is to chop hay and put it in the silo as hay silage, which we call "haylage".

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Husband is blessed with an exceptionally strong constitution.......maybe its a German farmer trait.......he never gets tired, or sick......and never takes a vacation, and can't figure out why other people get sick, or tired, and take vacations. I lag far behind him in energy and stamina, and that's becoming more pronounced as time marches on. I'm not complaining......just stating facts. Husband is very blessed to be so strong and healthy........ I am thus blessed, also, of course, but not so much in the vim and vigor category. There's a yawning gulf between our energy levels. Is this common between men and women, do you think?

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Enjoy your Thursday! Mid-June is a gorgeous time of year........I was thinking that yesterday as I raked back and forth across the hay field.......is there any other time in the year when the sunshine seems so balmy, and almost healing in nature. Maybe that's because we're approaching the summer solstice, with the sun at its zenith for the year!

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(My brother-in-law just sent me an email containing this link to Cedar Rapids flood photos.)

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Love (or Chase) Thy Neighbor

Izzy.......STOP!........its, "Love thy neighbor"............not, "Chase thy neighbor"!

Seriously, I've been rather bothered by something lately. I don't wish to elaborate much about it, but it is related to the concept of "Love Thy Neighbor". I feel we missed the boat big time recently; we had an opportunity to offer significant assistance to a family impacted by the tornados and flooding.......and, we didn't do it. I, actually, had not the authority to give the help; I could only offer my opinion, which was ignored.

At any rate........its been bothering me some, and yesterday, by coincidence, a random e-mail arrived from Paraclete Press, containing the following excerpt from the book 4o Days Living the Jesus Creed by Scot McKnight. It definitely was something I needed to read right at that moment. I pray for "eyes that see" and "ears that hear", and the prompting to actually make a move to help my neighbor, instead of just talking about it.

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Day 3 Loving Others
"You shall love your neighbor as yourself."-Mark 12:31Loving others is a great idea until "Mr. or Ms. Other" happens to be a person you don't like. If we are honest with ourselves, the exhortation to "love your neighbor as yourself" slides quickly into a decision to love someone we like or someone just like us. So, for example, in the world of Jesus, loving God naturally meant doing the Torah. Doing the Torah involved maintaining some firm boundary lines between the holy and the profane, the Israelite and the Gentile, the clean and the unclean. So, the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself became for (too) many persons little more than loving one's holy, Israelite, clean neighbors. The profane, Gentile, and unclean person was erased from the dictionary definition of "neighbor." Jesus redefined the word neighbor.We might say that Jesus' primary sparring partners, the Pharisees, practiced a "love of Torah" that created boundary lines between neighbors and non-neighbors. Jesus turned that Pharisee expression around and believed in a "Torah of love" that crossed boundaries by redefining the word "neighbor." And to make loving one's neighbor central to life, Jesus picked up the central moral creed of his Jewish world, the Shema, and amended it. He added "love your neighbor as yourself" to the Shema, which urged Israelites to recite daily these words: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength." Jesus' amendment created a moral creed that summoned Israel to love God and to love their neighbors as themselves.A scribe asked Jesus how to gain eternal life. Jesus, ever the good teacher, asked him what the Torah teaches. After proving to Jesus that he understood the Jesus Creed, that the two central commands of God's Torah were to love God and love others, that scribe asked Jesus another question. This time, though, the scribe revealed that he was not yet ready for the revolutionary nature of the Jesus Creed he had so glibly coughed up. He asked Jesus, probably with a little sniff of snobbery, "Who is my neighbor?" (Luke 10:29). Jesus answered with the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37). That clever parable revealed that the real question was not "Who is my neighbor?"-a question that permits one to create boundary lines-but "To whom should I be neighborly?" The Jesus Creed calls us to neighbor-love-regardless of who the neighbor might be.Be Prepared for the UnpredictableYou cannot determine in advance to whom you will need to act in neighbor-love. Neither can you determine what kind of love you will show. I have joked for years that my education prepared me best to exit my front door on Saturday mornings, to summon my neighbors into my front yard as I stand on the porch, and then to give them a short exposition of a passage from the Greek New Testament. The only problem is that no one would come! We all like to do what we are good at, but my neighbors need something other than what I have to offer in explaining the New Testament.To discern what prompts neighbor-love, we need to develop eyes that see and ears that hear needs. Sometimes our neighbors need us to mow grass or shovel snow or bring in the mail or look after a dog. They might need us to take them to pick up their car, or they might request a lift to the doctor's office. What neighbor-love does is never predictable. Often neighbor-love interrupts our schedule, annoying us more than we care to admit, and calls us to abandon our plans. But our eyes will reveal and our ears will hear the needs of our neighbors if we learn to live the Jesus Creed.Respond to Needs, Not LabelsIn Jesus' parable of the good Samaritan, the priest and the Levite, who both knew and observed their Torah, saw the man sprawled out on the path and thought he was dead. A corpse was impure, and the Torah taught priests not to defile themselves with corpse impurity unless the dead person was their nearest kin (Leviticus 21:1-4). So they passed him by. In effect, then, the priest and the Levite were doing what the Torah said. But that wasn't enough for Jesus. Someone as desperate as a man abandoned on the road had a need, and needs come before labels and purity laws. This corpse was labeled "unclean," and the priest and the Levite, in Jesus' comic parable, respond to the label instead of the need. The Samaritan, who in stereotyped categories shouldn't have been the one to respond, responded to the need and ignored the label.We are like the priest and the Levite far more often than we care to admit. We may choose not to stop our journey to respond to persons because of their ethnicity, their economic status, their clothing, their age, or their body piercings or tattoos. Sometimes we respond negatively to an immigrant's accent or country of origin, or we may fall prey to stereotypes about such persons. Sometimes we walk away from persons because of their disease or their rumored sins. Neighbor-love, as Jesus teaches it and practices it, crosses those boundaries because it responds to needs, not labels.Two of the biggest challenges of living the Jesus Creed are these: learning to see and hear the needs of the one who happens to be my neighbor and learning to discern when and how to respond. These are the challenges of the Jesus Creed to neighbor-love.Jesus' word is to us: "Go and do likewise."

Raking Hay Assignment

Well, I'm pretty well sun-baked and worn out, but will quickly load the raw footage of yesterday's hay raking assignment.

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Husband and Son were chopping and cutting hay, respectively........in tractors equipped with cabs and air conditioning. Ma (me) was relegated to the old clodhopper, Johnny-Popper, John Deere 630. I guess the menfolk of this farm were offering me a free tanning session.......how thoughtful of them!!

I wish some knowledgable person could give info in the comments about how old the JD 630's are. I'm guessing they were new in the early 1950's or so. I could be wrong about that. I'm quite sure this tractor is older than me, and I'll be 50 VERY, VERY soon. (So soon, its making my head spin!)

Below you can see the rake which turns each swath of hay over and kind of fluffs it up so the warm sunshine and the breeze can work their magic and allow the hay to dry enough to be baled.

Good grief! You can tell what an antique this tractor is. These gauges look ancient, and I don't believe any of them work anymore. The fuel arrow stays on "E" all the time. Maybe the other ones are operating, but I don't think so........they just jerk back and forth.

Below is the gear shifting apparatus.........you push that metal arm thing into the gear slot you want. I was instructed to drive in "5th" for this hay raking session. Good! That's fairly speedy and I like that!

Here's the view from the seat........the steering wheel is big, requires two hands to hold it, and has a twirly knob, which is not in the photo.......I rarely use it anyway. That's for the skilled guys to use when they back wagons up and such, which is not my cup of tea. The shorter lever with a knob on top is the throttle.......Vrrm! Vrrm! Fun! Fun! The taller lever is the clutch.......pushing it forward makes the tractor start moving, and pulling it back again makes the tractor stop. Tractors don't have foot accelerators-----at least none do that I've ever driven.......so when you are driving a tractor, your feet are free.......Yee-ha!!You can really kick up your heels when the tractor hits pocket gopher holes and mounds!

The sun was beating down strong all afternoon, and a couple hours into my assignment I decided to go back to the house to rummage for a straw hat. What do you think?? Quite country cool and stylish.......wouldn't you say!!? A cap or hat on the head......always the pinnacle of farm fashion.

There I was, putt-zing along, lost in a dreamy reverie, brought on, no doubt by breathing the hot exhaust fumes emanating from that upright muffler, when suddenly...... what do you know.......there's company in the hay field! Husband has appeared with the round baler and that means the raking is doing its job, and the hay is dry enough to bale. Johnny-Popper and I are fulfilling our assignment!!!

Here's a somewhat clearer view of the round baler, spouting dust out of its top. (Have you figured it out yet........tractor driving must not be too difficult if I can snap photographs while driving!)

Look carefully at the photo below, or click it to enlarge the picture. It shows the baler "pooping" out a bale! Isn't that exciting!? The back half of the baler raises up, and the completed bale rolls out. (The bale is on the ground there behind the baler.) Husband can set the baler to make different sizes of bales.......the ones made this time are about medium-sized.

Here's a close-up of a newly-made bale. The baler forms the hay into a tight roll, as you can see. Plastic netting called "netwrap" surrounds the outside of the bale to hold it together. Izzy says........"I'm getting tired of holding this bale in place. Hurry up and finish writing this post, so I can step away and get this bale rolling!"

(If you think I'm pulling your leg.......you're correct! The bales don't roll very easily.......they are very heavy!)

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I hope you enjoyed this mini-seminar on hay raking. Its a tad bit different than raking leaves......its more like giving the hay a coiffure!