Fred & Bessie Take A Stroll

This morning Fred and Bessie oohed and aahed---and, mooed and mused---over Laura~Peach’s new grandson, Bradley Joel Hall! The Cows wished they could return to Georgia to see little Bradley in person.

After I explained the complicated logistics of trying to arrange a trip back to Georgia, Fred and Bessie instead decided to take a stroll outdoors. They wanted to see how the flower beds were coming along after the many rain showers we’ve been blessed with recently here in northeast Iowa.

First, Fred and Bessie took a gander at the Hen-and-Chicks, wondering how on earth this plant acquired a name like that.

They gazed at the giant granite ball with awe and some trepidation, agreeing that they would not wish to be standing in this spot during an earthquake.

As they walked past the Spirea bush, Fred thought he saw someone he recognized, but couldn’t be completely sure. He said it almost looked like someone he had met at one of the other homes he and Bessie had stayed at, but his memory failed him as to which one……so he said.

Fred and Bessie ambled on, soon stopping to view a cluster of Hosta shoots making their way into the light of day.

A rather unusual-shaped rock caught their attention next. It seemed to have a ledge made just for Cows to stand on. I urged Fred and Bessie to be very cautious and not overstep the boundaries of their fragility.

After that, Bessie wanted to take a closer look at the violets. She dearly loves violets, she said. Oh, I just looked away and rolled my eyes because violets are really getting on my nerves right now with their brazen invasion of all my flower beds. As Fred and Bessie admired the purple blossoms, they spied that same person….er, cow…..they had noticed earlier near the Spirea bush. Bessie tried to be friendly, hollering “Yoo-hoo…..hello…..how are you? Are you lost in the violet patch?” Fred had become suddenly very quiet.

Oh, my goodness……merciful heavens……what have we here??? An udder-flasher!! Fred and Bessie gasped in shock and stood rooted in place for a few seconds……completely dumbstruck.

Next thing I knew, Fred fell over in a dead faint and Bessie turned away in disgust, trying also to shield Fred’s eyes should he suddenly reawaken and attempt a second look. Honestly, though, I don’t quite understand what the fuss was about. Cows display unclad udders all the time…..even Bessie does that. So what’s the big deal?? Apparently, its all in the stance.

Well, last I knew, the brazen “hussy”---Bessie’s word for her---was sauntering back into the shade of the Spirea thicket. Oh, goodness gracious, I’m hoping we don’t see her parts around these parts again very soon, considering the ruckus she caused.

Do you suppose Fred and Bessie will start spreading the story abroad that our dairy farm is not entirely wholesome? What will Flea think? Oh, dear……something else to worry about. Perhaps its time to think about sending The Cows back to Oklahoma.

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This Just In......

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Here's the SCOOP, though there's no way I'm at all deserving of this momentous honor......

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Follow the instructions in the link and send it on!!

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Neighborhood Horses & Kitties

These are the only horses in our neighborhood.  On my way to a track meet last evening, I was able, at long last, to catch a drive-by shot of them. 

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Very exciting, earth-shattering news……earlier this week, I ordered a new pair of these Jobber Boots from the Muck Boot Company!   I can hardly wait for their arrival.

My old holey chore boots are being donated to the Kitty Scientific Research Foundation.

Along with a pathetic pair of shoes……

For the life of me, I could not get a clear shot of these adorable little wiggle-worms……who will soon be leaving our house to go live with their new owner. 

In the past few years, we’ve had several litters of kittens born around here, and at around one month of age they invariably go through a stage of fascination with shoes……and shoestrings, of course!

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Happy day to you!

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SkyWatch #43

Welcome! These SkyWatch scenes come to you from northeast Iowa, USA.

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Last evening, this was the view looking east as thunderstorm clouds were moving in from the west:

A few days ago, this dark pancake of a cloud settled over our farm in early evening. Though sporting a rather menacing look, it but brought neither storm or rain.

Finally, here are the twin spires of St. Peter Lutheran Church in Eldorado, Iowa. This photo was taken on Wednesday as my husband and I were driving past that tiny town. To see an interior shot of the church, go to this Flickr page.

Thank you for stopping by! Please visit the official SkyWatch website to find this week’s list of links to beautiful sky photos from around the world.

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Happy Odd Day!

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Today is "Odd Day":

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Read about it here.

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Be proud to be odd.

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Lawnmowing Can Wait

These flat Skechers are currently my most comfortable pair of shoes. (They were a clearance rack find.) Normally, flats are not my thing, but this pair is amazingly comfortable for some reason. I got the chance to wear them yesterday…..read on to find out why.

Yesterday morning, as I was scraping cow manure in the barn and morosely contemplating the lawnmowing job that needs tackling, Husband suddenly asked, “What’s on tap for your day?” Uh…..hmm……he rarely asks that question, so what is going on? He better not want me to do fieldwork because I HAVE A LAWN TO MOW, so I announced with flourish, “I need to mow the lawn.” He wasn’t fazed at all by that, and proceeded to say, “I feel like taking a drive.” I nearly dropped the scraper.

Actually, his plan was go to Fort Atkinson to buy parts for the haybine---the machine which cuts hay---so I tagged along because he said we could drive around for awhile afterwards. I threw together sandwiches and drinks to take along….plus the camera, of course…..and off we went. Drive-by shootings, here we come!

This blue-shingled barn looked quite fetching against the greening trees…..

I’m sure you all clearly recall my Fort Atkinson post, so I’ll not include photos from there, or from the nearby ruins of an old limestone church.

After Husband bought $600 worth of parts at the implement dealership in Fort Atkinson, we headed northeast out of town, thinking we’d end up in Spillville. A closed road sent us detouring in an easterly direction and soon we came to an intersection with Highway 52. I expected Husband to turn south to start meandering towards home, but to my surprise he steered the pickup north towards Decorah. I certainly didn’t care which way we went……the further from home, the better!

The scenery was a pleasant treat……that part of northeast Iowa is very rolling, much more hilly than our own home territory to the southwest.

As we traveled further north, billboard signs for businesses in Decorah began to appear, prompting Husband to suddenly say, “Why are we getting near to Decorah? I thought we were heading south.” I was stunned speechless for a moment (like most guys, my husband NEVER takes wrong turns) then found my voice and said, “Dearest, you turned NORTH at that intersection back there.” He shook his head saying, “I thought it was south.” Weird.

Quickly, I devised a plan to take advantage of the turn of events…..we could stop at Walmart in Decorah to pick up a couple grocery items and then head south on W-42. Husband was OK with that idea. Speaking of Walmart, practically every semi-trailer we saw today had “WAL-MART” printed on it, including this disabled one.

Husband snoozed in the pickup while I went into the store and grabbed Cheerios and a jug of orange juice. Then we continued our round-about journey towards home, with me now at the wheel.

A few miles southeast of Decorah we came upon the Washington Prairie Lutheran Church…..established by Norwegian settlers, I presume. Across the road from it was this quaint old limestone church building and I simply had to brake for some pictures.

Quite a story etched on the ball-topped gravestone……

Five children of A.K. and Julia Anderson---Rudolph (age 17), Florence (11), Adella (13), Helma (4), Anders (19)---died in 1886. Their epitaph states:

THEY ARE NOT LOST---BUT GONE BEFORE. These children may have been taken by diphtheria or some other disease. What a heartache that must have been. It would surely be a story too sad to tell. The parents’ epitaph reads:

OH, ‘TWILL BE SWEET TO MEET

ON THAT BLEST SHORE,

ALL SORROW PASSED ,

ALL PAINS FOREVER O’ER

I almost had the chills as on down the road we went. As we came over a hill, the perfect photo opportunity presented itself---a herd of Holstein cows grazing in a pasture in front of another old church! But, for some reason, I just couldn’t bring myself to reach for the camera. That scene will have to wait until another time.

Further on, we saw this old brick church building in the town of Ossian:

South of Ossian, we had to detour onto a gravel road for awhile and ended up spotting this silent old schoolhouse, guarded by a silo.

This final picture is a doozy! I realize my drive-by shots are often off-kilter, but these farm buildings appear to be rather lop-sided to begin with!

Needless to say, I did not get any lawnmowing done yesterday. Hopefully, today.

Thanks for all good wishes for my son’s “almost” pneumonia. He continues to cough, but has no fever anymore and feels generally improved. He did go to school yesterday, but not to track practice.

Enjoy your day!

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Corn Planted!

The guy who plants our corn showed up yesterday afternoon. See how he steers his tractor to follow the dark line etched in the soil by the arm which extends from the side of the planter. That’s the secret to creating straight corn rows!

With his 12-row planter it took about 5 hours to plant our 73 acres of corn. There must be a math story problem in there somewhere.

He finished right about sunset, as a bank of clouds was invading the sky from the west. Rain is in the forecast…..hopefully not the gullywasher type which would wreak havoc in newly-planted fields.

Though blue-and-green is my favorite color combination, purple-and-green runs a close second. Yeah, it surely is the season for violets right now. Though they display lovely, delicate flowers for a time……we should not be deceived…….they are actually very aggressive weeds.

My son has had a fever, aches, and coughing for a few days, so he saw the doctor yesterday morning. After my son described the course of his symptoms, the first thing the doctor asked was if he’d been out of the U.S. lately! It must have sounded like flu, and possibly the notorious H1N1.

It was determined that he has the next thing to pneumonia; the doctor prescribed an antibiotic and sent him home for the day, with instructions against track practice or meets for a few days. What does my son do then but send texts and a Facebook message to his friends saying, “I have pneumonia!” Nothing like stretching the truth in an attempt to fish for sympathy.

He studied and watched TV off and on all day, and coughed, coughed, coughed. Golly, that grated on my nerves after awhile. The doctor had advised him to stay well-hydrated, so I kept vigil over his water glass, filling it regularly and pestering him to keep drinking.

Other than the excitement of corn planting and having a child stay home from school, yesterday was my day to work on paying bills…..fun, fun. The encouraging thing is that milk prices apparently hit bottom in April and are just now beginning to inch up a bit.

My goal for this day is to bite the bullet and attempt to psyche myself up to mow the lawn for the first time. For some reason, I always dread that first mowing. Its like breaking a new trail or something, and then once the mowing begins it lasts until October. Hip-hip-hooray. Its becomes my main focus all summer long. Each mowing takes several hours, that’s what’s especially exciting about it. Of course, if the rain materializes today, it will provide a reprieve of one more day……and the grass will grow even shaggier!

Happy day to you!

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Pickin’ Up Rocks & Treasures

Its the time of year for picking up rocks where needed…..after fields are tilled and before row crops are planted.

My married daughter (from Des Moines area) was home over the weekend. Was she here because she missed seeing Pa and Ma? No……she needed rocks for a landscaping project. She couldn’t have chosen a better time because Husband’s work plans for the weekend included picking up rocks.

Residing permanently in the middle of one of our fields is this massive boulder. We believe large chunks of it were blasted away years ago to provide foundation stones for the original buildings on this farm. Several of those large blocks now reside in the landscaping near our house. I like to imagine that ancient people may have sat on this boulder and surveyed the adjacent low-lying area.

We believe this hole in the boulder was drilled for the placement of dynamite:

Daughter chose rocks to take home from the piles surrounding the large boulder. Then she went to the other end of the field and helped her dad pick up rocks in the areas of ground that had been disturbed last fall during the excavating done to dig in new strings of drainage tile.

Here’s some of Daughter’s choices…..they will look better once they’re cleaned with the power washer:

I decided to start working on the closest tile ditch. Much to my surprise, the first rocks I found were the two large flat ones shown in the next photo, each about two feet long and one foot wide. Honestly, I have never found rocks this shape before, and more odd yet was the fact that there were TWO of them right next to each other! As if God had stowed away a spare pair of tablets for The Ten Commandments, right here in the soil of our farm in Iowa! Sasquatch was curious about them, too, and proceeded to plop right down in the shade of the upright stone which promptly toppled over on her!

The less visible stone was embedded too tightly for me to dig it out. Husband had to do it.

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Since childhood, I’ve been involved in more annual rock-picking expeditions than I care to remember. When I was growing up, our “back forty---and it literally was a 40-acre field located at the back of the farm---produced a new crop of rocks every spring. We kids would glumly take our spot on the flat-bed trailer for the bone-jarring ride to the field. The thoughts going through my head then always included, “Maybe I will get lucky and find an arrowhead this time”…….but that never happened. Sigh. That hopeful wish still lives inside of me, however……and GUESS WHAT!! I may have found a Native American artifact on Saturday! Its not a projectile point, but I believe it could be a cutting tool or scraper. I spotted it not far from where the two flat rocks were. Its edges are VERY sharp (I could use it as a jack knife, for cutting baling twine, etc.) and one side appears to have been deliberately chipped.

We left piles of interesting rocks on the edge of the field to pick up later.

Eventually, the colorful rocks in the creek bed caught my attention, too, but I decided to come back another time to retrieve some of those…..if I can find a pair of boots that don’t have holes in them!

The trunk of Daughter’s car was well-weighted down by the time she left.

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Here’s two round stones I found a few years ago……down by the creek. They could be tools from the past (or prehistoric golf balls).

Here’s a link to a video about a cache of ancient tools that were dug up in Boulder, Colorado, during a landscaping project.

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[Related coincidence: On Sunday, the day after we picked up these rocks, our pastor's sermon text was Acts 4:11: This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone.]

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Have a rockin’ good day yourself!

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Thrasher In The Maple

This will be my last mention of maple buds and blossoms……I promise…..I think. The problem is their delightful shade of green. Its irresistible! Someone else thinks so, too, and was melodiously singing about it yesterday morning high in the tiptop of a soft maple tree:

I believe this bird to be a Brown Thrasher, sometimes erroneously called a Brown Thrush, and nicknamed “The Mockingbird of the North”.

Read about it here and here.

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“However the world goes ill,

The thrushes still sing in it.”

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My Birds of Iowa Field Guide by Stan Tekiela states that Brown Thrashers are “prodigious songsters”. No kidding. Its song caught my attention as I was walking out to the field to pick up rocks, causing me to be delayed several minutes in getting started with that exhilarating task. Thank you, Thrasher!

The field guide also states “the male Brown Thrasher has the largest documented song repertoire of all North American birds, with over 1100 song types.” Quite impressive.....an iPod with wings! (And, yes, I’m well aware that the photos are not crystal clear……its the best I can do with the photographic equipment at my disposal.)

Here’s one of them bloomin’ maples again. The unfurling leaves look a bit like lobster pincers here:

Its a hard maple variety…..possibly a Norway Maple, but I could be wrong about that. Right now, a maple syrupy scent fills the air around this tree, too.

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Here’s how the buds look right now on another hard maple tree in our yard, next to an even different one which was transplanted as a seedling from my parents' farm thirty years ago. I should do a search to learn what these various hard maples' proper names are, but am too tired at the moment.

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Have a blessed Sunday!

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