Colors of Goat’s Beard & Buster

 

I’m in awe of these Yellow Goat’s Beard seed heads right now.  The gold metallic glow of the seed stems is very noticeable when the sun is shining.

Buster usually plops down to take a rest and wait patiently as I prowl around taking a closer look at the plants growing down in the ditch alongside the road.  I presume he’s waiting patiently, anyhow…..

Oops…..I could be wrong about that.  Buster’s expression now appears to be anything but patient.  In fact, he looks seriously on the grouchy side…….

Hmm…….what Buster doesn’t realize is that his image is entirely at the mercy of my whims.

Listen, buddy Buster…..if you’re going to turn grumpy on ME then I’ll turn the photo-editing tables on YOU! 

Blog readers, please make the acquaintance of Buster the Colorful!

Have a great weekend!

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Weathered Butterfly

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks. ---- John Muir

Buster and I spotted this Pearl Crescent Butterfly feasting on Prairie Ragwort in the road ditch on Wednesday. There were a pair of butterflies, the one in the first two photos looks a little worse for wear, though happily engaging in normal activities despite his or her wing injuries.

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The name "Pearl Crescent" comes from the whitish crescent-shaped designs on the lower wings. This butterfly had a 1-1/2 inch wingspan, much smaller than a Monarch's. I like the dotty look of the antennae.

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Yesterday around noon my daughter phoned from Germany where it was 7:00 in the evening. She finally whipped the lingering jet-lag with a 12-hour night's sleep the previous night. It rains everyday, off and on for 5 or 10 minutes, then the sun shines again. She's getting along well with her roommates and the kids they are working with in their Camp Adventure program. She reports that the houses in the towns are all built in the classic German style (even the new ones) with flower boxes on the windows. There are no lawns to speak of; instead gardens and lots of shrubbery surround the houses. The streets and roads are narrow, accomodating well the small cars owned by the German people and not so well the large vehicles owned by the Americans. I asked her what the countryside looks like and she said, "Mom, it looks like in that Irish show we used to watch on PBS. Lots of narrow roads lined with fields of waving grass."

Oh, yes......I recall "that Irish show", Ballykissangel, and watched it faithfully (quite the interesting characters inhabited that little village) until the script allowed Assumpta to be accidently electrocuted in the basement of her pub. Sheesh.....that was just too much.....I had been desperately hoping that Assumpta and the priest, Father Peter Clifford, would run off and get married. That first time he tried to kiss her was one of the most dramatic moments I've ever seen on a TV show. That's just me being sappy me, though; I always assume unmarried priests must be lonely and longing for love.....which might not be true at all. Yeah, similarly I was glued to the TV screen when The Thornbirds miniseries was shown many years ago......poor Father Ralph.....and Meggie.....boohoohoo. The book was worse, though......oh, my goodness, what sad things happened to the people in that story.....I bawled and bawled while reading it. What a sap I was and probably still am.

How'd I veer off on that goofy tangent???

Have a wonderful day!

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SkyWatch #48

WELCOME!  You have dropped in on our farm in northeast Iowa…..did you know that?  I snapped these photos while riding the lawnmower around all afternoon today.

Can you see the profile of a face in this last photo?  I can.

Thanks for stopping by!  Please visit Skyley.com to find many links to beautiful sky photos from around the globe.

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More Hay Goes Down

My goodness…..its past midweek already. Yesterday the guys were busy at cutting the rest of the hay fields. I like the look of the zoomed photo above; it appears there’s a big hill a-happening, but its only an illusion. Below is how it really looks…..just a small rise there in the middle of the field.

Look, in the next photo there’s a barn swallow swooping over the haybine, probably gulping down bugs which swarm up from the thick alfalfa and clover that’s being cut.

How convenient…..next to the hayfield is a cornfield to show you. The corn is about a foot high right now, if the young stalks were to stretch out on their tippy-toes.

Next is the oat field…..green, green, green is all I can say about it. Those lighter green spots out in the center of the field are patches of timberweeds, sad to say. I wish timberweeds had some sort of commercial value for they grow so mightily around here, often to heights way above my head. Timberweeds are blessed with stiff stems and big leaves…..you would think the botany scientists at Iowa State or some other agriculture college could figure out a way to make use of them for the good of humankind. Hey, I’d even donate timberweeds to them FREE OF CHARGE.

The above oat field photo also gives you an idea of the type of weather we’ve been having lately…..hazy and coolish. No blue skies or bright sunshine in sight. The crops need sunshine and warmth, that’s for sure…..heat units is the scientific way of saying it. The crops need heat units to spur photosynthesis and growth. Which reminds me…..have I ever mentioned Norman Borlaug here on the blog? If not, I had intended to at some point. He’s a famous agronomist and Nobel Peace Prize winner (1970), born near Cresco, Iowa, in 1914. A friend of ours has elderly relatives who grew up in the same rural Cresco neighborhood as the Borlaugs and they attended country school with the Borlaug kids. Pretty cool.

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Buster kept an impatiently watchful eye on me as I snapped photos of the crops. He was probably thinking, “Good grief, woman…..hurry up already so we can take our morning walk!”

And, an enjoyable walk we had and found various interesting plants and butterflies. We’ll show you in upcoming posts.

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Forgive me for my veering into a pity-party attitude in yesterday’s post. I truly appreciate your kind and encouraging comments, though. Thank you! When finances are tight then I start feeling guilty about not having a career in place. My career has been doing farm wife and mother stuff and the monetary pay for that is nil, of course. If I could even find a job now, it would be low-paying and would probably require a 40-mile round trip of driving each day. Think of the fuel and vehicle maintenance expenses. Most of the women in Readlyn work at a big insurance business in Waverly, but I have no desire to work at a place like that, sitting in a cubicle, talking on the phone. Ack. And, how would I ever keep up with my responsibilities here at home if I had a job off the farm? Its exhausting to even consider such a scenario. Plus, I’d probably have to give up blogging and that would make me just too sad.

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Have a pleasant day!

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Baby Killdeer

Hey, take a look at this! This afternoon, my son informed me that one of the killdeer eggs had hatched out in the field near the barn. The eggs are around 2 inches long.

The parent or guardian was having a conniption fit because I had dared to venture near the nest for a closer look:


Here's a video of the Killdeer's over-the-top performance in an effort to protect the nest by distracting me away from it:

In the Doldrums

Its Tuesday evening…..my son is busy at the other computer where my photos reside so I decided to take a look at the few pictures here on the laptop to see if I can find one that’s not been posted on the blog yet. The one above is what I found. It was taken EARLY one morning in EARLY spring, probably around the time of the equinox. The golden sunlight was slanting its way just so through the kitchen window, creating the fascinating shadows in the picture. I thought they were rather fascinating, anyway. The old canning jar is filled with grapevine curliques. The glass fisherman’s ball came was found at an antique show several years ago…..its shadow reminds me of pictures I’ve seen of the planet Jupiter.

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My daughter sent an email from Germany today. Her group is staying in Miesau. They walked around town last evening and found a place to eat. She said the word “menu” means “meal” in German. She ordered a “Dunker Kabob Menu”. It was freshly-roasted chicken in a flatbread wrap with lettuce, cucumber, pepper, goat cheese, and garlic sauce…..a “fantastic” meal, she said. There are lots of cute houses in the town, with shrubs, trees, and plants growing everywhere. They don’t really have lawns, and she thought I would like that. Yeah…..no mowing!! Gas costs 1.47 Euro/liter (she said that would be around $2.80).

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Here on the farm, the guys were cutting more hayfields. Hopefully, the weather will stay dry so we can bale some of it…..the rest will go in the silo, probably. I’m not caring for the weather right now…..its muggy and heavy. The heaviness just weighs me down…..why is that? Maybe the economy is part of the problem, too. Dairy farmers’ financial situation is dire. Our income has fallen 50 % since a year ago, but all our expenses are the same or higher. NOT GOOD. The tension is written all over my husband and my stomach is in knots continually. A couple weeks ago there was a gathering of dairy farmers in Manchester; they met to “discuss” the poor milk prices. I talked to a guy from our area who attended……he said there was plenty of anger in the crowd that day. Yipes…..I’m glad I wasn’t there. Being in close proximity to ONE angry farmer is bad enough, let alone 200 of them. Dairy farmers can’t just turn off the lights and walk away from the barn until the economy turns around…..the cows continue to need milked and fed and cared for, and that costs money……money that doesn't exist.

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I know the economy is tightening up everywhere, pinching a portion of the joy out of many peoples’ lives. I’m trying to smile, but it is definitely getting more difficult to do so.

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Safe Arrival

The only halfway decent-looking blossom in my perennial garden right now is Yellow Columbine.  Don’t ask me why I chose to plant a mountain native here in my Iowa yard…..evidently I was overcome by temptation at a nursery one day a few years ago.  This Columbine is cheerful and bright, though, and seems to be spreading little by little.   The fuzzy stuff attached to everything must have blown in from Cottonwood trees several miles away, we think, for there are none right in our local area.

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Other than that info, I wanted to mention that my daughter did call from Germany yesterday morning!  I had skipped church because I was so tired, and she called during that time.  She was fighting jet lag and sounded exhausted, but seemed in pretty good spirits.  She said the long flight from Minneapolis to Amsterdam went just fine.  Her seatmate was a woman who kept having panic attacks about the flight, however.  Haha…..that’s probably how I would be……I’ve never flown and don’t especially want to.

My daughter flew on from Amsterdam to Frankfurt.  She said her seatmate on that flight was a young man engrossed in reading a mathematical paper. 

Daughter is a bit disappointed about one thing……she had set up a blog to journal on from Europe, but it appears there is no internet access where she is staying and the students aren’t allowed to use the internet at the school where they will be working.  Perhaps she’ll find internet access when she eventually gets the chance to do some traveling.

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Yikes…..a thunderstorm has moved into our area here on Sunday evening as I type this.  Lots of lightning and thunder, so I’d better close this post and unplug my computer.  Have a great Monday!

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The Mega-Mall

After taking our leave of the Minneapolis airport, the afternoon was still young so we motored ten minutes west on I-494 to the Mall of America, dubbed the "The Mega-Mall" by my husband's relatives who live in the Twin Cities. A massive shrine to American materialism is what it is, though I must admit I find it pleasant to get lost in the crowd there, wandering around, watching and listening to people.

The scenes above and below overlook the mall's center which is an amusement park complete with rides and games and color, color everywhere. There's even foliage to be seen......I think its fake, but can't remember for sure and did not walk through the center yesterday to find out.

My goal was not to shop, but to walk completely around each of the three main levels. Sounds simple enough, but it takes a couple of hours at best and turned out to be more of a challenge than usual yesterday due to huge, slow-moving crowds of people who commandeered nearly every walkway. Wow......seemingly not much evidence of a recession going on, although I noticed there are more clearance-type stores cropping up---Nordstrom's Rack and Marshall's being two---and that's where throngs of shoppers congregated. The lengthy check-out lines discouraged me from browsing very closely there, running the risk of finding an item I simply had to purchase.

There seems to be more food court areas than in the past and lots and lots of seating provided. One food court strip contained DQ, Arby's, BK, a pizza outlet, a Greek sandwich place, Chinese stir-fry, and Italian pasta offerings......anything your hungry heart might desire. Of course, there are many regular restaurants spaced here and there throughout the Mall, too. In the past, I have eaten at The Rain Forest Cafe and Twin Cities Grill. Should you run low on caffeine, there are Starbuck's and Caribou Coffee shops lurking around almost every corner, it seems, not to mention chocolate shops to tempt you, too. I must confess to buying a book at Barnes & Noble, a clearance sweater at Old Navy, and a 3/4-sleeve tee at a Minnesota souvenir shop.

While meandering, I kept close watch on the time displayed on my cell phone, waiting for 3:10 p.m. which was the departure time for my daughter's plane bound for Amsterdam. This is the truth......at 3:08 p.m. I happened to walk by this memorial sculpture which I'd never noticed before. It is a tribute to Thomas Burnett, one of the leaders of the heroic passenger uprising on Flight 93 on that infamous day of 9/11/01. Thomas Burnett grew up in Bloomington, Minnesota, home of the Mall of America.

"The open door in this piece reflects the cockpit door of Flight 93. It also represents a door to a brighter, safer future. Never forget the victims of 9/11 and walk confidently toward the future intent on 'doing something'......something good, something kind, something noble, and something right."

There I stood amidst the throngs of mall browsers, reading this memorial plaque as my daughter's plane was preparing to take off a few miles away. You better believe I was sending out concerned thoughts and fervent prayers. It seemed to be the only "something" I could do in that particular moment.
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Airport Scenes

It’s 11:11 p.m. and I remain keyed up from the big day of taking my daughter to the Minneapolis airport, so here’s a few scenes from there.  A drippy day it was, as you can see in the above photo as we approached Lindbergh Terminal.

First stop was to swipe a credit card to pay for short-term parking.

Once we found our way through the parking ramp and up and down steps and escalators in the terminal, it was time to check in.  Before leaving home, we had asked, “Do you have your passport?”, about 100 times.

There was about a half hour’s worth of time to spare before Daughter needed to be in the security line.  We took in the sights of the terminal, including arrival/departure boards and the weather map.  As you can see, a wide band of showers and clouds lay over the upper Midwest and Plains.  Thankfully, there was no lightning or wind in the Minneapolis area.

Daughter was pleased to see her flight to Amsterdam was running on time as scheduled.  There were only a handful of other international flights on the Delta/Northwest boards……to Tokyo, Singapore, Paris, and destinations in Canada.

Well, the time has come…….we must leave Daughter on her own in the security line.  Unfortunately, after 9/11, family and visitors are not allowed to accompany the traveler to the departure gate.  When my older daughter flew to Amsterdam in late August of 2001, we were able see her board the plane and watch it take off.  A little over 2 weeks later, the awful events of 9/11 took place.  You better believe I was one very nervous mother for awhile, wondering if planes would ever fly safely again.

Oh-h…..good-byes are always hard.  Even Grandma was there to provide a hug.  Her presence was reassuring as she’s flown overseas several times in the past few years.  She admits its not her favorite thing to do, however.

Back to the parking ramp we trotted……

And, emerged once more into the soggy reality of the day.  With one more swipe of the credit card to finalize the parking payment, we were on our way……..

We weren’t headed in the direction of home quite yet, though.  After a short discussion, we decided to go to ___ of ________.  As if you can’t figure that one out.  Photos from there will be in the next post……

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(Its now 11:42 p.m.  My daughter’s plane was set to land in Amsterdam at 6:30 a.m……that’s 11:30 p.m. CST.  If all has gone well, she should be back on terra firma again by now.  I wonder if she got any sleep during the flight?  She’ll be one tired girl tomorrow/today.  We don’t expect to her to be able to contact us for another day or so.  Its a case of “no news is good news”, I guess.)

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Blogging From "The Cities"

A quick post from "The Cities".......(Minneapolis/St. Paul area). I'm sitting in the hotel in Eagan, Minnesota, just before heading to the airport which is not far from here. The day is chilly and rainy. I hope the weather is pleasant where you are. Have a great weekend!!

Choppin O’ The Hay

Hey, we chopped hay today….

Conveying it to the silo to stay….

Our son drives wagons back and forth from the field where Husband is driving the tractor pulling the chopper.  The chopped hay is unloaded into a hopper which augers it into the blower which forces the hay up a tube into the top of the silo.  Its a VERY noisy process.

I spent the afternoon digging in the dirt, planting and weeding, hoping the sunshine would improve my outlook on life…..and, I believe it did.

The next couple days will involve taking my daughter to Minneapolis to catch her flight to Germany.  The packing is all done; her older sister kindly came home yesterday to offer experienced assistance with that.

My stomach remains somewhat tied up in knots, though sleeping was improved last night, thankfully.  Being able to sleep helps immensely, and I know I’ll feel better once I hear my daughter has arrived safely at her destination.  The bad thing is she may not be able to contact us for a few days.

I’ve been a poor excuse for a blogger lately.  I’ve not kept up with blogger friends’ posts during the last week and I’m sorry about that.  It has somehow been impossible to sit down at the computer for any length of time…..restlessness has had the upper hand.  DON’T ALLOW YOURSELF TO GET LIKE THAT!

I hope to catch some photos on the trip north.  It will be good to get away for a short time……I wish it could be longer.  Take care and God bless!!

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SkyWatch #47

Welcome to this Sky Watch Friday post! There have been beautiful sunsets lately here in Iowa. This one was two nights ago, I believe.

Don’t forget……always turn around to see what the opposite sky view is:

Please visit Skyley.com to find a multitude of beautiful SkyWatch links for this week.

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(Mr. Linky doesn't seem to be working on the SW site, so this post isn't on the list yet.)

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Back in the Blogging Saddle

“Aw, get outta here with any of them saddle ideas”, she snorts. “I ain’t the type to tolerate such a contraption……no sirree!”

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Have no fear, that’s just one of my neighbor’s Brown Swiss cows taking a glare at you. Behind her are cornfields to give you an idea of how they look right now. I finally took the camera along again this morning though I almost had to force myself to do it. Don’t know why, but am feeling very out-of-sorts this week. Walking, cooking, chores, are difficult.....heavy slow-motion is my speed these days. Mostly, I want to be down on the ground, in the dirt, pulling weeds, and I've done quite a bit of that the past few days. My sleeping is way off-kilter; due to churning thoughts I've been unable to fall asleep…..and after a few days of that one’s whole being is affected. Now, I feel as though I’m operating from inside a trance and though I feel only half-awake, the rather intriguing side-effect is that the world seems almost enchanted. Maybe this is the state of mind where fairy tales originated; maybe we should be thankful for insomnia once in awhile……or Once Upon A Time……

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Well, once upon a time in an ancient myth, the goddess Venus was grieving the death of her beloved Adonis and wherever her teardrops fell, Anemones sprang up. And, by Jove or Zeus, it looks like she must have shed some tears in our roadside ditch…..

Anemones are members of the Buttercup family. Yes, I believe I see the resemblance…….

This is the absolute truth……I had never seen this boundary sign before today, so it must be newly-installed. I had to stare at for a few moments to figure out what it is demarcating……possibly the line between two townships. Usually that falls along a road, but not in this case, due to a creek being where a road would have been built in the traditional one-square-mile grid pattern.

As I type this, my son is cutting hay in the field near the house. The noise adds to my discontent and seems to scream: “Get moving and do some actual work, Lazy Woman!”

So I will try to rouse my acedic self and get some small thing accomplished. In Acedia and Me, Kathleen Norris states, …..when life becomes too challenging and engagement with others too demanding, acedia offers a kind of spiritual morphine. Yes, that may aptly describe how I feel right now. It is not something that anyone in my household understands, though, so I’m on my own……and mostly have to fake being enthusiastic about anything. I don’t expect anyone to understand…..the reality is we are each on our own path in life. You do what you can and you do what you must.

I’m ok, really……not contemplating anything rash, but am trying to glean whatever it is I’m supposed to learn from this experience. Kathleen Norris offers an ultimately encouraging quote from an ancient monk, Evagrius Ponticus, who calls acedia a demon. [Acedia] instills in the heart of the monk a hatred for the place, a hatred for his very life itself, a hatred for manual labor. [Acedia] leads him to believe that charity has departed from the brethren, that there is no one to give encouragement. [Acedia] brings before the mind’s eye the toil of the ascetic struggle and as the saying has it, leaves no stone unturned to induce the monk to forsake his cell and drop out of the fight. No other demon follows close upon the heels of this one (when he is defeated) but only a state of deep peace and inexpressible joy arise out of this struggle.

Maybe we moderns might call it “being burned out”. Anxiety is part of my problem right now, I’m quite sure of that. My daughter will be flying to Germany this weekend and she is VERY nervous and that is making me nervous. And, I just heard the unwelcome news that a Brazil-to-Paris flight crashed into the Atlantic yesterday, with over 200 souls on board. Why do I even check the news……that is a valid question. We’re better off not knowing certain things.

I know, I know……turn all anxieties over to prayer. That’s what I’m trying to do…..but…..acedia/torpor/sloth is also known as one of The Five Hindrances to Prayer. Golly…..did you know there was such an official list like that?? I didn’t. My goodness, what a person doesn’t learn from writing blogposts.

God’s blessings to you and thank you for all thoughts, prayers, and comments.

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