Wild Red, White and Blue

Our Sunday Drive

Kev and I took an afternoon drive this past Sunday. Not something we do much lately (damn those gas prices), so it was really nice. The day wasn't super sunny, but very pleasant. We started out over in Mt. P., and stopped by Ryan and Megan's for another good-bye. Then we headed kinda sorta north, where we soon left the pavement behind...



We saw some beautiful country, including this large bit of marshland...



Home to at least one family of Canada geese...



And several Red-winged Blackbirds, like this beautiful guy...



The geese family made their way through last year's dead cattails. The babies were adorable...



Then Kev and I watched the blackbird go postal on the lead goose...







It got very loud between the blackbird and the geese - very loud! We think the geese must have gotten too close to the blackbird's nest. Whatever it was, they finally called a truce. The mom and dad ushered the goslings on through the marsh. The cattails and other growth in the marsh didn't seem to impede their progress; they moved pretty quickly along and away from the blackbird. We enjoyed the bird drama!



We saw a lot of beautiful barns. This one was near the marsh.



Love the stonework. New pole barn on old, old footings...



I was hoping for a cow or two in this beautiful field... wouldn't that have made a great photo?...



More gorgeous stone footings. I love the gray...



Poor old barn...



And not surprising, around the poor old barn, many discarded things, trucks, tractors, parts of tractors, cars...



Yes, that is moss...



There were lilacs growing all along the roadsides, tons of them! And depending upon which side of the road and how much shade, they were in a variety of blossom stages. It smelled wonderful.



I love the old fashioned lilacs...



Our car smelled heavenly...



I don't care what anyone says, wild mustard is a wildflower, not a weed...



Just ask the butterflies...



We stopped at a few garage sales, and I got a rock tumbler (polisher) for a buck. Score! We also stopped at very cool barn sale. A guy had his pole barn tricked out into a total awesome man cave. It had a front porch on which there were tables with stuff for sale (paperbacks - I got 7, he had some good ones, Robert B. Parker, James Lee Burke... score!). The one side of the barn had an open garage door, and from the road we could see all kinds of beer signs & mirrors and neon lighted signs. When we walked in, we could see a long, oak bar - fully stocked (seriously, all kinds of bottles setting in front of a long mirror wall, plus draft beer pulls), and quite a few nice bar stools. Pool table, awesome stained glass light above it, big round wood table, comfy looking wood and padded dark red vinyl chairs, a couple of lighted glass display cabinets with beer steins, shot glasses, trophies, etc. on the shelves. This place was so awesome. It made me wish we were good friends with the old guy and could stay and drink beer and shoot some pool with him. We're going to make our way back there again this summer.

Then somehow we found ourselves in Farwell...



Where it started to rain really hard. So we headed back to Mt. P., called Ryan and Megan and met them for dinner at Bennigan's...



It was so nice to spend some time with them. Megan left early the next morning to head back home to her family in Kansas, and Ryan is by now somewhere around Goshen, Indiana, where he is doing a residency this summer with Justin Rothshank. I'm looking forward to seeing more of both Ryan's and Megan's work, now that they're both graduates with their BFA in ceramics from CMU. Both Ryan and Megan were super generous to me, and I got to purchase several pieces from the 2 of them before they moved away... at what was obviously a "family discount" pricing! I will post photos soon.

May

I've been watching the ditch down our dirt road, and with all the April rain, and rain in May, too, it has been rising and falling daily. I am somehow entranced by the streams of water coming out of the woods (more on that later...), and when I'm on my way home, I've been driving past our driveway on these sunny days to check out further on down the ditch.

Saturday, I saw this heron and managed to get quite close to it before it spread its huge wings out and flapped away...



Then I watched a number of small, yellow birds flying around and chasing each other, all the while singing like crazy. I think they are Orchard Orioles, but I'm not completely sure. I haven't seen this bird before... they were lovely, they sounded lovely and their antics were very entertaining. When a couple of them would decide to chase each other, they would really get some speed going. I was sitting in my car, with the engine off & window down, and they'd ZOOM! by. One got a little close, and startled me... thought it was going to zoom into my car, or right into my head... Pretty, aren't they...



While I was watching the streams of water and the birds, I could hear a chainsaw going, so I made my way down the road. Kev was out on the northwest corner of our property cutting up a downed tree. The man loves to cut wood...



And in the woods, there were violets everywhere...



It was a beautiful day. Love this time of year.

I must get some hair dye soon

So this past week, I've stated out loud several times that I cannot wait for springtime. Several times. This is not like me. I usually love winter, and I am never the person saying that I cannot wait until springtime.

In my now usual balance with the universe, we got over 6 inches of snow yesterday. Of course.

And, also in keeping with my current kinship with the universe, which is to say, I am the red-headed stepchild as far as good luck servings, I woke up this morning with a sore throat, chest congestion and a headache that just continued to build and build throughout the morning. I am not even 100% over the last 'flu yet, my ears still hurt, and now I'm sick all over again. Of course. This next week is a super busy one for me at work, with a lot of meetings, a lot of things to learn and a lot of deadlines. Of course.

My head feels too heavy for my body. Last week was difficult... I had some things I had to do that required composing... stringing words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs... but I felt like all creative spark in me had been snuffed out. The fires were not banked, they were stone cold. Sucked out. Leaving a big, puffy feeling in my head, like big, painful pillows between both ears.

I cannot wait until springtime. Sun. Warmth. I'm sick of winter, sick of snow and sick of coughing.

Waa, waa, waa!!! I am a whiny baby. With a runny nose.

So... because I still have no creative juices flowing whatsoever, I decided to whine and complain (so unlike me! ha!) and then show you some beautiful, beautiful photos that Joycie took with her little Sony camera last August, when it was warm and sunny and beautiful...











There, I feel a little better. Don't you?