Wordless Wednesday
Barn Hunt
When was the last time I set out on a photo shoot specifically to find barns?
It’s so long ago that I don’t remember. Sure I’ve grabbed barn images on my way to and from other places. But to go out looking for barns?
It’s been forever.
Last Sunday morning the blue sky sported fluffy white clouds as accessories and I just could not stop myself. It was physically impossible not to get into the car and start driving.
I tried to keep it reasonable. After all, gas around here is regularly over $4.00 a gallon. And I was driving a new car with low mileage that we’d like to keep low. At least for awhile.
But still…blue sky and barns. Maybe the soybeans just north of us would be turning yellow. It was a possibility given the lack of rain lately.
Blue sky and barns and yellow soybeans. Yep I could see it in my head. Would I find it in reality?
I drove for a total of three hours, slightly up north, a bit over to the west, around big country blocks, looking for the image in my brain.
I never found it, exactly. The soybeans are a persistent green, though if you squint you can sort of see a yellowish cast in small parts of the fields. Or that could just be me and wishful thinking.
I didn’t shoot any amazing barns, though I saw three really beautiful ones while I was on a busy road with nowhere to pull over. You’ll just have to conjure those up in your own minds.
But I found some pretty enough barns and experienced a few faded memories of driving these same roads years ago on other barn hunts.
It was a nice day. The sky, in the end, was the star of the show.
And I smiled at it on my drive back home. In my experience you can almost always count on the sky to come through for you, day or night when you’re out looking for something pretty.
It was a short, sweet and fun barn hunt that sort of eased the wanderlust in me. For the moment anyway. I know there are barns out there just waiting to be found. And maybe there’s one in the middle of a yellow soybean field if I get lucky and time it right.
Don’t see why that can’t happen.
Taking the tent down
I haven’t gone on any camping trips this summer, but I’ve had the tent up in the backyard a few times. Today I took it down for perhaps the last time this season. It had been up for a couple weeks and last night when I slept out there I was freezing! It seems silly to sleep in the backyard and be cold when I have a perfectly fine bed in a heated home.
Right?
Still, I feel sad to put it away.
I’m also sad because I didn’t get Penny comfortable with the tent this summer, though we tried several times. Out of all our attempts to sleep out there together, she made it through an entire night only once.
I have great hope for next summer though.
Today as I disassembled the tent I found the usual daddy long-leg spiders hanging out. I always find a few of those, no matter if I’m in my backyard or at a campground. I don’t know what attracts them to the tent. I always move them gently to a shrub nearby.
Today, here in my own backyard, I found a couple more insects hiding out. I don’t know what either of these is.
The dark one looked kind of scary, and when I went to move it off the tent it leaped off on it’s own. I only jumped a little.
But the most surprising thing I found under the rain fly, but still on the outside of the tent, were four, yes four, tiny tree frogs.
They are adorable and about the size of a dime, maybe a little bigger.
I’ve never found tree frogs on my tent before. I wonder about these guys and what caused them to climb up the tent and hide in the folds and under straps.
I hope I found them all.
Next season maybe I’ll put the tent up in a spot further away from the woods.
Until then I’ll dream of listening to the frogs and bugs and coyotes sing all night while I’m snug in my real bed nice and warm.
A visitor. Or is it two visitors?
This week I was washing dishes and caught this Coopers Hawk sitting on my deck railing.
I quietly slid away and walked silently to the living room to grab my camera. Amazingly enough Penny moved silently next to me.
I didn’t really expect the bird to still be there when I returned. They generally don’t wait for me.
But he (or she) was still there, seemingly unfazed. I watch it for a long time, even moving to a better window. It picked up one foot and tucked it into it’s chest feathers.
And then suddenly it flew. I expected that to be it.
But it only flew about 3 feet, to the corner of the deck where it could inspect the ground under some shrubs.
We used to have quite a few chipmunks. I haven’t seen one in awhile.
Then it flew away, and I figured that was it. But it showed up again about 10 minutes later, back on the deck railing, watching the back yard, inspecting the ground and the sky.
Turns out he or she was being harassed by bees.
When it left, being pursued by the bees, I was SURE I wouldn’t see it again.
Until about 30 minutes later when I walked through the master bedroom and guess who was on the bedroom deck railing? I didn’t have my camera with me, so these were taken with my phone.
Yep, our favorite (or perhaps least liked, depending on whether you’re a chipmunk) bird.
But…is this the same bird? Or a different one? Perhaps they’re a couple? Or parent and child?
Your call.
While I wasn’t looking
I’ve been gone for a week, and when I came back I was surprised to see how well the zinnias were doing. Along with other stuff. But mostly the zinnias.
Last evening I took the dog out after her supper. The garden was mostly in shadow. But there was one beautiful monarch zipping among the blossoms.
We went back inside for the camera. Poor Penny had to wait to do her business while I stood there, foot on her leash and shot over 200 images.
She’s a good girl. Patient about her mom taking pictures of stuff not her. I promised her I’d take her to the park soon.
Wait! What happened to South Dakota?
A month ago, now, my sister and I were traveling to South Dakota. I even showed you a couple of night shots that we took and told you I’d share more.
And then life just kept going and it got harder and harder to go back and finish editing the South Dakota images. Luckily I was able to spend a lot of time in the evenings during my stay in Alabama working on them.
I probably told you the biggest reason we were traveling way out to SD was because my friend from high school lives in a place with very dark skies.
And there’s nothing like dark skies to fully appreciate the sky and especially the Milky Way. So we chose a few days during the darkest part of the month to sit under her skies and stare at all the stars.
But we did other things too, the things that most people do when they’re in Southwest South Dakota. Like visit Crazy Horse.
We saw the Crazy Horse mountain sculpture back in the late 60s or early70s when I was a kid. My family was traveling west in our pickup camper and we stopped here. Back then there was just the hole under the Indian’s arm.
And if I remember right, we spoke with the sculpture in his little house where he had a front room set up as something of a shop. I could be wrong in that memory but I remember being in a small room with a low ceiling talking to a man with a beard about the project. It was just a hole in the mountain then and it seemed so unlikely that we’d see an Indian some day.
Now that home is part of a bigger structure that is part museum, part gift shop, part restaurant. We ate lunch there. I had something they called a taco, made from Indian fry bread and topped with a bunch of stuff.
After Crazy Horse we went to Mount Rushmore. Again, we were there when we were kids. Back then there was no welcome center or museum. I remember parking and walking to a view point pretty much directly under the sculpture.
Now there’s a big walkway with flags from different states leading to a viewing area.
But, if you want, you can take a trail walk and get the old, closer, view.
It was close to 100 degrees the day my sister and I visited but of course we had to do the trail! Even with the warning about the 425 stairs we would encounter along the way!
Even in the heat it was a lot of fun.
The next day we went to Custer State Park. I don’t remember if our family visited the park back in the day. We probably did, but I have no specific memories.
The first cool thing we saw inside the park were the buffalo. There were lots of them, on both sides of the two lane, two way, road. We stopped behind a slow moving line of cars and shot images from our open windows.
There was a group of motorcycles behind us and I kind of wondered how folks on the bikes were feeling having little to nothing between them and the big animals.
But no animals and no people did anything stupid.
After we did the Wildlife Loop we drove the Needle road, also in Custer State Park, which winds (and I mean winds!) among tall, thin spears of rocks.
It is also a narrow, two lane, two way road. There was no stripe on the road as there wasn’t enough room. It snaked around the rocks, often with drop offs and no guard rails.
It was typical of many roads in the West, but scary for both me as driver and my sister as passenger.
There was also a place where the road went through the rock. You couldn’t see to the other side and it was one lane (8 feet) wide. So I didn’t know how you knew when it was your turn to go. I sure wouldn’t want to meet a car in the middle. Which car or truck would back out?
Luckily we made it, though I don’t think it really was my turn. I just followed the car in front of me and went. We also saw a big motor home on the winding road and apparently it fit through too because we never saw it again. My friend who lives out there said tour buses go through the tunnel so I guess it isn’t as tight as it felt. But honestly? I think the Needle road needs to be one way…and there needs to be a red light/green light system for going through the tunnel!
On our last night we took our hosts out to dinner in Wyoming! It was only a few miles away and so we get to say we visited another state!
On our way home the next day we drove through the Badlands. What a beautiful place that is! Even though it was still very hot and we didn’t stay outside the car for very long at any overlook.
I think there are several spots close to the road, in parking lots and viewpoints, that would work for Milky Way photography.
We had a really lovely time out there. I’m hoping to go back again someday, maybe earlier in the Milky Way season when there’s a chance of doing a pano of the whole arch of the Milky Way. Of course I’d have to learn to do a pano first.
Celebrating mom.
Happy 98th birthday, mom. I can’t imagine you at 98, you only got to be 75, which seems pretty young now.
But I imagine you’d still be spunky. As you are still I’m sure.
In our hearts forever.
Relaxing in the South
My week in the south at my parents’ house started out with a great walk up Smith Mountain to climb the local fire tower.
Many of you have seen the fire tower in pictures before. I wish you all could come with me and experience the view from the top. This trip I was lucky to have the company of fellow blogger Mike from MLCreations to climb with me.
The mountain trail was it’s usual beautiful self, and the climb up the tower was it’s usual long way. We had a nice breeze and a great view at the top. It’s always worth the climb.
On the way back to the car we explored the fire road that runs around the base of the mountain. By the time we got back to the car we were ready for lunch on the deck, complete with a yummy pound cake provided by Mike. All in all, a lovely day with very nice company.
Since then the house has been filed with family, coming and going, busy, busy, busy, but not too busy to enjoy how beautiful the lake is.
Morning reflections and evening sunsets have slowed us down and made us more observant. That’s a good thing and exactly what spending time at this cabin is designed to accomplish.
I’m just lucky I got to come down. Every time I’m here I vow to come back soon, to not let so much time go between visits, but somehow I turn around and months, sometimes years, have gone by.
This time I’m going to try harder to be back before another year slips away.
In between the raindrops
It started raining last night. By this morning it was a full on downpour.
I didn’t mind, today was a rest day after the long day yesterday waiting in lines, waiting at gates, waiting on the plane and then driving from the airport. A little rain was actually nice. Napping was easy.
But by late afternoon the sun had come out. I felt like I should do something.
So I dragged the kayak out of storage and managed to get myself into it without capsizing. I headed out, staying near shore because, as on any weekend in mid-summer, the lake was busy with jet skies and boats and people paddling on boards.
As I left our little protected cove the wind picked up and I didn’t go much further. Too busy, too windy, too many waves for me.
So I turned around and let the wind push me back. I floated down to the end of our slough, where the cypress trees grow.
The sun was getting lower and the light was pretty.
I sat down there, gently turning and looking at all the trees for a good long time.
And then I slowly paddled home.
By the way, there’s a house down there for sale if you’re interested. Only $1.9M. Not a typical home on our street, it’s never been owner occupied, it’s being rented as an AB&B. The neighbors, who now have a monster house almost lot line to lot line, must hope for an owner to move in. It’s got to be quieter than the parties happening there now.
I doubt the boat is included in the price.
Life on the lake is changing. Sometimes change is hard.
Change Is Hard 