Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

 It has been a wet weekend, from Thursday night through today; Sunday evening at the moment.  We've had well over 4 inches, and it is coming down gangbusters again.  This is what Four Mile Creek looked like yesterday afternoon when Ellen and I went to our friend's boutique. I don't know how long it has been since the creek has jammed up the bridge this badly.  I think since it hasn't flowed through consistently for a long time, much less been so high, there was a great amount of debris collected along the bed.  The big rain just kashooshed it along all at once. I'm thankful for the rain though, the ponds were getting so low.

 Just testing to see if I could blog from the phone.  And apparently I can. I remember with the other phone I couldn't figure out how with the other phone  So anyway.  Here is a milestone the car made yesterday.  Ha

 Why DO we collect things? Here is what Google told me: "Knowledge and learning . Relaxation and stress reduction. Personal pleasure (including appreciation of beauty, and pride of ownership) Social interaction with fellow collectors and others (i.e. the sharing of pleasure and knowledge)"  Or, under the heading: "The Psychology of Collecting" "Collecting can be seen as a form of self-expression, identity construction, social interaction, emotional regulation, cognitive stimulation, or aesthetic appreciation . However, collecting can also have negative aspects, such as compulsiveness, hoarding, addiction, or isolation. Sep 26, 2023"  Over the years it has always made me wonder, and as I age and look back on the things I have collected, especially as relates to having lived here in Missouri, I think it's more just personal pleasure for myself and those I have known. The other day I was cleaning the little nook above the fridge, where I just toss t...

 Yes, this one came from out of nowhere and bloomed first.  Actually it was the bloom above it, but the first bloom was damaged when I covered them to weather the frost.  There are a few of them that came on all at once now, but the yellow one was the next to open. I love this rich shade of yellow. Then this one bloomed.  But now I am not sure if this is the one they called "blue" or not.  If it is supposed to be blue, it falls a bit short of attaining that worthy goal. Then this one came along and surprised me: So far these are all the ones that have bloomed.  I need to get more colors.  I have my eye on an orange shade in one of the iris bulb catalogs.  Or I have thought of getting a white one. This one above wasn't one of Betty's irises that she'd given me a few years back.  This one was from the Maxwell house; the house my mom lived in when she came here, just up the road from us, sort of catty corner to Gail's place.  Florence Maxwe...

Every year it's always fun to see which iris will bloom first.  At first I thought it was a race between the yellow and blue one: The Yellow Iris   Or the Blue...  (I think this is supposed to be a "Blue" iris) I wish I'd taken the time to focus the camera.  Ellen always gets frustrated with me and my lack of camera skills.  Haha... And actually the yellow won between these two, but it was this one that came in first.  It just popped right out and surprised me.   Unfortunately it's a bit damaged because I covered all of them night before last. The temps got down into the lower 30s.  Gail's thermometer said 30 degrees, ours only said 32, but ours is under the carport, so it's probably not exact. There are quite a few blooms coming on, and after they did all that hard work to produce them, I didn't want them to get frozen, so I hauled out the old sheets.  Of course now the stems are a bit wonky, but that is OK, the blooms will be lovely an...

A bit different from the winter sunsets of a couple of months ago.  The grass is green, the trees are starting to get green, and the sun is doing its level best to shine through the clouds. Spring is almost my favorite season of the year. 

 I have heard that saying pretty much all of my life, off and on.  "Never say never, because that is exactly what will happen to you."  Maybe that is right.   I have said never a few times in my life and at least twice it has indeed happened to me. My first never was when I was a teen.   I was never having children.  Ever.  My mom knew better. This is the result of my first never.  Haha...  On Monday she and her team did their presentation at FBLA State competitions in Springfield.  They came in 5th place; very excellent, but just one spot shy of qualifying to attend Nationals.  They were bummed, but proud of themselves at the same time. My second never, of course, involves the first photo above; teaching. When I graduated from high school my father was determined that I would go to college.  I had very little drive when I was in my teens; no clue of what direction I wanted to take in life.  I was content to enro...

  All around me my neighbors have irises blooming...even as of over a week ago.  Here my irises are just now throwing up bloom stalks...or whatever they are called.  It looks like I will have quite a few blooms this year.  I am excited to see what they will give me. The irises blooming this Spring will be a bit bittersweet though.  Many of them were given to me by a precious lady from church.  Betty.  Betty loved her flowers; she always had lovely flower beds all around her house.  She had irises around her house, and down her drive, I believe.  In any case, quite a few years back I'd mentioned at a ladies meeting that I wanted to start growing irises, so she said she'd give me some when she separated hers in the fall.  I wish I'd written down all the different colors she gave me, but I quite remember she gave me yellow.  They are all so lovely.  About 2 years ago I bought myself 4 different colors of irises; two different "bla...

 Yesterday we went to the Preferred Pump Customer Appreciation barbecue in Springfield.  This is the company Gary gets his water well supplies from...well...one of the companies.  Every spring they have a barbecue.  It is a pretty big deal; they have 66 stores all over the US and every year they have two big retreats.  You earn points with every purchase, which you can use as credits to attend one of this trips.  I think they always go to Las Vegas, and then this year there vacation trip is to Aruba.  They have an entire hotel booked for 3 weeks, and you pick the week or few days when you can attend.  They do this for customers and employees alike.  I think if you don't get enough points with them you can pay for it, but I am not sure how that works.  We don't do that big of business to worry with such, and we neither one would be very comfortable anyway, since most of the vacation pictures they show involve alcohol in some way or anothe...

 Above is the lunch I had yesterday at the house where I do caregiving once a week.  The H House I will call it.  Mr and Mrs H had their 68th anniversary last week.  He was 17 and she was 20 when they got married.  They are both in their 80s now.  I don't recall if she ever held a job outside the home.  They raised 4 children on the farm; a dairy.  One son passed away here a couple of years ago.  His brother still runs beef cows on the farm there.  All of her married life, I suspect, Mrs H has always cooked 3 meals a day, because when I arrive there at 8 AM it isn't long afterwards that she is wondering what we are going to cook for lunch.  Generally it's simple sandwiches or potato soup, but yesterday it was steak, leftover pulled pork and roasting ears.  I took a picture to send to Gary, since he appreciates such things.  Someone of the family had given them the steak, I believe, the pulled pork was leftover from another...

  Since Ellen was off to a track meet after school yesterday, and Gary was off with his family to the total eclipse, I didn't have to worry about fixing any supper.  So Bella and I took off on a little walk down to the creek.  I didn't actually take any pics of the creek, but here is one of the little springs that we have on the place. This is actually right alongside the road, track, path, whatever you call it, that goes down to creek bottoms.  I tried to get a shot of the water with redbud blooms floating on it, but they aren't very visible. There are quite a few trees that have fallen across the spring bed.  They make for enchanting bridges. This last photo above is of further up toward the milk barn, though that is still quite a hike away up the hill yet.  But it's about where the spring water emerges from the spring bed.  Further on up it was quite dry.   I had put Bella back on her lead by this time, you can see it on her in the pic abo...

 For the sake of a lack of anything really cohesive to write about here, I will just post a series of random photos I have taken the past few days.  A couple of them I might have posted on Facebook.   Photo #1.  Here is Smudge with Ellen.  I took these on Smudge's birthday, April 6th.  She is 4 years old now.  We got her from a rescue a gal had in a place she rented south of Buffalo.  Her name was Julia Stidham.  We got a new kitten there in the middle of the freaking COVID-19 pandemic, it was June 2020, because our cat Matilda was old, 15 at the time I believe, and because Ellen needed a distraction during the lockdown.   What was heartbreaking about this is that Julia, the young woman who was starting up the pet rescue was killed in a one vehicle wreck just 6 months later; it was mid-December, I believe.  She was just in her mid to upper 20s and left behind 2 young children, as well as her husband.  So heartbreaking...

(OK, so this is Saturday now, and I think I started this blog post on Wed maybe...but the internet has been super spotty, so this didn't post...ugh)  Monday evening and night we had a couple of storms come through.  We didn't get hit very badly, but we did have a tornado warning for our immediate area...meaning there was a tornado overhead, but it didn't touch down.  Scary stuff.   Needless to say we didn't get a great deal of sleep that night.  AND...it took out our internet, which is radio based, I am sure it took out bits of their whole network.  They got around to our tower later that afternoon, around 5 or 6 PM.  This is Thursday and our internet service has been spotty since.  We will see if it will even save this post. South of us there were a few barns, sheds and outbuildings blown away.  And quite a few trees downed.  We had one dead tree blown down, and quite a few limbs, but nothing major. 

  Usually I never bother with planning or keeping a written record of what I have planted where, or what should go here or there.  I have tried it once or twice, but have never followed through with keeping track of it.  It would probably be handy, but what with so many variables going on, I just don't bother.  This year will be no exception. It's not that I just throw things out willy-nilly, I usually have a plan in mind, or at least a reason for planting things where I plant them.  But often my plans go awry for one reason or another, usually a crop failure, or a cat digs up the area, or my child has other ideas, or a certain spot gets drowned out by a record rainfall.  Last year the volunteer tomato plants I took pity on pretty much overwhelmed and squelched my okra and beets.  This year no volunteers of any kind will be tolerated; unless the volunteer is a sunflower.  Then it will be relocated.  I am not going to deny the birds their sust...