Damselflies

I took this when we were camping at Hartford Beach State Park with Mike & Sue and their 4 kids, who have grown up so much since we last saw them. This little swarm of damselflies was sprinkled on the grass by the lake's edge like little blue jewels. This one should definitely be embiggened.

Pelicans

Not something you'd typically expect to see in South Dakota, but there they were. These guys were enjoying themselves in a bit of flooded out marsh alongside Lake Poinsett (that's pronounced PON-sit), which is right here:


View Larger Map

It struck me last night that if I just posted one photo from the trip per day, that would provide me with blog fodder until some time in November. I likely won't do that to you, though. Or will I?

Double Rainbow

No, not this one.

This was taken from David's Aunt Lila's front yard in Rapid City. About three weeks ago. Because I'm a bad blogger.

Another South Dakota Postcard

or, My what a big sign you have!



We chanced upon this in Rapid City before catching our flight home. If only the food had been as impressive as the sign. I've taken what would be described down south as a ass of photos and will work on putting together some more coherent posts soon (with luck).

Greetings from South Dakota!

Just a quickie drive-by post. We're in South Dakota on vacation and visiting with the in-laws. We started in Sioux Falls (way eastern side of the state) and are now just outside Hill City (near Mt. Rushmore in the Black Hills). I'll try to post more later, but I thought I'd share this photo I took a few nights ago in Leola, which is the town of about 300 people in north central SD where David's mother's family comes from.



Just for reference, this photo was taken at around 9:30 in the evening. Since Leola is at about 45N latitude and near the western end of the Central time zone, it gets dark really, really late this time of year.

Catching Up

So here we are into the second half of June and I haven't posted since early on the first, before we headed south for my grandmother's funeral. Suffice to say it's been busy as all hell since I got home, and I'm just beginning to feel like I'm breaking the surface a bit to catch my breath. So I guess the thing to do at this point is backtrack a little and talk a bit about the trip.

Mostly it was just good to spend time with family and catch up a little with members of the extended family and people who may as well be family, some of whom I hadn't seen in years. It was also nice to be there with everything all leafed out and lush (And HUMID! Sweet FSM, was it humid!). I'm pretty sure I could never live in that climate again, but little doses remind me of my childhood, and I'm perfectly okay with that.

Another echo of my childhood came the day after the funeral. I had an errand to run and on my way back to my parents' house I spied this beauty on the side of the road:



As far as I can tell, she's an Eastern Painted Turtle of considerable age and, had I weighed and measured her, possibly of record size. She'd left a small farm pond nearby looking for some nicer real estate, but if I hadn't stopped to pick her up, she'd have likely ended up as a turtle pancake on a hot country road.

So after taking her back to my folks' and snapping a few photos, I took her off to the edge of the woods, through which she could get to my grandfather's pond and the creek. I sat down for a bit to see if she'd come out of her shell for a better photo, but she was having none of it. I did, however, manage to pick up a mess of these:



That, friends, is a genuine chigger, a true Southern institution and a rite of passage I really don't enjoy repeating. On the other hand, there were some ripe blackberries near at hand, so just maybe the pleasure slightly mitigated the ungodly itch.

Mary Merchant, 1919-2010

My maternal grandmother passed away Saturday night. It was expected, as her body had been slowly failing her for quite some time. Her health was, in fact, one of the main reasons for my visit in March, as I knew it was likely that I wouldn't get another chance to see her. Hospice was called in a few weeks ago, and being the phenomenal organization they are, they were a tremendous help in easing her transition from this existence to the next.

As is often the way of grandmothers, my Manana (a moniker that came from a cousin's faltering attempts at saying "my Nana", and which a younger cousin would much later shorten to Menah) was an exceptional woman. She was her high school's valedictorian (a new young state senator by the name of Strom Thurmond gave the commencement address) and star girl's basketball player and, according to my grandfather, was the best bareback mule racer in the area.

The photo above is from just after their wedding in 1936, which was just 5 days after her 17th birthday. They first lived in a cabin across the road from her parents, where they had their first child, and from which she went out the next day to work in the fields. It was the Great Depression, and not working was a luxury they couldn't afford.

A few years later, when they bought land about a mile down the road and built the home she would spend the rest of her life in, she and my grandfather fenced in 80 acres of pasture working side-by-side. Having fenced in a smaller section of that same pasture, I know very well what a feat it was, but their relationship was always one of equal partners, and it was from her that I learned about the grace and beauty of a strong woman. Even as her body betrayed her, she maintained her wit and her ability to laugh, but she knew it was time to go and she was ready for it.

Yes, I will miss her dearly, because how could you not miss someone so fiercely wonderful? But it's a bittersweet sort of loss, because in the end there's so much of her in me and in everyone else whose lives she touched. And I can't think of any tribute more beautiful than keeping that part of her alive and sharing it with everyone in my own life. Because again, how could you not?

Fuzzy Black Balls

I haz 'em.






A matched pair, even.






Wanna see them?








That's two super soft balls of possum-merino in black, and that long skein hanging between them is some hand-dyed superwash merino sock yarn from James in the "Highland" colorway. Or is that colourway?

Either way, the hand-dyed is James's own lovely creation, and I ordered it all from his online shop, which is right here.

More (Belated) DC Photos

I meant to go back and post pics from our Saturday trekking around to see the monuments, but I'm kind of a bad blogger these days, apparently. Anyway, we had a nice day to do it, albeit a bit on the warm side. We started out hanging with the Obamas.



For some reason, David didn't like it when I tried to nibble on his neck.



By then the Secret Service people were looking at us funny, so we went around and over to visit the National Phallic Symbol.



I'm not entirely certain why David decided to bring his rain jacket along, but it stayed tied to his waist all day. With temps up around 90F and strong sunlight filtered through hazy humidity all day, there was no way a rubberized black nylon shell was going to be a needed item. Anyway, by the time we got to the Washington Monument, they'd already handed out the last of their available tickets for the day, so we didn't get to go inside and kept on trekking around the Tidal Basin to the Jefferson Memorial.



Honestly, I think that every single teabagger and every single Republican politician who blathers on about what they think the Founding Fathers wanted for this country needs to be dragged to these monuments and made to actually read what they actually said they wanted, especially this one.



After we left there, we walked the rest of the way around the Tidal Basin, where we saw a cricket game



what I'm pretty sure had to have been the last of the cherry blossoms (look at the little green cherries!)



and the FDR Memorial (which I also think the teabaggers need to go see)



Then we got to the Korean War Memorial, which David particularly wanted to visit, since his dad is a veteran of that war. All the people in red & blue shirts in the background were part of a huge group of veterans who were there for some sort of rally.



Then it was on to my favorite of all, the Lincoln Memorial. I only learned as our plane was landing that David had never visited it before. Built to look like an ancient Greek Temple, to me it is the one monument in DC that best captures the sense of Sacred Space.



Also, by that point in the day, I really appreciated being able to slip of my sandals and feel the cool marble under my feet.

Then we visited the Vietnam Memorial, followed by the World War II Memorial, by which point our energies were seriously flagging. At the WWII Memorial, too, I had to contend with the Umbrella Lady, who was oblivious to my photo-taking attempts and just would not get out of the way. So finally, I just said to hell with it and let her be the subject as she was holding court.



I must say, though, that I was quite impressed at the coordination of her outfit.

Cherchez la Femme

A mantilla is the perfect accessory for any outfit!



"

The higher the bonnet, the closer to Gah.

Good.



Much better.



And never, ever underestimate the value of a good disco nap.



p.s., If you want to see more pics from our afternoon with VUBOQ, go see his blog post about it here.

In the D.C.

I'm going to be doing a 3-day continuing ed course in Arlington, VA, starting tomorrow, so David & I decided to take a mini-vacation and spend the weekend being tourists in DC. Not much time to write, but there has been lots of walking, lots of touristing, lots of food, and lots of fun.

I'll post a few monument photos later, but today we went to the National Gallery of Art and met up with VUBOQ, who was much better at taking photos of us all than I was and who will more than likely be blogging about it in the not-so-distant future. What I will share, though, are some interesting artworks depicting the Flying Spaghetti Monster through the ages. First are two photos from an ancient Roman mural depicting a celebration known as an FSManalia.

The God Incarnate:



And a worshipper carrying a plate of spaghetti with meatballs:



And here's one of St. Francis receiving stigmata directly from FSM. Most paintings of this event actually show them coming from a giant flame in the sky, likely meant to depict FSM covered in a spicy arrabiata sauce, but in this particular image you can actually make out his noodly appendages.



And since I have to get up super-early tomorrow, I'll end this art history lesson here. More later!

Shearing Day & a Sad Weekend

Friday was shearing day, and I got home from work in time to video Spirit getting his hair did. In case you don't recall, Spirit has been featured in this here bloggie before. Remember this post? Anyway, he's a bit of a drama queen about getting shorn, as you'll see.



I wasn't around to see the sheepies get clipped, since they were done first thing that morning, but I did catch up with them to get their thoughts on it all. It's funny to see how much more forward Angus is than Shaun-Fergus these days, when the reverse was true before I castrated them.



Unfortunately, the weekend ended on a sad note. Mizzen, one of Paula & Wendy's maiden girls, died rather unexpectedly Sunday noon. She was bloated and colicky on Saturday but had seemed to improve. Then yesterday morning she deteriorated rapidly. We were concerned that perhaps she had suffered a fluke bowel torsion during shearing, but the post-mortem exam, I'm told, showed no such thing and no explanatory lesions.

Then tonight our friends Kit & Sue called me about their dog Alex, who we knew had terminal cancer of the liver. He was going downhill rapidly, so I headed over to their house near midnight to help him on his way. Mercifully, he passed on his own. Also mercifully, I managed not to hit any of the two porcupines, one raccoon, one opossum, and one deer who were in or alongside the road on the short drive to their house and back.

And with that, I think it's about time for bed.