Thunder and Rain

 I can think of several advantages to not caring in the least who wins a basketball game. For instance, this morning is still a lovely morning around my house, but, as I took a quiet walk I saw signs of a  subdued village. There are hopeful banners in store windows, demanding that some team make mincemeat of another team. Someone must have spent hours decorating for this desired victory. Now someone will spend the same amount of time solemnly scraping off the paint.





Thousands bought  T-shirts they won't want to wear anymore. . . and multitudes of Oklahomans will recover from stress brought on by suspense, indignation, and outrage. A myriad of enemies in far away Florida will name their infants Le-Bron or Jamey....

Ah well. It's still a beautiful moisty morning out here in Western Oklahoma!
We had thunder yesterday ...and then rain.  Life is Grand!

x

Ghost Mountain

You have to be willing to make a detour...and the road, though paved, is full of potholes. Of course that doesn't mean people slow down in the least. They seem to know where the holes are in time to swerve around them while they are whizzing past me at 70 miles an hour. I'm sure the speed limit on those roads is forty five, because it isn't posted, but they must think there is no limit. Ah well, there's very little traffic out here, even on a day so beautiful. It's around seventy five degrees; thy sky is full of poofy clouds, and there's a myriad of little red roads to explore.

Claye and I took a little time off from our drive home. (Actually we added a few minutes to the drive home...which, oddly enough comes out to the same thing) After inadvertently entering a driveway and asking directions from the farmer's wife, we found a road that led right up to the foot of what looked like "Ghost Mountain". (It's Oklahoma, ok? Anything taller than the grain elevator is called a mountain) I don't know where it got its name. Really, there's no place for ghosts to hide on it at all, but that's what the kids called it. Looking at it up close reminded me of a certain sophomore class party a few years ago when we decided to climb Ghost Mountain.

It was an easy climb to the top, and I probably would have forgotten the whole incident were it not for the foolish insistence of three girls who, ignoring advice and clearly stated direction, decided to climb it once more after supper so they could "watch the sunset from the top". They slipped away as we cleaned up the picnic detritus. We called. They giggled and pretended not to hear. Soon, they sighed triumphantly from the top as the sun slipped down into the wheat fields. Suddenly, it was dark. They had no flashlights, not even cell phone lights because they hadn't been invented yet. There was a lot of squealing, and terror, and bold rescuing on the part of the brave guys in the class, who led the clinging girls back to the safety of the ground--which lends understanding and perhaps motive to the girls' uncharacteristic lack of judgment.  They all made it down to the cars with only a few scrapes and bruises.  I fussed and fumed all the way home about how the party could have ended in broken legs and backs, and who knows what! By the time I got home, I had murmured it out of my system and was able to face the rest of the year without strangling a small subset of the sophomore class. Never-the-less, I haven't taken any more classes on a "Mountain-climbing" party.

Today, Claye and I parked the car beside the road and got out. If we had only obtained permission from the farmer, who was plowing nearby, we might have ventured a small climb of our own. As it was, we just poked around a bit and took pictures.













Our three word Wednesday prompt was : cling, murmur, taken

Odd Mounds

If you wander around Western Oklahoma, you see interesting sights...like windmills broken by the wind that once gave them life... or black cows in green fields next to red roads.












From the interstate, I always see a set of odd-looking mounds in the distance. For years, I have wanted to drive over there and investigate them.

So a few days ago I left the beaten path--or driven- upon path if you will--and explored. For all you people who have wondered, here's what they look like up closer.



There are actually several sets of them. Some are being mined for red gravel or maybe potting soil. Others, grass covered, just sit there and look knobby. Cows graze around their skirts.












This one was outlined in hay bales.

Medicine Park

We stopped and had a picnic supper in a recently-discovered and highly commercialized little resort  called Medicine Park. This river area was a public park, running through the center of town.

There were little kids splashing everywhere, so I finally caved in and let Zay and Mim wade in the water---but only up to their necks. Well, if you had smelled the water, you would have set a few limits too!

 The geese were fearlessly swimming and strutting all over the place, joining the waders and begging--nay, demanding--scraps from our picnic lunch. While we were watching the grandchildren  doggy-paddle in the puddle, three wild ducks swooped down and made a glide through the canyon. It was impressive.

 

All the same, we had a concert to attend, so we soon called our bedraggled youngsters to the car, where they struggled into clean, dry clothes that didn't smell like old geese poop. We made it to the school auditorium and listened to Elijah's third-graders and then his fifth-graders. All together, there were around two hundred and sixty choir students. They sang exuberantly. With the auditorium packed, I'm sure nobody noticed what remained of the pond-water smell.

A Picnic in May on a Hot, Windy Day

 When my own children were young, we used to hike in the Wichita Mountains. Now that the grandchildren are visiting, we've renewed the tradition. No, we didn't take the eight-mile Buffalo Trail. We had a lot to do in one day, and the temperature was approaching ninety degrees, so we just hiked a little ways--less than a mile actually, although it included quite a bit of climbing. Since there was a great breeze, it didn't feel as hot as I knew it was.

 That was fine with us, but it sure messed up Mim's posing for the camera. She always had to hold her hair out of her face.

 I liked the look of the swirly clouds and the little trees against the sky here.

 There were plenty of rocks and stumps to clamber over, and the wild flowers were vivid.

 We saw a cosy little bench near the end of the trail, but, since it was not in the shade, it wasn't tempting in the least.

 In the distance--a lake beckoned. Nope, we didn't swim in it, but we did make it back to the creek at the beginning of this article, where two squealing grandchildren scampered around to cool down, chasing fish that were as long as their feet, but swifter.

May--Canola and Wheat Pictures

Canola in the April Green

Our usual March fields are green--new wheat green.
There's the occasional white elevator poking out, and the blue, cloud streaked skies over and above, but the ground is green--just green.

This year is different. I don't know if it's due to the drought last year, or if there was a great sale at the local COOP, but this year's green has occasional interruptions of blazing yellow canola.

I'll be driving along, resting my eyes on the green with a merry sigh that it actually has been raining when boom--there's a yellow field. 

Sometimes I can see it for miles and miles ahead.

Not only is it fantastically beautiful, but it even smells fragrant.

And if you have any farmer friends, they might let you stand at the edge of the field and soak it all in.

I hope it harvests well. Because if it does, we might be seeing it for a long time.
Welcome to Western Oklahoma, Canola.

Haiku with Hebrides (Played loudly)

Morning drive in March
Misty and mysterious
Mendelssohn's Music

Sheets of fallen cloud
Spreading tenuously thin
Slice through the treetops

Glowing in the East

Reveals an elevator

Palace of the plains

March Skies-- the evening and the morning

Coming home from play practice at around 6:30 on Tuesday evening, I saw this out to my left as I drove southward through the countryside. Of course I stopped. Who wouldn't, with the moon suspended just so, as if it were an escaping bubble from the sudsy clouds below...

Then I zoomed in a little, steadying the camera for the shot, and catching the shine on the surface a little better. It needed a song, but my brain was simply to exhausted to write one. There was the moondancing song from Celtic Thunder, however, so I played it in the car as I turned and wended my way to the West.

The next morning, I awoke, refreshed and ready to discover this blossoming tree outside my door. Obviously, the warm night winds had shaken its flowers out of their little buds.

I drove at a leisurely pace toward work, which, on Wednesday, begins thirty minutes later. Ahead, were clouds, struggling to contain the persistent sun as it poked and beamed its way through.

The fields are green in March--wheat coated and rain hungry. Meandering through the back roads gave me the freedom to pull over suddenly and take pictures as I approached the cloud bank.

And then...as I was standing there in the early morning quiet, the sun came bursting in, splitting the glass on my camera lens like a star. I snapped it, then jumped back into my little Dusky Wuggins, and drove to school where the inside world awaited--like a different planet.