Pictures of summer

We had a busy two weeks, convention, Tori being home, and Clover and kids coming up. But all those pictures have not been sorted and edited yet. Seriously, I got in the habit of posting a couple times a week, and now a week and half's worth of pictures to wade through seems like a bit much. That may be because it is 6 in the morning. (Incidentally, I am quite proud of myself, already writing a blog post by 6 in the morning.) So I am going to put up a mishmash of pictures from the end of July and August. I am quite sure it will delight you.

I really wish I knew how to get rid of power lines in my pictures. I must get someone clever to tell me how it is done.

I clearly have a thing for hay bales, fields and summer skies.

Thistles and sky

Evening

The Amish buy up old, decrepit farms and fix them up. Usually the silo roof is gone. So they build a regular little house roof up there. Dad, being crazy, has always thought building an apartment on the top of the silo would be a really neat idea. So I like to pretend they are little houses. Little houses I would never want to visit due to my predilection for firm ground beneath my feet.  

One night after meeting. Clean counters and fresh flowers. 

These flowers are from an abandoned garden of one of our friends, Ethel Jones. She died in 2000, but no one has lived in her house or worked her garden. (This probably has something to do with the fact that a creek runs under her house or through her basement. Seriously. The cement wall has an opening at the side, and here comes the creek. I suppose it is like a springhouse.) I walk past it most mornings, so I get to see the things she left behind, a thick row of daffodils in the spring and a mass of sweet pea in the summer. Not a bad heritage. Of course, she was a dear, sweet, faithful lady, so she left a lot more than that behind her. She rode to meeting with us for years, and she often told stories of her life, not an easy one. I remember one that involved her getting a rare new dress for spring (they were very poor) and one of her sons told her she looked beautiful. And all those years later, while she was telling it, her voice broke. Sweet, sweet woman.   

Somehow, seeing flowers that someone planted in front of an abandoned house is almost heartbreaking to me. Thinking of people moving into a home, maybe loving it, or in it's later years when it was a falling down house, making the best of it and planting flowers to make it more beautiful. And then, for whatever reason, they moved on. But the flowers are still there, year after year. A living testament to the hopes someone had for that empty house.  

Our sweetest baby girl, Abilene. We love this kid.

Abilene is too cool to suck her thumb.

I took a road out of Malone that I have never been on before. It is terribly pretty.

Lovely, invasive, purple loosestrife.

Goldenrod

Dad and Owen's cows

Queen Anne's Lace

We went to a toy store in Plattsburgh, which had giant playmobil figures. 

And this is Gilbert, with six lego blocks, which entertained him for a half hour. Object lesson: I should throw out most of their toys.