August 25, 2015

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. 

7 comments:

Virginia said...

Good gracious, Orianna is looking like a mini-18 year old. Also, my vote is you move to a farm on that road outside of Malone. So bucolic!

Evan and Clover and Co. said...

I got all teary-eyed thinking about Ethel. Then I got all joyful looking at Abilene and other pretty things.

Ryan said...

Love your photos, as always! And I am impressed you were up so early posting. Well done!(:

Cecil and Amy said...

Ahhhh, Ethel memories. I didn't know that about the creek going through her basement. Wow! Anyway, there are so many people that were old when I was young that I wish I could talk to now that I'm an adult, but of course they're gone. Ethel would be one of them. I want to hear their stories! I love her sweet peas- they're in my top ten flowers I believe. The different colors Dad would grow were beautiful.

Well, you may like fields and clouds; I like fences and flowers, so well done on the fence and pretty flowers pictures.

Laura said...

The pic right above the fence post pic is simply FAB! I love the purple with the blonde, and so evenly distributed.
And I LOVE love LOOOVVVVEEE that you were able to enjoy those "ghost flowers" from Ethel's garden. Talk about poignant!
How amazing is it that you can be raised somewhere (or live there for 31 yrs) and there is yet a road not travelled. I've been trying to that more lately, altho even w/ GPS I have the insane idea I won't make it home in time for supper. The one that I'm s'posed to be cooking.
(Dale may have to fire me after all my blog loitering...)

Laura said...

Let's coin a new phrase, shall we? "Bloitering"
And I still say there's nothing quite like a blog. You just can linger over subjects more luxuriously there than with fb or ig.
The thing that your (and your sisters') writings do is re-remind me to watch for the detail. After reading yours this morning, and while my feet were still clumps of frozen matter, I decided to go perambulate (wonder why the 'per' is necessary? Doesn't the root word do the trick already?) about the scalehouse. It's just such a gloriously perfect day out there and it's a lovely quiet country setting. So expect to see evidence of taking time to notice the detail, thanks to you.

Bethaney said...

I have to say, I love a blog myself! Like you said, you can immerse yourself in it longer than a post on facebook or instagram. And I will be looking for evidence of your detail noticing perambulations. :-)