Taking A Sunday Drive #14

With all the silver jewelry I have purchased over the years - much of it as my 'souvenirs' from vacations - Nevada, The Silver State, could be *my* state.  Another nickname for Nevada is The Battle Born State because it became a state during the Civil War.
I didn't know about the Battle Born nickname before, but we did stop one night in Battle Mountain, NV which had the nickname, Armpit of America! And no, no battles were fought there.

You know what they say about the Grand Canyon, that everyone should see it at least once? Well, I had been told the same thing about Las Vegas even though I had absolutely no desire whatsoever to visit Sin City.
We were on our way home from visiting Kari & Ken in Portland when we ran into a late spring snowstorm in Idaho. We both agreed we hadn't taken that vacation to be back in snow. I looked at the map, said "You know, we could head south to Las Vegas" and that's all it took.

We stayed a couple of nights, walked the strip, ate at fabulous buffets, even did a bit of gambling (slots).
This is Bud outside The Luxor Hotel & Casino. We also visited the Mandalay Bay Aquarium.

And, of course, the original site of The Flamingo because of Bud's interest in the whole Bugsy Siegal saga. Bud wanted to see the memorial to Bugsy and I found the whole garden area very attractive and peaceful.




On the way home from Mark and Sarah's wedding in California's wine region in 2006 we decided to see some of Utah's National Parks. That meant driving through Nevada.

Instead of taking the Interstate, we decided to take The Loneliest Road - U.S. Route 50 - which crosses the central portion of Nevada. There were some pretty desolate areas of desert, but there were also some mountain passes and pine forests. This photo is of Sand Mountain Recreation Area.

We stopped to see the petroglyphs at Grimes Point just outside Fallon. From the time I first learned about petroglyphs as a young student, I always wanted to see some for myself. Every chance I get we stop for petroglyphs.

I made Bud pose for a photo op, too. He is saying, "See, here is a petroglyph which means....." (Censored!)

One of the most unusual (to me) sites along The Loneliest Road was this tree full of shoes. It was really out in the middle of nowhere. The how or why of shoe trees is a mystery. (We have seen one other, in Idaho, I think, on another trip.) This one is believed to be the largest and to have begun in the 1980's. According to legend it happened when a young couple was on their way to get married in Reno. Supposedly the bride-to-be was getting cold feet, no pun intended, so the young man tied her shoes together and threw them up in the tree so she couldn't escape. It is good we saw this sight when we did as four years later the tree was cut down.

There are many small towns along Highway 50 which began as boom towns when silver was discovered nearby. The Loneliest Road was also part of the Pony Express Route during its 1860-61 existence.
We did not have our 'passports' stamped to show that we had survived crossing Nevada on The Loneliest Road, but we were glad we did it and just as glad to get on into Utah to see some of its spectacular scenery.

The Old Rocking Chair

An old rocking chair sat on the deck
Its wicker was weathered by storms

Wild vines climbed when no one sat there
And a red morning sky gave warning

Big changes were on the horizon
Retirement to town was forecast

Grandchildren mourn farm visits
No longer a vacation possibility

Country sunrises and rocking chairs
No one misses them more than me.

A Fork In The Road

At every fork in the road you make a decision. It is the decisions we make which shape our lives. When the fork in the road is literal and you realize you have chosen the wrong way, you can retrace your path and take the other road.

But when the fork in the road is metaphorical and involves choices which affect your life, once you make your choice you can't go back and start over because your circumstances will already have been changed.

When you get my age, no longer involved in a hectic daily life and have time, you might find yourself wondering about those forks in the road, and, even though it is too late, wondering if you chose the right one.
One of those choices I often think about is how my life would have unfolded if I had gone to college.

I don't lament any of my choices, but I still occasionally think about them.
When faced with decisions it is wise to evaluate all your choices. If possible, wait a few days before deciding.

And if your decision doesn't feel right, deep inside, your inner being is probably telling you that path is the wrong one. Don't go down it.

Robert Frost's poem about choosing one's path has always been one of my favorites:

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood,
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, 
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Or, as Yogi Berra famously said, "When you reach the fork in the road, take it!"
Put your mind and energy into the route you've chosen and do your best. But, life changes, and if, after traveling that road for a while and you are re-evaluating your path, that just means you have reached another fork in the road.

Time to make another decision.

Love Lies Bleeding

I'm always fascinated by the weird things that just pop into my head, generally at the oddest times. Yesterday morning while doing some sweeping it was love lies bleeding. What? Why?

The first thing that comes to my mind for Love Lies Bleeding is the plant, Amaranthus caudatus. I've been intrigued by its long strings of blooms but I've never tried to grow this annual. And I am definitely intrigued by its common name.
Its genus name, Amaranthus, comes from the Greek, amarantos, which means unfading. Caudatus means, with a tail.


Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding is also a song on Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album.
In the Victorian language of flowers, Love Lies Bleeding represented hopeless or unrequited love.

When I googled the words this old 1948 detective novel, from the golden age of detective fiction, showed up. Oh how I would love to find a copy of this to read. Gervase Fen (don't you just love that name?) was a Professor of English at Oxford who solved the case of a missing Shakespeare manuscript in one weekend.

While I have no idea what made the term pop into my mind, when I try to explicate it, I think about the times my children got hurt: Doug when he wrecked his bike and tore up his leg; Kari when she fell down the basement steps and cut open her head; Preston when he put his arm through the storm door and cut it so badly.

For a mother, there's nothing scarier than seeing her loves lie bleeding.

A Simple Little Band Of Gold

"I've never wanted wealth untold
My life has one design
A simple little band of gold
To prove that you are mine."

Chances are good I was influenced by Don Cherry's hit song, Band of Gold, back in the mid-50's when I was a young teen. Or maybe it was because of my mother's wedding rings, but when the time came for Kenny and me to pick out wedding rings in 1961, I wanted something simple. Amazingly, considering Mom and Dad were married in 1937 and styles had changed, the jeweler in Lenox still had a set of rings very similar to Mom's. That's what I wanted. They cost less than $40.00. But Kenny had his mind made up that he was going to spend $100.00 for my rings. So, even though it wasn't huge, I got a diamond engagement ring with a band that matched the designs on either side of the diamond.
When my son Doug and Diane were getting married I gave them my wedding rings to use. Their marriage lasted even a shorter period of time than mine to Kenny had. I don't know what happened to that set of rings. I once saw Diane get mad at Doug and throw a necklace he had given her into the lake, so I have an idea of what probably happened to my first set of wedding rings.

"Don't want the world to have an hold
For fame is not my line
Just want a little band of gold
To prove that you are mine."

I had better luck convincing Denny that I did not want a diamond engagement ring but he still wanted to get me some kind of ring.

We settled on a black star sapphire set in gold. Star sapphires are usually blue or red, but I wanted a black one. My wedding ring was a plain gold band.

My ring looked similar to this one. After Denny and I divorced I put the rings in my jewelry box to save for Kari someday. I never got to give them to her though because one weekend while we were gone they were stolen, along with my high school class ring.

A few days ago one of those articles in the Lifestyle section of my online homepage caught my eye: "The Right Engagement Ring For Your Zodiac Sign". Well, of course I had to find out what the right design was for me! "Scorpio, you're an intense person all around. You tend to favor dark colors like black and red. Look for rubies to jazz up the design of your ring." Now it didn't say what the main stone was, but it looks black to me. Which is what got me thinking about my former wedding rings.

"Some sail away to Araby and other lands of mystery
But all the wonders that they see will never tempt me.

Their memories will soon grow cold
But till the end of time
There'll be a little band of gold
To prove that you are mine."

Third time has been charm for me. Bud and I married with plain gold bands. Mine is the thin style I like. I swore to never take it off and fought hard to keep it on when I had my shoulder surgery, finally capitulating. Mom wore her wedding ring even after she was widowed. Her gold band was so thin by the time she died.

"I've never wanted wealth untold
But till the end of time
There'll be a little band of gold
To prove that you are mine."

To me there has always been something very romantic about a simple little band of gold.

SNOW DAY!!

Some of the political entourages trying to get out of Iowa after last night's caucuses might be disappointed in the weather this morning, but school kids are loving it! I am just being grateful I'm retired and don't have to go/be anywhere else but in my own warm, comfortable home.

I was awake at 1:30 a.m., no snow. At 3:00 a.m., it was snowing. When I got up around six there was a flash of light - yes, lightning! In February. And the wind was howling. (Still is.)

I took this picture looking out my window at 7:11 a.m. That's rain running down the top glass while snow is stuck in the lower screen. Schools are closed. The Y is closed - or at least the classes have been canceled. (I wouldn't go anyway!)

I opened the side door out the garage to the patio. The wet snow is stuck on the wind chimes, but they are still jingling.
The blowing snow nearly hides the nearby tree.

Usually everything under the patio roof is safe from the rain and snow - except when it is blowing as it is this morning.
My car....

.....the patio chairs....

....some flower pots and an Isabel Bloom statue.

The little snow birds are hopping around looking for their breakfasts out on the deck. Meanwhile the squirrels have dug down through about five inches of snow and found the pan of birdseed.

The very good news is that the groundhog did not see its shadow! Early spring! So enjoy this snow day, it may be the only one you get until next season.

My Mom Was A Gardener

Some of my earliest memories are of *helping* Mom in the garden. She was one of those farm women who, out of necessity, always raised a large garden and preserved its produce for our consumption during the winter months.
Mom was also something else - a woman who truly loved gardening. During this time of year, every year, the gardening catalogs would arrive. And mother would began poring over them, making her lists of what to order and from which company. And which new, never grown before, seeds to try - purple beans? okra? huckleberries?

Gurney's was one of her favorites, as was Burpee's. Ordering from a Henry Field or Early May catalog was like ordering from a neighbor - both originated in Shenandoah, a town less than fifty miles away and one she had been to many times over the years.

A trip to see the Earl May flower gardens was a destination every year for Mom and for her mother, our Grandma Delphia. Earl May and Henry Field tried to out do one another with their field trial gardens. This photo is of 18-year-old Ruth on the right with Roy and Evelyn Kapple who were the attendants a few months later when Mom married our Dad, Louis.

One of the few photos I have found of Mom with her garden in the background. She had a large garden right up until her final years even though she no longer needed to raise and preserve so much food.
She passed on to me her love of the idea of gardening. As soon as I moved out of an apartment to a home with space enough, I tilled up a garden plot. (We won't go into how successful I was at keeping the garden weeded!) Each year, I, too, would order garden catalogs and pore over them, fantasizing about how that year would be the one I would have the perfect garden.
I no longer have the space for a garden, nor the energy, even though I would be tempted if we had a community garden nearby, and the seed companies no longer have me on their catalog mailing lists. But this time of year I get an itch. Luckily it is one I can scratch by going online.
This past weekend I learned of a new (to me) seed company, superseeds.com. I've been looking through their offerings, impressed by their prices and doubly impressed by their craft section. Wouldn't my daughter(s) and some of my granddaughters drool over those temptations?

There is a certain magic to be found from digging in the soil. Mom knew it, I know it. Innately, women have always known it.
Another Ruth, one of Mom's favorite gardening authors, Ruth Stout, said, "I love spring anywhere, but if I could chose I would always greet it in a garden."