Sunday Morning Walk in the Park

It was such a beautiful start to the day - a nice breeze with a temperature in the low 70's, but the humidity was already high.

It was past time to start putting some outdoor miles on the new shoes I got in January. Lake McKinley Park here we come.

Stix was probably thinking, "It's about time we got outside again."
I like starting the trail at the southwest corner. It's not flat, but the hills are gentle.

Down to the where the bridge crosses this little stream, where I see scum on the water here, just like the pond scum yesterday. Isn't it too early in the season for this? Is mother nature trying to tell us something?

Red-winged Black birds were singing conk-la-ree, conk-la-ree.

And these poppies were silently swaying in sunshine and shadow.

I went as far as the corner where the path starts up the hill. I'll save the hilly portions for after I get more used to the trails again.

The windmill blades were really whirring, but I don't think any water was being pumped.

There were many other dog walkers, runners, bicyclists, and joggers who had the same idea as I did - get out early and beat the heat - including this guy striding along on the far side of the lake. Hmm, he looks familiar. 😎

Does the heron even care what the speed limit is? He can probably fly that fast. And he flew just as soon as I started across the dam.

The cottonwoods were rustling so strongly, I thought it was water rushing over the spillway.

I was headed for that path on the left with plans to take it through the woods and back to the car.

Morning sun on the grasses along the stream.

Into the woods a short distance before stopping to take a close-up of one of the last honeysuckle blossoms. I only got this blurry picture before realizing I was being swarmed by biting, sucking mosquitoes and beat a quick retreat. It was not the day for a walk through that area!

I'm sure that tomorrow my knees and hips will tell me I did something I wasn't used to, but I will keep taking Stix and heading for the trails each day until the hips and knees do get used to it. 😅
I have to. Besides, I enjoy it.
Happy Trails to You. 😘

Reasons a One and a Half Hour Errand.....

.....took three hours.

Far and away....

....off the beaten path....

....where mares graze and foals cavort....

....and yellow sweetclover perfumes the air....

....a very small brown sign warns: DANGER!

But no danger lurked; only the pleasure of a lovely morning....

....full of photo ops.           

(I call this one Pond Scum.)

Walters Creek east of Quincy.

He called to me - bob-white, bob-white. It has been years since I last saw one of these little quail.

"How green was my Valley that day, too, green and bright in the sun." (Richard Llewellyn)

Weathered old barn in the hamlet of Brooks. My Brooks Boy, Bud, tells me that when he attended the two story, frame school that stood on the lot in front of this barn years ago, there was a basketball court in the barn's hayloft.

As I crossed the East Nodaway River south of Brooks, there was a heron standing near this sandbar. He flew when I backed up to take a picture. A photo op that flew the coop.

During all my young years on the farm, if someone stopped and asked directions to Brooks, it was, "a mile and half west, a mile north, a mile west, turn right when you come to the tree in the middle of the intersection. Following that road will take you into Brooks." It just hasn't been the same since the red cedar tree was cut down and the green and white street signs went up.

The Fairview school house was across the road from Fairview Church. Some of the Vacation Bible School classes were held there in June, after regular school was out for the summer.

Bull thistles in the ditch near....

....the West Branch of the 102 River south of The Little House....

.... and northeast of the little house where we once lived.

Lastly, west of the Kent corner ....

      "While there's life, there's hope."   (Marcus Tullius Cicero)

Fill Your Arms With Peonies

                           Peonies
                                                      (By Mary Oliver)

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
  to break my heart
    as the sun rises,
      and the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open --
  pools of lace,
    white and pink --
      and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
  into the curls,
    craving the sweet sap,
      taking it away

to their dark, underground cities --
  and all day
    under the shifty wind,
      as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
  and tip their fragrance to the air,
    and rise,
      their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
  gladly and lightly,
    and there it is again --
      beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
  Do you love this world?
    Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
      Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, 
  into the garden, and softly,
      and exclaiming of their dearness,
        fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
  their eagerness
    to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
      nothing, forever?

My Spirit Is Tossed

The Enkindled Spring
              (D. H. Lawrence)

This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,
Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between
Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.

I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration
Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze
Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,
Faces of people streaming across my gaze.

And I, what fountain of fire am I among
This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed
About like a shadow buffeted in the throng
Of flames, a shadow that's gone astray, and is lost.


Spring came late again this year, so while I kept this poem in reserve, waiting to use it until the flame-filled bushes with their thorn-blossoms finally bloomed, what has been happening in our country this past week can give a whole different meaning to Lawrence's poem.

My spirit is tossed, and lost, first by the horrible murder of George Floyd and then by seeing coverage of the aftermath. Just as a world-wide pandemic had seemed to me a distinct 'someday' possiblity, so had the thought of another war between ideologies and cultures. I just didn't think they would both happen at the same time or during my lifetime.

I don't know what the immediate answers are, I have none. But I have opinions about what will have to be done to insure the future of our planet and lives in the long run. And the hope that the leaders we need will be able to take us there.

But as I wait, I will rely on the beauty of nature to sustain me.

First of June Photo Shoot

All of our FB friends know Bud always greets a new month with a run/walk. Then I take a photo of him, usually here at home, to post on his FB page.

He often walks to and around Lake McKinley so today's shoot took place there at the spillway. His official pic is with the lake behind him, but I chose this one (which wasn't the best of him) of the water as it comes under the roadway and out because I liked the colors. Also because it intrigues me that this is where the Platte River, which gets fairly wide before entering the Missouri River near Farley, MO, has its origin. (Okay, technically it begins on the other side of the lake where it was one of many small streams before the dam was built.)

Bud went on with his walk and I went back to this tree, here as I first photographed it April 8, because then I was stumped as to what kind of tree it was. I did not remember ever seeing winter seed pods like those before. But even with this photo and one of the tree's bark, I couldn't identify it.

I knew I had to wait for it to leaf out before I could identify it. Even then, I was at a loss.

There were a couple stems of leaves on the ground so I brought one of them home and got out my old (1952) Guide to Familiar American Trees book to finally learn the tree is a Tulip Tree! Boy, was I surprised. All my life I thought a tulip tree was just another name for the magnolia trees with their pink and white blossoms. (Note: You are never to old to learn something new.)

Here is what my tree guide says about the Tulip Tree: "TULIPTREE or Yellow-poplar is a tree of ancient lineage. Closely related to the primitive Magnolias, the Tuliptrees go back over fifty million years. Fossil leaves have been found in rocks of Europe and Greenland. The Tuliptree grows tall, its straight trunk free of branches near the ground. (If those leaves had not already been on the ground, I could never have reached them.) A beautiful tree in all seasons, it is planted as an ornamental but not as a shade tree. The peculiar squarish leaves, broad and notched, make identification easy. (It will be for me from now on!) The tree is named from the greenish-yellow tulip-like flowers, opening in May or June. Buds, closed by two purse-like scales, are unique. The fruit is a cone of many small, winged seeds. The creamy yellow wood, soft, easily worked, is used for pulp and manufactured articles."

This is a picture of an Iowa City Tulip Tree in bloom which I found online, but I will certainly go back in a week or two to take some of my own pictures of the Tulip Tree in Lake McKinley Park.

May Reading List

You might think that with our self-isolating I would be reading more, not less. Only four books read this month. The first two for which I dipped back into my own stash.

Smilla's Sense Of Snow by Peter Hoeg - If I read this award winning book back in the 90's when it was new and very popular, I don't remember anything about it. Smilla is a half inuit Greenlander living in Denmark. When her six-year-old neighbor is killed in what is ruled an accidental fall from a building, she does not believe it was an accident and begins her own investigation.
There are so many beautiful passages in this book. That, along with the mystery and development of characters, kept me reading even through the technical stuff. But the last line describes the book succinctly: "There will be no resolution." Having books end without a tying up of loose ends is okay sometimes and not okay others, probably because part of the time I can imagine an ending myself while other times I want the author to do it for me.

eat cake by Jeanne Ray was a book recommended by my daughter years ago. It is impossible to read without wanting to try out at least some of the included cake recipes. Or, if you are like me, wishing you still had your mom around to make the cake for you. (Not surprising since the heroine's name is Ruth, same as my mom's.)
Ruth's answer for everything is to bake a cake: crisis: bake a cake; celebration: bake a cake. When she isn't baking, she is thinking about possible variations for her cake recipes. So, when her husband loses his job and her parents move in with them and her teenage daughter is acting up, what does she do? Bakes cakes. Eventually the whole family gets involved and their cake baking business saves the day.
This is an easy, fun read and even though I am a 'pie' person, not a cake lover, I still thought how good a piece of coconut cake or strawberry cream cake would taste.

In my previous post I wrote about learning to download books through the library's 'Bridges' program. Loving Eleanor by Susan Wittig Albert was the first book I downloaded. I have been a fan of this author since reading all the books in her China Bayles Herbal Mystery series.
Loving Eleanor is a fictional interpretation about the intimate friendship between Eleanor Roosevelt and AP writer Lorena Hickok. I was/am a big fan of Eleanor's. She was an amazing woman.
This is a passage from the book: "But wasn't that the way of love? Never going the way you would think, or hope, setting its own pace, its own direction, taking you and your heart with it as far as you could go. And then farther, and then farther still, past all hope, all fear, all comprehension."
I really liked this book.

lethal white is Robert Galbraith's fourth book in the Cormoran Strike series. I remember when the first book, The Cuckoo's Calling, came out and Robert Galbraith was soon unmasked as a nom de plume of J.K. Rowling's. Knowing that didn't make me want to read the book any more or less. I never read all the Harry Potter books, but, being a mystery lover, I did read the first book by Galbraith and the second and the third. This fourth one cements my intention to read all that he writes. I am hooked on Cormoran* and his partner, Robin Ellacott.

(*Cormoran is such an unusual name I finally looked it up and found its Cornish origin very interesting. #JackandtheBeanstalk)

Needs Must

Needs must was another one of those old sayings my mother used from time to time. I understood it to mean that even if there was something I did not want to do, I must do it because it needed to be done. I don't remember if she ever used the entire saying: needs must when the devil drives. If she did, it wasn't often enough for me to remember it all, just the needs must part. The phrase, now considered a proverb, was first found in the writings of medieval author John Lydgate.

Needs must popped into my mind earlier as I was reading the latest book I downloaded to my i-Pad. Before my library closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I had only downloaded and read one book on the i-Pad. As long as I could get all the books I wanted through the library, that was my preferred method of reading. Still is, and probably always will be.

Yes, I could still get books from the library via curbside pickup, but instead I opted to re-read some of my own books I kept but hadn't read since before we moved here almost twelve years ago. Then one day I decided to look at some of the titles available through the library's Bridges service. "Oh my goodness, there's a book I've been wanting to read! And there's another one!" Soon I was following instructions and had successfully (much to my surprise and delight as I am not tech savvy) downloaded a book. Three days later, another one.

So, between downloading books and finally agreeing to facetime with my daughter, I have become slightly more adept at using the i-Pad. At least I am no longer afraid of touching icons and swiping screens. (Still a long way to go, though.)

This is the old i-Pad my daughter gave me last year. Its cover could not be any more perfect for me. And dare I admit, I am kind of enjoying facetiming and definitely liking the eBooks I can read because needs must sort of made it necessary.