Covered Bridges.......

CEDAR BRIDGE

Digging through my mom's photos I found these that were taken by my brother Rex from California.  My dad passed away in 2000 and from one of the photos it shows my brother taking his daughter and my mom to see some of the bridges in Madison County, Iowa.  My dad passed away in March and he could of taken her to see these at that time, but my mom was so sick from taking care of my dad his last days.  From another photo, it says they were taking in March, so it must have been after my dad's funeral.  I didn't remember ever hearing of this excursion but my brother was good about taking off and doing things like this especially with my mom being sick as can be.  It is about a hour from where my mom and dad lived and it is my mom's county that she was born in 1919.

HOLLIWELL BRIDGE

Here they are at another bridge, my mom is with her granddaughter Kristi who lives in Kansas City.  I don't know why he didn't take any side views of any of these bridges but there are not any among the pile. I really don't know which bridge was used to make the movie "The Bridges of Madison County." I can look it up but I bet someone out there knows which bridge it was that was the famous one.

This photo made me feel good as I see my brother is still trying to figure out his digital camera, and he didn't get a great picture.  I like it though as I like seeing the inside structure of this bridge.

I also found this photo in the pile.  My brother and two other guys own a company that make trailers for dune buggies, motorcycles and many other custom trailers.  This little guy is one of their gems that they make.  They are the only ones in the United States that make them and if you see one here in the US of A it came from my brothers company in California.  These devices tell you have fast you are going and they are only a speed moderator as they have no camera's on them to record who you are.  They really are there to scare you.  My brother had to design a device for them to lock up the wheels with an eight foot rod as when they were first sold,  people would drive up, connect them to their truck hitch and steal them.

We are having strange weather but normal weather.  We were up to76 degrees with high humidity and across the state cold air from the north, Minnesota and Canada came roaring in. Across the state they had 41 degrees.  When those two air masses rub together, we have tornadoes, hail or very high winds.  It all stayed east of us but we had to run the air conditioner in our car today as it was so extremely hot and humid and when we got into the  car to come home we had to turn the heater on to warm up the car.

Iowa, love it or leave it!!!!   Thanks for checking in today......

Tuesday's tidbits........

A small branch of my forsythia bush has a few blooms on it. The rest of the bush has not started to bloom.

As a bonus while picking the forsythia blooms I found this sprouting start of a branch stuck in the ground.  I brought it and put it in a flower pot for now.

Hey I wore a tie to church Easter Sunday.  I haven't worn one for some time.  My wife and I teach in the Asian Ministry and we were encouraged to dress down, to not dress up for the teaching of class.  So I quit wearing a tie ever to church.  The coat and the shirt is new, and the collar size fit well so the tie worked well.      Thanks for stopping by.............

Monday, Monday, so good to me....

Did you notice that I didn't use the lyric "can't trust that day"?

These daffodils are hanging out under my pin oak tree at the other end of the property. They have multiplied since they have been planted for a couple of years.

My pet wild rabbit did a number on two of my burning bushes.  The snow was deep so it ate at the higher levels and then as the snow melted it keep eating at the lower levels.  I don't think it will kill them but I haven't seen buds yet.   I did try to keep bird seed out there for the rabbit and corn but I guess they need vegetable matter in their diet too.

My fern leaf peonies survived in two places.  I lost one other planting, unless it is slower because it was setting under a snow drift. I brought this home from my parents home and this is it's second year of survival. 

As a teaser for those who are interested, I have more shots to take of the rest of this collection of war toy soldiers and vehicles. Thanks for stopping by..........

Sunday Scatterings.......

A bunny convention on Easter morning.  My wife's collection I stumbled onto when I was putting away one last Christmas dish in the buffet today.

I do love a sale on garden books.  I don't need this book but I couldn't resist it either. It has a few good ideas in it and one great idea in it.

I bought this book so I could hang onto the fence design that is shown here. If I were ever to move to a new place, I will build this fence in part of the garden.

Here it is again with a great rose bush in front of it.

I like this garden scene but I could never have it unless I moved to some southern state that receives rain fall regularly.  Some summers in Iowa it would be brown grass and no water in the pond.  We were  80's yesterday and Saturday morning it was 35 degrees.  Rain and hail predicted on Monday as the cold air from Montana snows will give us some good hot and cold mixtures.

I found my ice cream container, antique one for sure, that holds some more of a certain collection I blogged about earlier.  The container was not new when I got it  in 1970.  It is a  heavy cardboard with no wax coating, which means it was probably the 40's or 50's when freezer were available for people to buy bulk ice cream.  They couldn't keep it in an ice box, but maybe they could.  I have never thought about that before now.

I will show the contents later as this is just a teaser.

I do not know why this loaded sideways, but you can catch an idea of what the lid looks like.  Thanks for stopping by...........

More Greening of Iowa.......

This is called many things.  Some people hate it but I love it. If fills in areas where I can't get anything else to grow. Snow on the mountain is one of its names and goutweed is another of it's names. It is coming up quickly with our two warm days and rain today.

Daffodils are pretty perky considering how dead every thing else is around it. I have coneflowers planted around it and a surprise lily is sending up it's foliage in the background.

This will be the third year for this rhubard in this location.  I planted it for use and also for landscaping as it does work well for filler.  I have three of them planted next to a pear tree and it looks like shrubs planted in a row.

Our neighbor removed a row of junky trees that kept us from seeing any sunrises.  The trees are gone and you can see a rolling hill in the background that use to be planted in corn.  We now can see the old 48 Pontiac parked out there along a property line.  It belongs to the farm and not to the neighbor with the garage.  I wanted you to see the green we are having from our half inch of rain.
Thanks for stopping by.......

Another Spring Report......

Daffodil row at my house. I have a close shot of this showing it to be an unusual flower. It doesn't have the horn shape but has a yellow set of inside petals.

The inside is a set of yellow petals and the white standard petals of a regular daffodil are on the outside. I have had these for awhile but I don't think they have ever looked like this before, and yet maybe it was never nice enough for me to see them before with the warm weather.

These are normal daffodils.  I had planted a lot for my mom down at the Osceola house.  Last summer I dug up a few bunches of them and brought them home. I left the foliage on them and just planted them back into the ground immediately.  It is nice that they bloomed for me.

The field lilies are up and at them.  I could show you another picture now that they have grown about two inches since I took this photo.

We will be getting rain part of Friday and some on Saturday.  We had another day of 81 degrees so we will definitely have storms.  The cold air in the northwest will meet up with this wedge of heat and we will get lots of rain. I know it will make our grass turn green and the bulb plants will go crazy.  Thanks for stopping by ...........

Sculptural forms.....

They are figurines  actually of various waterfowl. My wife would buy one for me, some form of waterfowl, each year at Christmas.  I was putting away the toy soldiers and saw a few of these peeking out.

This one was made in Italy.  I really don't know the process, but I am assuming they are cast resin.  It is a solid piece while the resin swan was cast and done so it would be hollow inside.

This duck is twice the size of the other ones.  I like that it actually is standing on it's web feet. It was made in China.  I am not sure if this duck species really exists, but the hand painting has been done so well.  My macro didn't like the head of the duck so it almost doesn't register.  I was too lazy to go back and try it with an automatic setting.

My wife and I raked leaves and sticks today in the yard.  I had  done a pickup of the large sticks and limbs earlier last week, but today we were more serious about it.  I uncovered some flower beds along the house even though we could still get another snow.  It was over 80 degrees today so we didn't stay out too long. We have another warm day coming then the rain will set in for us.  Spent my morning framing pictures and a crochet.  I have many more to do.

Thanks for stopping by..........