Snowy Saturday

 It is a beautiful stain glass window. The modern design matches the modern architecture of the church. We attended a memorial service for my sister-in-law on Friday. The weather was good and the roads were winding and steep as we headed through the hills of southern Iowa. Our state has its different groups of people who have their individual ways of living. Things seem more small town in the south. Winterset was the birthplace of John Wayne and it isn't unusual to see men wearing their cowboy hats. My relatives who showed up for family reunions from this area would wear their hats. I was use to seeing it even though I thought it strange as we were from Iowa. The town is the county seat and yes it does have a street named John Wayne Road. A house that was just like the one he lived in is a museum. No one is suppose to know that the actual house that he was born in was right next door and that house was torn down.

 One of the memorial flowers was a red anthurium. I have seen them before but I had to look up the name of it. We will work at keeping it alive and well for as long as we can. The leaves are so shiny and the red flowers are really striking. 

 

 We are returning to winter weather after a bout of 60 degree F. weather. The birds are coming to the feeder and looking for seed. We had an inch and a half of rain a few days ago. I backed my car out into the drive way to get a free car wash. It doesn't do a great job but it does clear away the top layer of dirt. We will have to get use to winter driving again.

Thanks for stopping by today. 

 

 

 

 

Thursday's Things

 It was time to bring in the turtle. I had forgot about him and he did get covered with snow once so far. He probably could weather okay but I do try to bring him to protect him. anyway. His expression is always one of friendly surprise as you look at him. His bulging eyes are not very natural looking but it is yard art isn't it. 

 As I keep on randomly shooting everything I see here is a repeat one of two of my camels. The angel makes it into a different composition than I have shared before. They all will be put away soon. 

 Her is another sculptural form of a shore bird. Carved from wood, I always admired the piece so I bought it on a whim. My wife's painting of the cats seem fitting to be behind it. My red and white carved pot was one that I made while taking a college class. I have rocks from my dad's collection sitting there with it all. 

 I never take food pictures anymore until now. It has been a long time since I have shot pictures of pies and cakes now that I can't really eat them. I use to take shots of donuts too but those are out of my reach now too.  The night that we visited the Main Street Cafe I had this Frisco burger with tomato soup. Looking at the price of pop, I should have just had water. The soup was wonderful and the sandwich was full of fried onions and pickles. It was a nicely cooked hamburger that made the sandwich a winner. The lighting from the Christmas lights really are poor ones for taking food photos.

It is suppose to rain. We need it but so far nothing has happened. Thanks for topping by today. 

Lights

 This is called a cafe but it is larger than your normal cafe. It has many rooms and tonight we ate in the Christmas tree room. It was fun to be taken back into a magical place to eat.

 

The ceilings in each room are filled with lights and Christmas designs hanging everywhere. The walls of each room have been decorated with strings of white lights.  The cafe serves breakfast and also has special cakes and fruit filled scones. It is a fun new place for us, having lived here for a few years and we just now visited it. 

I carried my deer down the hill this afternoon and also took down the row of lights. I still have my tree on at night inside and the star too. People are still displaying their trees around the neighborhood. My neighbor Vino took down the hundreds of blow up items yesterday leaving only a few lights on his house's balcony. No snow makes all of it seem strange and they look out of season for sure. 

 I created the star for a paper crane mobile presentation but I never got to it. It looks good in the window. Being displayed like this makes it the Star of David design. 

The memorial service for my wife's sister is on Friday. We are getting ourselves ready to return to  the Winterset area. The whole landscape of the covered bridge area consists lots of rolling hills and in some places groves of oak trees. In all the low spaces of the river are nine covered bridges. Originally there were 14 of them. My sister-in-law lived in Winterset since 1965.  She use to ride the buses that toured the bridges and she was a tour guide.

I am posting this a day late as I wrote it and became distracted. A day late is better than never. 

Thanks for stopping by today.  

Monday It Is

 The sunrise stretched a long way around our hill. All I could photograph was this one end of it looking out from my backyard deck. 

 The kalanchoe growing downstairs is reaching for more light. It seems like it would be bright enough but it isn't.  It stretches up to the window pane. with great blooms.

 I am rooting the begonia in a jar of water. It has a white flower even though I thought that I had a pink one. It is a mystery. 

 I didn't want to set the tree in the middle of the two windows. Because it would be off balance I added a star with white lights in the other window. I will start to take down some things soon as we all know Christmas has passed. 

We are having a warmer day today. Above freezing is good but it still does feel cold out there. We were out and about yesterday and went to Winterset, Iowa. That is covered bridge territory in Madison County. We did see a sign where we could take a gravel road three miles to see the hogback bridge. We were tired and had a fifty minute trip to get home. I don't like the gravel roads that much to drive on anyway so we didn't venture down. 

Thanks for stopping by today.  

News Early New Year

 We are at 26 degrees F and that will be our average for the whole day. The clouds have been bad enough that all the air craft flying over our house has been flown close to the ground I looked out once last night and saw the whole under body of the jet up close. Weather guys said last night it was snowing up there but t was imelting and evaporating before hitting the ground. Thus the planes took off and landed unusually low in elevation. 

 I have started to take away some of our Christmas items strung all over the house. We have a problem as we have close friends that can't come to see our trees until the 11th. The are former missionaries and just admire the lights, ornaments, and color. So the trees will be not be disturbed. We put out everything from all of life's journey and we have too much. So it is easy to take things away and visitor wouldn't know we had more that what they are seeing.  People gift us things and we certainly bring all of it out to remember them.

 

Our son gifted his mom two more village pieces. The are smaller and are lighted from inside. They look really good under the smaller tree and I think every year that is where they will be. This one is a fire station.

My wife's village will also stay up for a couple of weeks as the friends really like seeing the whole scene. The woman here is feeding sheep I believe. They are ready for her to drop things onto the ground.

From the studying of older ornaments the owl is one that was made traditionally early on when glass blown ornaments were first created. This company did copy the early creations pretty closely.  

We received word yesterday that my wife's sister passed away. It was just five weeks ago that she lost her brother. She was 87 years old living in a nursing home. It seems to be numbing to have lost them both and especially close together. We lost the brother's wife about two years ago. Funeral plans will be made soon. 

Thanks for stopping by today. 
 

No Words Today

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Day One....2026

 We finished of 2025 with lots of strong winds from the north. This angel demonstrates how our hair blew when we were outside in that wind. The angel is a wonderful help to the birds and animals. 

 I actually have three red trucks. My wife had me buy a larger one so I could use it for a model for a painting. Someday it will happen. I don't have a large tree for the largest truck.  Now that the photo is taken it is time to put my trucks away. The smallest one goes into the toy cupboard. 

 It is too cold outside to take outside shots so I can only share shots of the indoor world. The sculptural form of the paper crane continues to fascinate me no matter how many I have folded. I have six different mobiles with the cranes. They continue to fascinate me too as the birds float in air as the furnace air turn the around in motion. 

 One of the new gifts my wife received for Christmas is the man with his popcorn machine. As you can see the popcorn is flying around inside the machine. The little girl is waiting for her box of corn.

 Life can really be like a merry go round ride. I am glad for the new year and I will try to remember to write the 26 instead of 25. We had fireworks being set of in our neighborhood all evening last night. It was the only legal time and plenty of people bought up large supplies and shot them off. I was awakened at midnight hearing many fireworks but I was too tired to get up for them. We saw so many at the fourth and seeing them in the frigid cold is silly. 

Happy New Year to all my blogger followers.  I will keep on posting as that is what I do. It will be my end of 16 years in February and I am sure I was just continue on with it.  My adult boys keep up on us by reading it and they do call if they have questions about certain situations. I know I have followers who never comment and I appreciate them too. I have Canadian friends and European ones too. I have outlasted Australian bloggers and one photographer I still follow there. 

Thanks for stopping by today.