Good Morning America, How Are You?

In Nebraska, things are just fine.

In a Bony Light*

Our lawn looks like a graveyard. Everything that died in Nebraska this winter has been dragged into our square footage. Dogasaurus is saving up food for the nuclear holocaust. I just hope she buries all her loot before the start of lawn mowing season.



*with thanks to fans of Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend for the post title.

Music

I wish that you could hear what I'm hearing right now.













One picture may carry the weight of a thousand words, but a thousand pictures can't carry a tune.








Sometimes I just stop - to listen and be thankful and wonder, why am I so blessed?

Crayfishing

Every now and then we run across a crayfish.
          Crawfish.
          Crawdad.
          Crawdaddy maybe, if you live in the deep South.



Maybe what you call it depends on where you got it. If you order it through a catalog, if it comes vacuum sealed in clear thick plastic, with bright pink dye shot through its important internal organs, it's probably a crayfish.

Erica is dissecting a crayfish.

If its internal organs are all the color of pond-bottom mud, and you're planning to chase your sister with it, I'd say it's a crawdad.

Sam's crawdad.

Honking Geese

Geese honk when they fly overhead on their migratory treks to and from Canada. Southbound honks echo into the autumn skies with a plaintive sound, reminding me that the glory days of summer are over, the warmth of fall quicky expiring.

But this time of year, the loud cacophony in the northbound lanes sounds happy and hopeful to me. It says Spring!

Very occasionally, a pair of low-flying birds is silent, and I can hear the powerful whoosh of their wings against the air as they pass. But mostly these joyful, discordant crowds are above the trees where the din of their nasal honks drowns quiet wing strokes.

I wondered why geese nearly always honk when they fly, so I did a little internet search.

Now you know.

Good Morning! The Sun is Shining!

Merrill's curtain faces east. It dresses up morning's first rays with a sprinking of cut flowers before whispering "wake up, wake up."

Poor Merrill doesn't pop out of bed in the a.m. like I do, fully awake and rarin' to go. Petals gently falling through delicate sunshine will never persuade her to open her eyes. If we ever get around to redecorating her room, we'll have to filter the sun's greeting through something a little more powerful.....stampeding horses, maybe.

Hard Working Man

Zero degrees out when we woke up this morning!

Shadows

Day's End

I'm liking our new habit of walking together in the evenings. Sometimes we take a horse; always we leave behind the cell phones.

It is a good chance to shed the day's busyness, to slow down, to inhale peace.

Thanks to Merrill for the photo.

Guns

First it was Winchester '73. We settled in to watch the old classic from John's youth, in celebration of his birthday last week.

Winchester '73 is the guy's version of a Jane Austen chick flick -- the same thing happens over and over.

Austen's next scene is always about some encounter between males and females--who's going to marry whom?

Jimmy Stewart's next scene is always about some encounter between the good guys and the bad guys--who's going to shoot whom?

Next in the movie queue was Sergeant York, since the homeschool history class is studying WWI- the Great War.
Then came real life. Saturday woke us up with a strong sense of spring in the air, inviting my own hero into the back yard with his gun and one of his girls.

The good guys won every time.