Tag: nature

Things I love

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  • Look at that sky! It just makes you feel good to be alive, doesn't it? :)

    Look at that sky! It just makes you feel good to be alive, doesn’t it? 🙂

    The sound of laughter in the morning.

  • Long talks with old friends.
  • Cuddle time.
  • Sunshine streaming through my window.
  • Bright blue skies dotted with fluffy clouds.
  • Crisp fall air.
  • Lazy weekends.
  • The smiles elicited by a bedtime story.
  • Impending visits with distant friends. 😀

Speaking of impending visits, I am beyond excited for August 8!  One of my oldest friends will be flying out from sunny Californ-I-A to visit dear old Mom and Dad and guess who’s couch she’ll be crashing on?  That’s right, mine! 🙂

All sorts of fun things are in the works for that weekend.  Of course, fun for me would be staying up all night with a boatload of pop and watching movies till dawn.  But I’m sure other things will be involved, too.  Some major catching up is in order.

But for now…to the writing cave!  My boys (all of them) are down for naps and I’ve got a word count to hit.  Enjoy your Sunday, my lovelies!  How will you be spending it?

(c) 2013.  All rights reserved.

Water, water, everywhere…

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rcsign

Photo courtesy of the Marshalltown Times-Republican

If you follow me anywhere else online, you’ll have seen by now the various flood pictures I’ve been sharing (seriously, much like the water, they’re all over – both my personal and public Facebook accounts, Flickr, Instagram, and soon Pinterest as well).  Despite that, I’m going to post some more here anyway.  The extent of the damage won’t likely be truly realized for a long time yet, and the recovery will probably take years if this turns out to be anything like previous floods have been.

I know I’ve mentioned the Flood of ’93 several times already, but we had another major flood just five years ago that I had forgotten about until a friend mentioned it on Facebook.  I mean, I didn’t really forget, but I had forgotten that some of the severe flooding had been so close to us.  All you seemed to hear about was what happened in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, but there was plenty of severe flooding in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls area, too, and I had forgotten that.  I think the reason that ’93 is stuck in my head has to do with my mom; seeing all the photos she took of the local damage really imprinted the severity of the disaster on my tender little psyche.  The flooding in 2008, while devastating, just didn’t have the same personal connection for me that the floods of ’93 and ’13 have.

Anyway, we drove through quite a bity of flooding again on Monday as we tried to get home.

Where’s an ark when you need one?

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I shot this picture of a submerged field through the window of our truck as we were heading down to visit Seymour’s parents for the weekend. The rain bands on the window blurred the image and gave it the neat effect; the only processing I did to this was adding Instagram’s Lo-Fi filter to make the blue of the water pop out a little more. Even without it, the grass still glowed that green.

I love this image, but…

Foggy Trees

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Foggy Trees

Here’s a little experimental photography for you.  Something tells me the sky will look a lot like this a little later today (read: on my drive home). *sigh*

Stupid weather.  I’m supposed to go to the park for a play date!  Go rain elsewhere!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the picture.  Let me know what you think below!

(c) 2013.  All rights reserved.

Scenes from the courthouse

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Only in Iowa can it be 80° one day and snowing the next.  While it wasn’t 80° where I was yesterday, it was in other parts of the state, according to two of my friends down in southern Iowa.  And rumor has it that the temperature dropped 40 degrees in four hours.  That’s pretty quick!

So, to recap: The weekend and the first part of the week were sunny, warm, and absolutely gorgeous, leaving us all thinking that winter skipped spring altogether and decided that summer should just follow directly this year.  But now Winter, she’s a-back.  With a vengeance.

Me no likey.

I took all these – and a few others – over the course of the morning.

Winter in Iowa

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Snow Cat

Snow Cat (Photo credit: clickclique)

I’ve had it with winter.  Specifically, I’ve had it with all the white crap Mother Nature keeps dumping on us.  I nearly got stuck at work yesterday because the city does such a lousy job clearing the streets, and the same thing happened again today.  After narrowly avoiding the embarrassment of having to ask my boss to give me a push, what happened?  I came home and promptly got stuck in the mouth of my driveway, with the back end of my van sticking out into our very narrow street.

I was stuck so tight that after the kids and I tried to get out for about ten minutes, I went across the street and asked the neighbor for help (Seymour wasn’t home yet).  It took the two of us a good half hour and maybe a little more to get my van free.  The city I live in (yes, I know, it’s a small town, but that’s how we refer to our municipal government) doesn’t do any better when it comes to cleaning streets than the city I work in.  So in short, I’ve had it with winter.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  When the sun shines on newly fallen snow and it sparkles like a thousand diamonds, I love it as much as the next person.  I appreciate the beauty of snow.  However, I hate dealing with it.  I hate driving in it.  I hate shoveling it.  I hate cleaning it off of my car.

But at times like these, I often think of a joke my dad shared with me once.  It’s about winter in Iowa and, given the trials I’ve had with the snow today and the fact that it was three years ago today that I lost him, this seems like a good time to share it again.  I’ve posted it before, but here it is again in all its snowy glory:

Dear Diary. . .

The power of prayer

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Tonight on my drive home, I was able to see the lines on the road for the first time in 48 hours.  It was an amazing feeling, knowing where I was at and where I was going.  If only I could feel that kind of certainty all the time.

(c) 2013.  All rights reserved.

 

Strange times

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Yesterday, the courthouse groundskeeper was busy putting up fresh evergreen garland around the lampposts that dot the square.  Today, he was busy mowing the lawn and it felt like spring.  I know it’s Iowa and the weather will change at the drop of a hat, but dude – it’s November.  Get with the program.

Just don’t swear.  You can hold off on that till after New Year’s.

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.

 

Fall thoughts

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leflore marching band

leflore marching band (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Fall, despite being the herald of winter, is easily my favorite season.  And why not?  There’s so much to love: hot apple cider, marching band season, beautiful scenery, not to mention all things pumpkin.  I could go on and on.

There’s always a day in September when it begins.  The air is a little cooler, the walk to school a little more brisk.  Mornings like this hold a special kind of beauty.  The sky seems just a little more blue when the leaves are changing, and the brightness of the sky intensifies the crimson and gold of the leaves.

As a girl, I loved walking home from school in the gutters.

Love-Me Plant Lady

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I’ve been trying to get a bunch of things done today, so I’ve been ignoring my computer.  When I finally took a few minutes to check my email, I noticed I had a new one from my aunt with some information about where I could view my cousin’s wedding pictures online (I posted a few of them back in July when I wrote about the wedding – you can read that post here).

I just finished looking at the pictures.  They were awesome!  Aaron Borchers did their wedding photography and he did an absolutely fabulous job.  But that’s not what this post is about.  As I was looking through the pictures, one member of the wedding party stood out to me (and no, I don’t mean the bride, though she was gorgeous, or the groom, who looked quite dashing in his tux).

More memories from the year I turned twelve are this-a-way! Follow me!