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In early June, we visited Garden City, Kansas, and spent a little time on the sand sage prairie looking for buffalo, which was a story in an earlier post. This photo above was in that post but I have repeated it here, to set the stage for the photos that follow. If you click in the image, it will enlarge and you'll see individual dots of orange in the foreground. This was a field of Gallardias in bloom.
Also called Indian Blanket, several species of gallardia bloom in the plains states. They are particular in that they like dry soil and sand or alkaline conditions. The ones in my native Oklahoma are a little taller than these. They wilt if you pick them and they die if you try to transplant them. The prairie is their home, and they fill it with blazing color for a couple of weeks every June.
Another signature plant of the prairie is the mallow, or Kansas Beauty as my mother-in-law always called them. They form a bright magenta carpet in early June, blooming when the gallardias do. We saw these near the spot where we began the ride on the buffalo preserve. These flowers were beloved by the pioneers and they spell "high plains" to me.
There is more sand sage prairie behind Don and Kay's house, and I climbed up their retaining wall to see what kinds of flowers were blooming on top, since it had been impossible to shoot photos of most flowers from the moving wagon on the buffalo expedition. I found many of these prickly pear cacti with golden blooms. In Oklahoma, prickly pears have a pink flower.
These looked like little sunflowers. I'm not sure of their exact species or name. But at this season, most of the plants in bloom had yellow or orange flowers, with white or shades of pink to purple being a distant second.
But the prairie was home to feathered friends as well as flowers. As I was preparing to climb up this garden wall to get the above flower photos, I looked up and saw a bird walking toward me...it is a western quail, larger and obviously more curious than our eastern bobwhites.
I just kept taking photos as the quail trotted closer and closer. It seemed almost curious to find out what kind of bird I was.
Finally the quail approached the end of the wall and just stopped and gave me another long look. Then I must have shifted position and it finally flew away.
And no, I wasn't making this up. Unbeknown to me, brother Don on his back porch was taking pictures of me taking pictures of the quail, and after the reunion, he e-mailed this one to me!
Before summer ends, I want to share more images and stories of our Kansas trip in June. On the way to Garden City for the Linville reunion, we found ourselves retracing part of the Santa Fe Trail, and in this post I'll show and tell about some of the places we visited. At right is the flag in the center of the parade ground at Fort Larned, which is between Great Bend and Garden City. The fort was built around 1860 to safeguard traffic on the Santa Fe trail and give settlers and travelers some sense of security. It was said that travelers could see the flag on this pole miles away from the fort. We saw it too, from about 2 miles west on our way back east after the reunion.
We dropped in to the fort on a hot afternoon and quickly learned we would need more than an hour to see it all. There is a complete museum and gift shop and many of the buildings have been restored to their original state. This barracks held a regiment of enlisted men. They slept 4 to a bunk; two up, head to toe, and two down. Their uniforms, rifles and other gear hung in pegs on the walls. Furnishings were spare.
Fort Larned also had a well developed medical infirmary wing, with separate quarters for the doctor and corpsmen. The hospital beds were much roomier than the bunks. Each of the beds has a tag with the name of a soldier who was admitted, the date and the diagnosis. One of them suffered from "recurrent fever."
One of the buildings on the quadrangle housed a school that was attended by officers' children during the day and the soldiers at night. On the blackboard we saw this handwritten 8th grade final exam. It covered literature, geography, history, government, spelling, grammar, composition, arithmetic and algebra in 10 not-so-easy questions. If you click on the photo it will enlarge enough for you to read the questions. My favorite is No. 5: Tell what you can about the history of Kansas!
On this afternoon the post was serene. We looked in vain for evidence of where horses might have been kept. In addition to the barracks and the hospital shown here, there was a bakery, a blacksmith shop, laundry, a block house, quarters for officers and families, and various other functions. Somewhere on the wind we could imagine the clop of horse's hooves, the creak of wagon wheels, the sound of a bugle calling the troop to assemble.
Of course, we left Ft. Larned and arrived at Don and Kay's house on Thursday night to begin the reunion. Most of our activities there, including the electrical generating plant tour and the buffalo wagon tour, are covered in earlier posts. But we did all attend worship together at the Garden City Church of the Nazarene and I had to share a photo of this striking and beautiful stained glass window at the entrance to their sanctuary.
We also visited the Garden City zoo, a place dear to Kay and Don, who are strong supporters of it. This red panda was trying to take a nap in his tree as we rushed through near closing time on that Sunday. The zoo has unusual collections and is truly an oasis on the plains (not to mention on the Santa Fe trail.)
We were sorry to see our time in Garden City will all of the Linville sibs and inlaws come to an end, but we had more sights to see on the way back east. One stop was in Great Bend, where the historical society has placed 7 different Kansas themed quilt blocks in the sidewalks surrounding the historic courthouse square. This is the first one. I have pictures of all of them if anyone would like to see them!
We hoped to visit sites in Chase County that had intrigued us on our way west, but we were there on the wrong day for the Tallgrass Prairie and the historic Kaw Mission in Council Grove. We will be back some day. We did drive through the Tallgrass Prairie from Strong City to Council Grove and back to Emporia for the night. The cabin at above right was built by missionaries for Indians to learn how to adopt the white man's ways. A plaque on the grounds at Council Grove explained that the Indians disdained living in the cabins but kept their livestock inside.
We walked around the historic mission as the sun slanted low in the west. This is where the historic tour of Council Grove begins and we definitely hope to visit this segment of the Santa Fe trail on another trip, another year.
Since we were spending the night at Emporia, home of William Allen White, founder of the Emporia Gazette and an important figure in American journalism, I thought I'd like to visit his home, which is preserved as a museum. Not open on Tuesdays! From the outside, it is a fascinating structure. White was an early advocate of racial equality, and the town of Emporia was distinguished by its welcome of freed African Americans to settle after the Civil War. The quality of Emporia that impressed us most was the health of its Main Street and downtown business district. It was bustling, with shops and stores open and doing a brisk business. We drove downtown in search of a pair of replacement clip on sunglasses for Norm and found just what we needed at an old-fashioned drug store on the main street. Cash sales only!
Next installment: Prairie flora and fauna.
I guess the title of this post sounds like the weather forecast, but that's pretty much the outlook for the next 10 days in these parts. You wouldn't know it, though, from the show put on by the surprise lilies in the back yard border. They appeared almost overnight after we got home from our trip to Tulsa (see Thursday's Child) and have been in glorious bloom.
Meanwhile, our resident pairs of gold finches (two or three pair, we think) seem to be nesting and they are constantly at the thistle feeder. One of these days I'll get a camera with a longer zoom than 3x, maybe, so I can capture more detail before they nervously fly away.
In a season when even an early morning trip to the farm market for sweet corn, peaches and cucumbers leaves us hot and bothered and glad to be home in the air-conditioning, one of the amaryllis plants given to us by a friend years ago decided to bloom. This cream-colored wonder is a cooling sight on the front porch these days.
Also busy feeding a family were the hummingbirds during most of July. The female (here) and male took turns and kept us busy refilling the feeder with sugar water for at least two weeks. Usually we get hummers only during migratory season, but we got the feeders up early enough this year to attract a local couple. This feeder is attached to our dining room window with a suction cup, and we enjoy watching the tiny birds come and go while we eat our own meal.
There's a new look to our back yard: can you tell what is different? Actually several things are different, but the salient change for us is removal of the leaning, rusting chain link fence by our driveway. What little security it offered was outweighed by the unsightliness that seemed a barrier to the yard. We retained the fencing on the other side and at the back and will paint it with rust-resistant dark paint this fall or winter. The other change is in the left background: our northern neighbors demolished a rickety wood garage and a crew is building a sturdy new masonry two-car garage in its stead. It will be a nice backdrop to our flower border in coming years. Since this picture was taken, the roof trusses have been added and shingles should appear this week if all goes well. We are under an excessive heat warning, though, for the next 10 days. This photo was taken just after the July rains, and things are a little drier now.
Also thanks to cousin Debbie for this tip: you can click on some of the photos and they will open up larger on your screen. It works for me with the surprise lilies and the photo above, if you want to see more detail.
In early June, we visited Garden City, Kansas, and spent a little time on the sand sage prairie looking for buffalo, which was a story in an earlier post. This photo above was in that post but I have repeated it here, to set the stage for the photos that follow. If you click in the image, it will enlarge and you'll see individual dots of orange in the foreground. This was a field of Gallardias in bloom.
Also called Indian Blanket, several species of gallardia bloom in the plains states. They are particular in that they like dry soil and sand or alkaline conditions. The ones in my native Oklahoma are a little taller than these. They wilt if you pick them and they die if you try to transplant them. The prairie is their home, and they fill it with blazing color for a couple of weeks every June.
Another signature plant of the prairie is the mallow, or Kansas Beauty as my mother-in-law always called them. They form a bright magenta carpet in early June, blooming when the gallardias do. We saw these near the spot where we began the ride on the buffalo preserve. These flowers were beloved by the pioneers and they spell "high plains" to me.
There is more sand sage prairie behind Don and Kay's house, and I climbed up their retaining wall to see what kinds of flowers were blooming on top, since it had been impossible to shoot photos of most flowers from the moving wagon on the buffalo expedition. I found many of these prickly pear cacti with golden blooms. In Oklahoma, prickly pears have a pink flower.
These looked like little sunflowers. I'm not sure of their exact species or name. But at this season, most of the plants in bloom had yellow or orange flowers, with white or shades of pink to purple being a distant second.
I just kept taking photos as the quail trotted closer and closer. It seemed almost curious to find out what kind of bird I was.
Finally the quail approached the end of the wall and just stopped and gave me another long look. Then I must have shifted position and it finally flew away.
And no, I wasn't making this up. Unbeknown to me, brother Don on his back porch was taking pictures of me taking pictures of the quail, and after the reunion, he e-mailed this one to me!
