Two Quilt Exhibits at the History Museum

We took a field trip to the Missouri Historical Society Museum with friends from our church on Saturday. Our destination was a special exhibit, Mary Lee Bendolph: Gee's Bend Quilts and Beyond, that will be on display until Sept.13. But I also took a side trip to see a small exhibit from the Museum's own collection of significant Missouri quilts, From a Common Cloth. One of them is the Baltimore Album quilt completed in the mid 1980s by founding members of the Flower Valley Quilt Guild before I became a member. The guild voted a few years ago to donate it to the museum, and this is the first time it has been on display. Each block is signed by the maker. Photography is not allowed in special exhibits, so I don't have any of the Gee's Bend quilts. I sneakily took just this one of the Flower Valley quilt, without a flash.

The Compton Heights Christian Church group that saw the Gee's Bend exhibit included our pastor Jacque and her husband, Dave, Norm and me, and Arlene, Liz and Kathy. We relaxed and shared our impressions in the museum's cafe, Merriweather's, afterwards. Those dark bottles are locally produced Fitz's root beer, always a treat. In addition to the quilts, we saw a documentary about the Gees Bend quilt makers that was created by Alabama Public Television. Their story is an inspiring one of how women in a small rural community over 4 generations or more transformed their post-slavery experience of "making do" with what was at hand into art. "I didn't think of it as art," says one of the women in the film. "But when I saw it on the walls of a museum, I knew it was art." If you live in St. Louis, try to see this exhibit if you haven't already. It's even free to city and county residents on Tuesdays. If you live away, try to catch the exhibit if it comes near you, or check out the video, The Quiltmakers of Gee's Bend, which is available through PBS.

Now we are starting a new week. This week we will go to exercise, various appointments, and coordinate mailing of our church newsletter. Norm is going to preach next Sunday since our pastor will be at the Disciples General Assembly in Indianapolis.

Visiting Henry Shaw's Garden

Sunday, June 19--On this weekend, my cousin Mike and his wife Debi visited us on their way home from a vacation in the Carolinas. One of their favorite spots in St. Louis is the Missouri Botanical Garden, or Henry Shaw's Garden as we locals call it. The Garden is celebrating its 150th year. The day was spectacular: low humidity, high in the 70s. So after church we changed into comfy clothes, ate lunch at Sassafras Cafe at the Garden and set out to enjoy the horticulture.

After the entrance, one of the first features one sees is the view across the Lily ponds to the Climatron. Sculpture is featured throughout the gardens, as well as fountains.


These colorful "onions" in the lily ponds were purchased after the Dale Chihuly exhibit a couple of years ago. They add extra color before the water lilies start to bloom.



The Garden is full of fountains, lakes, streams and other water features. This dramatic fountain just inside the entrance just invites visitors to pose for a photo. Debi, Mike and I enjoyed the spray from the fountain while Norm took our family photo to mark this visit.


This fountain depicting Canada Geese is one I hadn't noted on other visits. It is located near the center for home gardening.

Something about the angular features interested me so I had to take a closeup and try out my camera's zoom feature. If this had been a really hot day, it would have been tempting to jump in.


This area of the Garden features a lawn, various trees, vegetable and flower gardens, test plants, and an indoor center with "answer men and women" and definitive information about home gardening. It was about the halfway point between the North entrance on Shaw Avenue and our goal-- the Japanese Garden several "blocks" away near the southern boundary of the park.

New gardens are always being developed and this time we discovered the Carver Garden, dedicated to Missouri native botanist George Washington Carver. This hedge of profuse white pyramidal hydrangeas was higher than my head, and it enclosed the entire Carver garden.

A winsome bronze statue of Carver is in the center of the garden named for him. I took this with the zoom because it was hard to get close enough to decide what plant he is contemplating. it could be a peanut or sweet potato vine. He developed multiple uses for both crops as an alternative to cotton, which depleted the soil.

Carver's view is of this fountain and pond, which makes a very attractive center for this garden. I had a good time trying to "stop" the falling drops of water. By this time, we were all getting thirsty and wishing we had each packed a bottle of water along, since no vending areas were available or nearby, and the sun was a little hot despite the cool breeze.

On this day we didn't visit the English Woodland Garden, but this shady brook flowed out of it along the path to the Japanese Garden. Refreshing sights were everywhere, and we heard many different bird songs as we passed through the various habitats.





At last we reached the lake in the center of the Japanese Garden. Norm and I were daring, and walked out on the boardwalk, while Deb and Mike rested on a shady bench and just enjoyed the tranquil area. Koi come up to the boardwalks and bridges to be fed; a special mix of food for them is provided in vending machines in the area. I think the machines are stocked with no more food than the fish should consume in a day, to keep them from being overfed. Even so, many of them are HUGE. We always come home from The Garden with an itch to add some interesting plants to our yard. My cousin was researching trees on this visit because I think he wants to replace some poplars he had to cut down recently.

More than 20 years ago the Japanese Garden was developed with the cooperation of a sister city in Japan. Every Labor Day weekend, there is a Japanese Festival at the garden with demonstrations on bonsai, tea ceremonies, fashion shows and the wonderful Taiko Drummers. If it's not too hot, we will be back. Mike and Debi left for Tulsa on Monday morning, and we still haven't put the guest bed away. We do love company!

Coming Soon: Weekend and Garden Photos

Dear readers in Garden City, Irving, Tulsa, St. Louis, North Platte, Colby, Ft. Myers, Denver and no telling where else: We are fine here. We really enjoyed our visit with cousins Mike and Debi, and I took oodles of great photos at the Botanical Garden. Plus we have oodles of flowers, mostly lilies, here as well. They will be up soon, I promise. But today later I've got an eye exam that will probably leave me blurry, plus an evening Quilt Guild meeting. So it might not be until Friday. Meanwhile, thanks for checking in. Norm and I are grateful for you.

Saturday Morning Rising

Today we are resting up from some house cleaning and organizing. The tasks needed to be done since company is coming! One of the restful sights under the deep shade of the back yard maple are these pots of caladiums. The one above always makes me think of Christmas, with its red and green coloring.
Remember when we used to have Christmas in July celebrations? Well, next Saturday is July 25. What can we come up with? Hmmmm...

This white caladium with its green veins makes me think of Easter. Actually Easter is appropriate for these plants, since they are all resurrected. I've had them for several years. Each fall when the foliage dies back from frost, I take the pots inside and put them on a window sill in the basement. I may water them a couple of times during the winter. I don't bother to take the bulbs out and lay them on their sides, as the garden books say to do. Then in the spring, when frost is over, I start watering them in earnest and take them outside in a shady spot. After about a week, tiny points begin to break through the soil and new leaves unfurl for another season. Plants just amaze me.

This year we went 4 for 4, including this mostly pink one. This one reminds me of the color of Surprise Lilies, or as they are known in the South, Resurrection Lilies. No sign of them yet but any day now, they should be coming up.

We are glad to report that baby Lily and mom Michelle are doing well. So is baby Korey and his parents Heather and Corey in Chicago. We are looking forward to seeing them in August here in St. Louis. Mike and Sandy had a good trip to Chicago. Our neighbor Barb finally got home from Atlanta. Bless her heart, she mowed our lawn yesterday just for the exercise. Norm's cousin Joe's wife, Elaine, is still undergoing treatment in Tulsa for cancer, but reports that her results are encouraging. Doug and Matt are back in Ft. Myers, working hard. Doug is hoping for an advance contract for a book project, and thinking about his classes that begin in late August. We are looking at dates this fall that we might be able to go to Florida and pester them. Norm will be preaching on August 2 while our pastor is at the Disciples of Christ General Assembly. We thought about going, but are saving our gas money for that fall trip to the Southeast. Both of us are back at exercise-- both low impact aerobics and water exercise. I've been tracing 1/4 of my own family tree, the McElyea/Tanner branch, with the wonderful help of our friend Lola, who works in the genealogy special collection division at St. Louis County Library. The Current, the student newspaper I advised before I retired, is getting a new adviser and I have actually been asked if I'd like to meet with her for a brief orientation. Oh yes! Here's hoping the coming year will be much better for them than last year.

My cousin Mike and his wife Debi have been on a 10-day driving trip from Tulsa to North Carolina, and their plan is to come by here, just a tad out of the way, on their return home. With luck, they'll be here by supper time but even if they aren't, we will leave the light on for them. That's pretty much our news, for those in Irving, Mineral Wells, Colby, Garden City, Denver, St. Louis and elsewhere who are faithful readers of this blog. And so, in honor of the memory of the late, great Walter Cronkite, here in St. Louis on this cool, cloudy mid July morning, that's the way it is.

Outing to Indian Camp Creek Park

July 1--Along with our friends Mike and Sandy, we took a "senior field trip" to the largest St. Charles County Park, located about an hour from home. It was a cool, cloudless day, welcome after the heat of late June, and we picked the middle of the week to avoid crowds and traffic. It was our Independence Day party, a few days early. The park comprises over 600 acres, much of it from a nineteenth century homestead for a family named Cannon. The park is beginning to develop an interpretive center about the area's history. This "ghost cabin" at the site of the original homestead is a start.

Part of the original homestead contains a restored grain silo, that has been recently opened as an observation tower. It is at one of the highest points of the park.


Norm and Mike took up the challenge of climbing the spiral staircase for about three stories to the top. Sandy and I cheered them on from below, content to listen to unusual birds and check out the many wild flowers blooming nearby.

We took a pot luck picnic lunch and ate in one of the park's many shelters. Actually these are supposed to be reserved in two-hour increments, but we found that out later. No one was using any of the several shelters that day. This one was down the hill from the homestead, and it overlooked the Indian Camp Creek valley, a playground, fishing pond, and the Cannon family cemetery.

Sandy brings everything one might want for a picnic, including a bright table cloth and soap and a towel for hand washing, plus a gallon of water in case potable water isn't nearby. We had ham salad sandwiches, chips, grapes and cherries, lemonade and Oreo cookies for dessert. Norm took this picture with his camera when I wasn't looking.

Our shelter had a playground in the woods nearby, and also adjoined one of the 10 miles or so of hiking and equestrian trails. We saw some horseback riders go by. Norm was armed with one camera and I had the other. That reminds me... I need to check out Norm's pictures. I found two and added them to the blog.

We drove down to the valley and parked near the fishing pond and Eco playground. Sandy took a book and settled in the gazebo, while Norm, Mike and I walked around the little lake. The playground features stone frogs and turtles made by St. Louis artist Robert Cassilly, as well as native wild plants and a small stream where a group of children were busy building a dam out of mud as we went by. A frog chorus could be heard from this batch of plants along the shore.

Here is one of Norm's photos showing the path between the pond and the small private cemetery on the grounds. It was in this area that we heard a song that we think was from a Baltimore Oriole in a tall tree. I caught a glimpse of something orange, but then it moved and not even Mike's powerful field glasses would bring it into range.

Another function of the park is as a nature preserve. We saw and heard many species of birds that are rare in town, such as Indigo Buntings (too fast for the camera) and a Baltimore Oriole, and some species of sparrow that had a rollicking song. The swampy east edge of the pond was full of darting dragonflies. This is the clearest shot I was able to get. The blue and brown double wings are very striking.

The park is named for Indian Camp Creek, which joins Big Creek in this far corner of St. Charles County. The photo is from an overlook on Big Creek. A park brochure says evidence has been found of a settlement of Mississippian Indians between A.D. 800 and A.D. 1400. More information will be added to the interpretive center in the future.

In addition to multiple sounds of birds singing, we saw various species of wild flowers. This clump of Queen Ann's lace was growing along the path to the creek overlook.










I think this is a variety of bee balm, but I couldn't find it in my Missouri Wildflowers book under either pink or purple flowers. The tall, showy flowers grew at the edge of the meadow near our picnic shelter. This was along the equestrian trail. One reason I had delayed posting this was to give myself time to identify all the flowers we saw, as well as some of the bird songs. But I decided I had better put this up or else it would be fall already.

Another very abundant flower was this small daisy. When I was a kid in Oklahoma, we called these flea bane daisies, but again, my Missouri flower book is silent. I am thinking about getting another flower book before we venture out again!


We saw black eyed susans all over the park. They grew beside the roads, beside the pond, and in open areas up on the hill not far from the homestead. We stopped to use a restroom (composting toilets, odorless!) and enjoyed this large array of them.

Sunday, Ava, Babies & MCS

This afternoon, Doug and Matt came by to see us before Doug took a plane home. Matt took this picture of Norm and Ava with his new, snazzy Nikon. He took more pictures that we like but the file size for them is a little large, over a megabyte apiece, and they would quickly eat up most of the free allowance for photos on Blogger. So this one will have to do for the blog and I'll print the others and put them on the refrigerator! Ava has been visiting us since Wednesday, and her owner, Barb, is due home sometime tomorrow. She has been sedate up until Doug and Matt arrived; then she got her ball and ran crazy eights around the living room and dining room for several minutes. Ava does like men!

Starting tomorrow, we will be doing some house sitting for our friends Mike and Sandy, while they visit their grandson Korey Jon'Mikal in Chicago. Heather reports he is gaining weight, not bad for a little guy born 4 weeks early. We know they will have a great visit and we look forward to a trip to St. Louis soon by mom Heather, dad Corey and this little guy.



Another baby in our lives, LIly, has passed the 13-pound mark just shy of her 3-month birthday. Doug and Matt were here last week for Michelle's surgery on Wednesday, which went very well. Doug took this picture while baby sitting during the week. I got to hold this lovely, non fussy girl on Friday night. Her mom is now back home, having been released from the hospital today. We pray for a quick recovery and return to full living for Michelle, and a couple of days of sleep for grandma Karen, who has been doing a whole lot of baby sitting during the last three months!

OK, that takes care of Sunday, Ava and the Babies. What is a MCS? Well, our weather forecasters call it a mesoscale convective system, but on a radar screen it looks a lot like a small inland hurricane just whirling toward you, with a lot of angry red on the front of it. They have a squall line with strong wind, followed by possible hail and drenching rain. They hold together for six hours or more, unlike the typical summer thunderstorm. (A very wicked MCS hit St. Louis in July of 2006 and left up to 2/3 of the city and county area without any power for 2 to 10 days. I don't have an entry about it because I didn't start blogging until August of that year.) Today one motored along I-70 toward St. Louis from Kansas City, and it caught up with us about 1:30 as we were driving home from church. It was a good day to be in a mini van since the water was running curb-deep in many places. After we got home, there was 1-1/2 inches of rain in our gauge.

Now it is quiet and cool. St. Louis is host to baseball's All-Star Game so we hope the MCS's and their friends stay away at least until Wednesday. Cousin Mike and Debi are enjoying the sights in Tennesee and North Carolina as they visit family friends. We are looking forward to having them here as guests this coming weekend.

Lazy Days of Summer

If I had known I would take almost two weeks off from blogging, I would have warned you, dear readers, as niece Debbie in Hutchinson recently did. But it was more a case of life taking up more energy than I thought, plus a serious case of nodding off once darkness falls. But to those of you who have inquired, we are OK. Really. Just being lazy in the midst of high summer. The Welcome sign is out in the back drive, and July has brought us promise of more company than we have had in a while. Doug and Matt are in St. Louis this week because Matt's sister Michelle had surgery yesterday. She is reported to be doing well and the guys visited our gardens on Tuesday night when they came here for dinner. Our next visitors will be my cousin Mike and his wife Debi around June 18-20.

On our drive through NE Oklahoma coming home from our vacation, we saw banks full of native purple coneflowers in bloom. And when we got home, our own plot of cone flowers on the south side of the house was in full array as well. When we moved here in July 2001, there was one clump of them. Now they range the full length of the house. These are just a few of them.

We also came home to an explosion of day lilies both front and back. The bright sun kind of washes them out, but we have yellow, cream, salmon and other shades in this bed. Matt helped dig it several years ago and we transplanted lilies from various places in the yard. They seem to like this spot.

Once again, the pale apricot "Judith" lilies bloomed profusely. The roses are finished for now but we know they will re-bloom later, when the nights get cool again.

Most of these lilies were once behind the garage or further back in the shaded yard. We thought all of them were orange, but some yellow ones showed up this year! Norm dug this bed in the side yard, in front of the back yard fence, so that our neighbors to the North would have something to enjoy when they pull into their driveway. We know that the lilies will be finished around the middle of this month, so tonight we raided Home Depot for some pots of bright zinnias, yellow and orange. We have also started some zinnias from seed--old times say to sow them on July 4. We did it a week early. The idea is they will start to bloom around labor day and skip the seasonal mildew that often disfigures zinnias around here.

The over wintered geraniums still bloom on the front porch, so much so that we haven't bought but one new geranium this year. Meanwhile, the rubber tree keeps growing. I may have to emulate my sister in law Kay and give it a trim when it's time for it to move inside for the winter. At Home Depot tonight we also bought a planter full of dark purple petunias, since that fragrance was missing from our evenings when it's nice enough to sit out after dark and listen to the tree frogs, which started right on schedule on July 5. Our porch is home to one hummingbird feeder, and we have another at the dining room window, where we can watch them feeding while we eat. This week we put a third feeder in the back yard. We keep them out of sight of each other because the little hummers are Very Territorial. They also are very hungry, despite all the flowers around here. They drain an 8-oz feeder in about 24 hours. We are looking for bargains in sugar!


So, what do we do all day, besides admire blooms on our hydrangeas? Well, there is exercise four days a week. A little bit of business correspondence. Some church volunteering. Saturday trips to the local farmers' market. Once in a while, a spate of cooking, followed by a desire to eat out. Reading for our reading group. I'm researching more about the places some of my ancestors have lived and trying to get serious about writing. Today we went to a lovely brunch at the home of one of the women in our water exercise group. She was unveiling her remodeled kitchen, but her screened in porch and gorgeous shade garden around her patio were what called my name! We are also trying to straighten up the place in advance of our next batch of company. Unfortunately the guest room is kind of a dumping ground for all the files that need to be put away, plus lots of stuff that just needs to be shredded. We bought a shredder tonight, too. Then we came home and played with Ava, who is visiting us until Sunday while Barb goes to market in Atlanta.