Summer Vacation Reprise: Flora and Fauna

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!

Summer Vacation Reprise: The Santa Fe Trail

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.

August: Hot and Dry

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.

More Garden Delights: July

Our July garden has several plants that we inherited from Lois and Bob when we bought their house in 2001. A dominant feature in the back perennial border is the plant above. (The backdrop is our neighbor's new brick garage.) It grows taller than me, and has the lovely double dahlia type flowers. A summer thunderstorm will bend it over and then we have to tie the stalks to a support. The seeds attract birds in the winter. We don't know its name. If anyone does, please leave a comment!

Purple cone flowers are a prairie staple and there was a small stand of these in the border by the driveway when we moved in. They are multiplying rapidly, and we added some plants to the back border as well. Goldfinches love the seeds and they delay nesting until the seed heads start to form, despite the handiness of our thistle feeder.


What would summer be without black eyed Susans? These provide more seeds for our hungry bird population in fall and winter. All of these came from a single plant we put in about three years ago.

Over 75 percent of the back yard is shaded and we are always looking for ways to add color to the staple shade garden of vinca, hostas, etc. Some years the coleus just sits there, but this year the plants have exploded in size and color. Maybe they like being in a pot instead of competing with the maple tree roots for food and water.

Caladiums also provide some much needed color in the shade garden, but the plants are expensive. We bought these three last year at a garden center, and when the leaves died in the fall, I brought the pots in and set them in a basement window. When spring came, I watered them, set them outside and enjoyed a minor miracle--they sprouted!

We call this one the Gold Lily. It's a daylily type but it blooms later than all of the others. It was here when we arrived, and we have divided it and there are at least three specimens scattered in the borders now. It reminds me of the Mid Century lily that was introduced in the 1950s, but I'm not sure if that is what it is.

This tall charmer is another find, a resident of our "back of the garage" section and also in the yard next door. It's the tallest daylily I've ever seen--these blooms look me in the eye. We moved it to the side fence so we and our neighbors can enjoy it more. It blooms profusely over a long season from mid-July into August.

Garden Delights: May and June

This month of July has been a 'time out' from blogging, and I appreciate the readers who have e-mailed, inquiring about my health or even my whereabouts. There's a lot of catching up to do, but I wanted to start by posting some garden photos that have been languishing in the blog file for a while, now. Above is part of our front bed in mid-June. We finally started putting the plants close enough together for an impact. Impatiens and hostas were the stars in this scene.

For Mothers Day in May, Norm gave me this lovely hydrangea. This is an everblooming variety and we love it's clear blue color.








About three years ago I found this daylily at a garden center and had to have it: its name is Judith. The pink salmon blooms were long-lasting this year.


One of the joys of inheriting another person's perennials in the garden is the occasional surprise. This was our 5th spring season at our present home, and we had never seen this pure white asiatic-type lily before. It came up in a clump of yellow Stella D'Oro lilies and had only two blooms.


Norm loves "old fashioned" roses, like this single pink rose here. It's a hardy bush we acquired two years ago and even though we don't really have enough sun for most roses, this one blooms from early spring until frost near the front porch.


In addition to old fashioned roses, an old-fashioned yellow rose is Norm's absolute favorite. We have had this one for about 3 years in the back border, and it blooms all season as well.



We have started a columbine collection and last year added this yellow one to it. This year it bloomed early and late in the rock garden at the front of the house.







A new addition to the backyard border this year was the Red Carpet Lily. We enjoyed these in early June.



A main stay of our back yard garden is the daylily bed that Lois had already established. Last year Norm dug them up and divided and re-set them, and they rewarded us with profuse, beautiful flowers in June, starting just after we returned home from the family reunion.

Tree Frogs: The Sound of Summer

Summer is officially here! Tonight we were sitting on the front porch, talking with Barb, our neighbor, and just after dark I heard it--the raspy, sandpaper-on-bark, slightly whiskey-voiced call of a tree frog (or tree toad, some call them) in one of the oaks to the south of us. The summer croaking of tree toads brings back memories of my childhood, of summer camp, of Ozarks vacations. When we moved to this house six years ago in July we were delighted to hear these creatures calling in the night. Usually they start 'hollering' around the first week of July in these parts, so once again, Nature is keeping pretty good time.

Links, Anyone?

I finally got around to adding some favorite blogs to the Links section in the sidebar. Among them are Doug's commentary on Southern Gospel; my pastor's blog, a blog by Norm's niece Debbie and a brand new blog by my cousin Debi. I check these every day and enjoy them all. To add these links in the Blogger template I'm using involves tinkering under the hood and correctly typing one line of html tags for each link-- so I'm feeling rather smug that I accomplished the task and they actually seem to work!

Ethereal Visitor

Yesterday afternoon we arrived home from a couple of meetings and as we were unloading the car, I spotted a bird in the bird bath that looked "different" somehow. At first I thought it was a young, light mourning dove, but on closer inspection, it appeared to be completely white. We watched it for several minutes, got the binoculars and the camera, and noted it had pink eyes and feet as well. Clearly it was an albino, but what species?

Our question was answered when an adult brewer blackbird swooped down to join the visitor, who fluttered its wings and hopped over to the adult to be fed! So we have an albino young blackbird in the neighborhood. Eventually the adult coaxed the youngster to fly to a neighboring garage roof, and then to a tree a couple of houses north, where our friend Patty lives. Now we know how the plains Indians might have felt the first time they spotted a white buffalo.

I did some research on the Internet and found a Missouri Department of Conservation article that discussed albinism in birds. It is most common in jays, cardinals and finches, but has been reported in red-winged blackbirds and many other species as well. It doesn't affect their health but may cause troubles in attracting a mate. Since the genes for albinism are recessive, that makes the appearance of one even more remarkable!

I still need to put up posts dealing with some of our Kansas vacation adventures and I will, soon, but I wanted to share this rare sighting before it becomes ancient history.

Linville Sibling Reunion 2007

The Linville Sibling reunion took place this year in Garden City, Kansas, home of Norm's youngest brother Don and his wife, Kay. We arrived on Thursday, May 31 to some cloudy skies, after an interesting drive through central Kansas.
Along the way we visited an historic fort, Fort Larned, that I'll post pictures of separately. On Friday, everyone but Evelyn had arrived for hamburgers on the deck. We hope Evelyn feels better soon! Five brothers and one sister and their spouses gathered on the deck after a rare rainy day.
(The agenda for the women on Friday was shopping...you can't believe the bargains we found.)

Saturday was our active tour day. Several of us got up early to meet the Sandsage Bison Range tour wagon at 7 a.m. We rode in an open wagon with hard, cold seats...it was about 49 degrees when we started out. The sand/sage hills ecosystem is very interesting. This had been a forest preserve in the early 1900s. It is home to one of the largest bison herds on public land in the country. I'll do a separate post after we get home on the many prairie flowers we saw on this trip.

After almost an hour of bumping and jostling on the prairie, we had a much better appreciation of the travail of those hardy pioneer ancestors who made the trip in covered wagons. We tried to imagine day after day of slow progress through landscape like this. At least it was cool and not windy. We heard many birds, saw mule deer and a jackrabbit and a painted box turtle. But where were the bison?

At last, near the end of the pasture, we spied part of the herd on the top of a sand dune. The recently born calves were having breakfast. At this time of year, the bulls separate themselves from the cows and calves. All of the animals were shedding their thick winter coats and they looked really ragged. The slowly wandered over the hill and out of site. And the time of our tour was up.

Our next project, after a post-ride brunch at Don and Kay's, was a guided tour of the Sunflower Electric Cooperative generating plant in Holcomb (scene of Capote's In Cold Blood) about 12 miles from Garden City? Why would we visit an electrical generating plant, especially a coal-fired one? Because it was there. No, seriously, because Corey Linville, Don and Kay's son, is a manager of the plant, where he has worked for 14 years. That's Corey in the green T-shirt and jeans, just to the right of center in the photo. We look pretty work ready, don't we?

In the future I hope to devote a full blog to the plant and what we saw. Here we are entering the ground floor. The pipes carry water that is either going to become steam or on its way from being cooled back to water. We took an elevator 14 stories up, and then climbed two flights of stairs to the roof of the plant. Sometimes it was hot and noisy. Sometimes we walked on grated floors and that was SCARY. But we all came back alive.

Corey explained all of the plant's safety features and all of its features to preserve the environment. It runs at nearly full load, and on this clear day, no visible smoke was coming out of the tall stack on the property. Corey will be in charge of the plants' expansion by two more units over the next few years.




On Sunday after church, we went to eat at Las Margaritas Mexican restaurant, in downtown Garden City. Everything was delicious. I definitely recommend the spinach/cheese quesadillas, and thank Kay for recommending the dish!

Another treat during our visit was an open air band concert in the park. We wrapped up in blankets and enjoyed the music and the sights of small children parading, dogs playing, some pure small-town USA Americana. These concerts have been held every year since 1879. Impressive. Garden City has a wonderful zoo (which we visited this evening) and a long-standing support for the arts.

Sunday after our Mexican dinner, we went back to Kay and Don's for more visiting, and taking the formal reunion picture that ends this post. Until Harold's official copy with all of us in it arrives, here is mine, sans moi, of course. Carol & Walt and Larry and Dolores returned to Colby this evening. Harold & Jan will go home in the morning and Roy and Maxine will start for Mineral Wells in the morning as well. Norm and I will head to Great Bend to see the Quilt Walk in the Courthouse Square, then on to eastern Kansas and perhaps the TallGrass Prairie preserve. We will return to St. Louis on Wednesday, probably. But we will have lasting memories of this golden time together, opportunities that seem more precious as time goes by. Below: Larry, Don, Norm, Walt and Roy . Front row: Janice, Dolores, Harold, Carol, Kay and Maxine.