The geese are coming from a pond and are low enough I can get a picture of them coming...
...and going.
Cousin Suzy let us use her car for a day so we could do a little running around. I think we made three trips to Wal Mart that day because of forgotten items. You'd think I'd keep a list, wouldn't you. Wal Mart was only a couple of miles up the road so it wasn't too big of a deal.
Look at this thing moving through Iola!
A couple of old buildings.
Ginger with a butterfly on her head.
Having lunch. One of those pesky mosquitoes I hope.
This guy is a Viceroy Butterfly, a Monarch look-alike. He only has a row and a half of white dots on his wings so I know he's not a Monarch.
A leaf, caught in a strand of spider web and suspended in mid-air.
And the birds! Oh my gosh! There were so many Starlings flocking and feeding at the campground. Even though the Starling isn't my favorite bird, I found myself mesmerized by the sheer number of them.
Something would startle them and they'd take off.
Not going too far, often only up onto the power lines, then when the coast was clear they'd come back and continue feeding.
Late in the afternoon, we headed out to Suzy's house and I had a chance to prowl around her yard. I just love, love, love, Suzy's yard! It's so eclectic.
I love the picture of the horse peeking around one side of the tree and the goat the other. I knew the horse was there but the goat was a surprise.
Sabrina is a rescue that Suzy takes care of.
"Peg, what are those green things on the ground there?" you ask.
Those are Osage Oranges or some people call them Hedge Apples. Most people find them an annoyance and of little or no value. Even the animals don't eat them. That's what I've always thought. I stumbled on a web page that says this, and I had to smile as I read it.
'If you Google Osage Orange you'll get some 50,000 hits. Approximately 49,997 of those sites will tell you the Osage Orange is not edible. Two of the three remaining sites, here and the one below, will say it is edible. The third one reports that we say it is edible but we must be wrong.'
Too funny. The guy goes on to say that it's only the seeds that are edible and taste somewhat like raw sunflower seeds. However, getting to those seeds 'is an aroma-filled process and not pleasant. Let's just say starving would help.'
I love this guy.
Although the fruit is of little value, the tree itself is extremely useful. Some bow makers think the Osage Orange's wood for making bows is far better than that of the Yew tree, which is held up to be the classic standard. The wood is also used to make guitars and you can get a yellow dye and tannins from it too.
There was a study to find old homesteads to excavate in the midwest and they thought to use old wells as possible homestead locators but found old Osage Orange trees were more indicative of a former homestead nearby. That says something else about the usefulness of this tree.
Suzy has two American Paint horses. Super Lucky Gal, or Lucky for short, is 20 years old and the mother of the other horse. Go Man's Jazzy Rebel, Jazzy for short, is 14 years old. Aren't they just beautiful!
Ginger and I continued the tour of Suzy's yard. You're going to see a couple of instances where I can't decide which view I like best, so you're going to see them both.
Bob, Suzy's neighbor, does wood carving and did these for her. "I wanted to keep as much as I could to help with soil erosion," Suzy told me. "And because they were hollow, it gave me a place to put my plants in the summertime."
Suzys' house.
Kansas is covered in yellow flowers! The Black-eyed Susan...
...and Tickseed Sunflower
Ginger and I caught a kitty snoozing under an old wagon. Ginger was curious and didn't bark....
...but the kitty wasn't sure about her and hissed. Since the cat didn't back down, I reeled Ginger in. I didn't want her to get tore up.
Suzy's granddaughter made her the white duplex birdhouse.
Inside Suzy's house is like a walk through time.
Suzy doesn't like to have her picture taken but she did let me get a couple of shots of her.
We took Suzy out to the local A&W for dinner that night, then she took us back to the campground where we sat around and gabbed for a little while.
Something whizzed past my face and landed on the patio. I looked but it didn't move so I concluded it was just a leaf.
Itsy must have seen the leaf land too and a little gust of wind stirred it enough that she sprinted after it. She snorted as she tore the leaf apart and that's when I realized it wasn't a leaf at all! It was a dragonfly!
I let her have it. I figured he was probably already half-dead anyway since he let Itsy catch him.
I thought she was finished so I got up to get rid of him when he fluttered his wings again and Itsy wasn't having any of that! Nosiree! — and she bit him again!
I got the dragonfly and carried him over to the weeds and gave him a toss. On the way back to the RV I snapped a picture of Mike and Suzy.
"Did you see all the Robins?" Mike asked when I got back to the table.
"They're not Robins, they're Starlings. I watched them all day yesterday." Sometimes I think I know more than I actually do.
"They have red breasts," Mike said.
"Yeah, they're Robins," Suzy confirmed.
Now I thought they were both crazy. "Well maybe there was one or two mixed in there but I'm pretty sure most of 'em are Starlings."
Mike is often more patient with me than you might think he is. "No, it was a whole bunch of Robins."
About that time a bunch of them land near us. I'll just prove it to them, methinks, and I brought my camera up, zoomed in and Oh! My! Gosh! Eat my words! They were Robins! A whole flock of Robins! I've never before seen Robins flock. I knew they migrated and maybe flocking is a natural part of that, I just didn't know that they did.
"You're right!" I told Mike and Suzy. "They are Robins!"
My picture isn't the best but these are all Robins.
There were plenty of Starlings around too and sometimes they got mixed up. I'm guessing they're after the same food.
A little grass spider came to visit me. Not really. I think he was floating along on his webachute (that's a parachute for spiders) and I got in his way. He was getting extremely agitated at me as he kept trying to run away and I kept trying to turn him around to get a picture of his face. Finally he put his dukes up and stood still. Then I took his picture and let him go.
The next day Suzy's older sister Dixie and her husband Boots drove three hours to visit with Mike and Cork. Cork wasn't due for another day yet but Boots wanted to come early and do a little fishing at the family pond.
"I haven't seen Dixie in more than 30 years," Mike told me.
We went to dinner and I sat and listened as they shared family memories.
The next day Cork and Pam arrived. We let them get settled in and set up before we all piled in and talked for a while.
A lot of the discussion centered around family history.
It was decided that we would spend the afternoon touring a private collection of cars and other memorabilia.
"Wow! How did you arrange that?" you wonder.
Easy. The owner is Donnie, the brother to Dixie and Suzy!
Donnie owns a lot of cars and through the years we've visited his 'museum' many times. Mike even sold two cars to Donnie and I think one of them still lives here.
But I am not all that interested in cars, having lived on the Strip in Lake Ozark for many years and seen tons of fabulous cars during the annual Magic Dragon Car Show. Near the end of our life there I didn't even bother taking car pictures anymore because I didn't have anything to do with the pictures once I took them.
Donnie has collections of more things than you can imagine! And more things than I took pictures of.
He has two jukeboxes! Do I sound jealous? Maybe, I am. A little. It would be cool to own one.
He has old typewriters.
Motorcycles.
And car stuff all over the place.
Donnie employs a couple of people who keep his cars clean and running and take them out and drive them every week. Donnie won't have a car that doesn't run.
I managed to talk everyone into a group photo before we left and they insisted I be in it. I was not happy and tried to hide in the back row, without much success. You've met everyone.
Dixie and Boots bowed out of dinner with us and headed for home. We went to a local pub located in a historical building.
I'm tempted to breeze right on past and go on to what I want to talk about next but I can hear some of you in my head.
"What did you have?"
"How was the food?"
This was more than a month ago now, time is slipping away from me, and so are many of the details, much to my chagrin. I think I had a small pizza and it was okay. Knowing Mike, he probably had a burger.
That night, as I walked the girls, I managed to catch one of the huge grasshoppers that were so prolific at the edge of the RV park.
These are called Obscure Bird Grasshoppers, although the Missouri bug guide calls them Obscure Birdwing Grasshoppers.
They get the bird part of their name because they can fly long distances and if frightened will even fly up into the trees. And when they zing past your face they look like small birds. Okay, I made that part up.
I handled this guy for quite a while before he settled down enough for me to get some decent pictures.
Now, in identifying him, I find out that with their strong jaws, these guys can bite. And if you hold them just right, they can use their powerful hind legs to try to escape and the barbs can draw blood.
Sigh.
Oh to be so naive again. Will it stop me from catching one in the future? No way, Jose!
The next morning was Sunday and our last day in Iola. I walked the girls while we waited for it to be time to meet for breakfast with Suzy, Cork, and Pam.
I took my camera with me like I almost always do, and I was walking along the edge of the RV park looking for anything interesting to take pictures of. I heard a door open and a man steps into the doorway. "Good morning!" I call in my happy sing-songy voice. He just stood there and glared at me. I was puzzled. What in the world? I wondered and moved along a little. I glanced back and he's still standing there staring at me! He stood there quite a long time and finally I just ignored him. He probably thinks I won't clean up after the girls and he's letting me know he sees me, I thought. Well, the jokes on him because I always clean up after my girls. Even if I've forgotten a popper-picker-upper I'd go get one, come back, and pick it up. There were doggie nuggets there along the path I'd walked a few times but I'm not the only one who walked that route with a dog.
"Peg, is it possible that you were so wrapped up in taking pictures that you didn't see your girls do their business?" you ask.
I don't know. I try to always be aware of what they're doing but I suppose it's possible. I know it doesn't help any but if I did miss it, then I'm sorry.
After breakfast, we hit all three of Iola's cemeteries looking at and taking pictures of family headstones.
"I didn't know there were three cemeteries," Pam said. "I know where two of them are but where's the third one?"
We didn't know, but Suzy did. She not only knew where the cemeteries were, she knew where all the family plots were too.
Two of the cemeteries were in town, the third one, a county cemetery, was quite a ways out of town and I got some road pictures for you.
Mike and Cork's mother and grandparents are buried here along with Suzy's parents and some other relatives as well.
I let them go on in ahead of me...
...and I went on up the road to take wildflower pictures.
I was so intent on all the pretty yellow ones, I almost missed this one. I spent about an hour researching it, and I think it's Blue Sage also called Blue Salvia. It's the first time I've ever seen this wildflower.
Hey, I can still see you, you know.
Grass flowers.
Back at the RV, I sat at my computer workstation, writing and watching the squirrels run back and forth between the woods and the pecan tree that lives on the grounds of the RV park.
Next time we'll head to Minnesota.
Let's call this one done!
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