Life and Death on the Prairie

As quite a few people have noted, there is a dearth of blogging and visiting and commenting this summer. I was muttering to myself about it the other night as I was looking at my comments - saying that I was missing the friends who usually come to visit. Care Bear was listening. Nothing escapes Care Bear's amazing mind. (If you haven't visited her new blog yet, it is really fun).

She said, "Well, you should go to all of your friends' blogs and tell them to come over to visit."

I replied, "No, I can't do that - they'd think I was whining."

She quickly came back with, "Well, Grandma, you ARE whining!"

Oh, my - -

But thanks for coming over to visit! I love hearing from each and every one of you.


One of the reasons we took the trip to the prairie last Saturday was because we'd heard that the wild flowers were profuse and you know how much we love flowers!

About the only town you encounter on this trip is the little town of Ault. I love this sign in the middle of the town.






I love the sight of cattle grazing on the grass. We have several feed lots in our area and it is not my idea of how cattle should have to live. It is truly disgusting and smells are outrageous. But to see these beautiful creatures enjoying the succulent grass was peaceful to me.






We never did find a profusion of flowers that we were promised, but we did come upon these lovely flowers. As I got closer to take the picture, I realized both of them were thistles. It occurred to me again how God can make something beautiful out of something painful.

The wind was blowing so hard that I couldn't catch the flower until several attempts.

It's a bit fuzzy, but I love the ladybug hanging on for dear life. Can you see it?




As we stood on that overlook of the valley, we found this variety.

We went home a different route and came across an amazing variety of flowering cacti - fabulous.

I am quite certain this is the largest anthill I've encountered - what industrious little creatures God created! If you enlarge the second one, you can see them scurrying into that hole.

Appropriately, the last thing we saw was this really old, small cemetery.

When I was a kid, there was a small, very old cemetery at the bottom of the hill from my grandparents' farm. We would go in there and visit the gravesites, imagining what it was that took a whole family in one fell sloop. I felt the same fascination as I walked around and checked out the dates and the names. And then there was the wonderful one I visited on St. Simons Island that you'll recall if you've been with me for awhile.

There was a great variety of stones. Quite a few of them just had these little brass markers.




Some of them had the marker, but family had at some point added a headstone. And this one had wooden outlines for each of the three graves.




There was this weathered wooden one that had faded writing on it, undecipherable. But someone had been here recently enough to put a silk flower, unfaded yet.

This was fairly elaborate, compared to the others.

A whole family - 2 of the children didn't live to adulthood.

This one had been visited fairly recently as well, but the glass enclosed gifts were very faded.

I cut off the date, but this was a four year old, one of two that I found.

This one was very beautiful, with another very young person.

I hope you have enjoyed our little trip to the prairie.