Flower anomalies

So over my lunch hour, which was really just half an hour, I went home to let the dog out to do his business. While he was doing his business, I walked around the house and noticed a couple of flower anomalies.

When I think of the word "anomaly" I'm usually thinking about celestial stuff (meaning stuff in space, and lingo in Star Trek) but that is the first word that popped into my mind when I saw these two flowers.

Right in front of the window well on the south side of the house, no where near any pansies that I ever remembered planting, was this lone purple pansy.

I gently weeded some of the clover away from it to give it a fighting chance.

And then, as I rounded the corner of the house, what do I see snaking out from under some of my alyssum but a single moss rose.

I didn't "weed" the alyssum to give the moss rose a fighting chance like I did the clover for the pansy. I figured they could figure it out between the two of them!

I love flower anomalies. I like to think it's a message: When the growing gets tough, the tough get growing!

Happy Friday!

Dawn

Bread and beer basket

Earlier today, I tweeted a fact about wheat and barley production in North Dakota, calling our state the bread and beer basket of the world. Okay, maybe "of the world" was a little strong. But we're definitely number one when it comes to the production of wheat and barley, in these United States.

Statistics from that National Agriculture Statistics Service North Dakota Field Office pegs our barley production at 24 percent of the nation's production and hard red spring wheat at 45 percent.

According to the Beer page on Wikipedia, "Beer is the world's most widely consumed^[1] and probably oldest^[2][3][4][5] alcoholic beverage; it is the third most popular drink overall, after water and tea."

And according to the Wheat page on Wikipedia, "Wheat was a key factor enabling the emergence of city-based societies at the start of civilization because it was one of the first crops that could be easily cultivated on a large scale, and had the additional advantage of yielding a harvest that provides long-term storage of food."

I don't know about you, but that makes me feel pretty darn proud of our North Dakota farmers.

And don't even get me started on the amount of durum our North Dakota farmers produce to make the oodles of noodles on our grocery store shelves. (Okay maybe just a little -- our North Dakota farmers raise 62 percent of the durum grown in the nation!)

I raise my beer glass, my garlic bread and my Rigatoni to you, North Dakota farmers!

Dawn

Wordless Wednesday: Moonie juxtaposition

My moonbeam coreopsis and my glow-in-the-dark moon garden thingy.

St. Francis and the flower miracle

My family got me a St. Francis statue to put in my garden for my birthday this past spring. My husband placed it in a spot right next to an ash tree in my flower bed. I thought it was a good spot, because I wasn't having much luck with the blanket flower and coreopsis I had planted there a few years before, to grow. The ground in the area was pretty barren and I thought a statue might draw attention away from the fact that there were very few flowers.

Until now.

If you are unfamiliar with St. Francis, learn more about him on Wikipedia.

In a nutshell, St. Francis of Assisi is the patron saint of animals and the environment. It isn't uncommon to see his statue in garden settings.

He sure did my garden a world of good. Look at them now!

The flowers sprang up everywhere around the statue, and in glorious shades of yellow and orange. And this was even after the ground got a little overspray on it when my husband was spraying for dandelions.

I hemmed and hawed this spring about what to plant there, so I didn't. These all came up with no help from me. In fact, when they first started coming up, I thought they must be weeds, because nothing had grown there for a couple of years. But, since I didn't have any ideas about what to plant, I decided to leave them.

The only explanation I have is divine intervention; this little flower miracle on My Two Acres.

Dawn

A flax view and a thank you!

It looks like water from a distance...

But when you get closer....

You can see it is a field of flax. Awesome, isn't it?

What is flax used for? Learn more at this Flax Page link from NDSU. And more on Wikipedia.

This wonderful view is just down the road a piece from My Two Acres. We also still have a couple of cattle producers to the south (and a little east) of us. But the city keeps growing, and I suspect that, in time these little dots of rural living will give way to urbanization as well. I really can't fault people for moving to the outskirts, because I am one of the guilty.

I grew up on a farm, and although I went through that, "The farm is so boring, I need to live in the city" phase, I really started to feel the need for a little space between me and the next guy once my husband and I started raising kids.

What I will fault people for, however, is moving to the outskirts and then complaining about the dust or noise or smell from a nearby farm.

Combines kick up dust.

The south wind brings the smell of cowpies into our yard.

If the weather is right, the seeder or the combine WILL be running at dark thirty.

They are all necessary, basic parts of the whole farming process.

I'm just thankful that there are farmers out there willing to take the risks, put in the long hours and weather the elements to put food on our tables. Hope you are too!

Dawn

Wordless Wednesday: Dragonfly still life

Life gets in the way

Isn't it funny, how sometimes life just gets in the way of blogging? That happened to me this past week. I had stuff to say, but I had other stuff to do, and the doin' got in the way of sayin'!

I would not be blogging today if it weren't for the fact that my jury duty, um, duty, got cut short. I reported at 8:30 a.m. along with my other fellow jurors. But when the judge came in at 9 a.m., he said that, because some new information had come to light, the trial would not be held, so we were excused.

On his way out he said, "So now you can enjoy this wonderfully hot day," or something of that nature. Well, I'm not really enjoying it, because I'm inside, but since the building's air conditioning is still out, it is not much cooler inside than it is outside.

It's 93 outside....

It's 86 inside.

And I'm really thinking an air-conditioned courtroom listening to prosecutors and defenders do their thing would be a much better way to spend the day.

But I'm a stubborn, old Swede, and I don't like to take my work home with me, so while everyone else is working from their homes in (hopefully) air-conditioned comfort, I'm running a fan and trying to make small movements, so I don't break out into a huge sweat! (Oh, what the heck, it's just me, anyway! I can sweat and still no one will see me sweat!)

I have to admit that I'm taking a certain amount of joy in being the last "man" standing! On days when I have a migraine, or my joints ache, or my right knee keeps saying to me, "Not today, you old fool!" I feel like a tired out old woman. But sitting here, doing my work in conditions that even men in the building have deemed "too much" makes me think that I am stronger than I thought I was, and I have more resilience than I expected I would.

It kind of reminds me of that line from Pooh's Grand Adventure, when Christopher Robin tells Pooh, "You're braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."

Except when Pooh tries to give his Hundred Acre Wood buddy Piglet a pep talk, he tells Piglet, "Just remember, you're bigger than....a big leaf."

Sometimes, it seems, life getting in the way is a very good thing. And sometimes, I'm bigger than a big leaf!

Dawn

Wordless Wednesday: Knick-knack paddy whack, give the dog a bone

Sometimes happiness is just as simple as a good rawhide bone to chew on!

Dawn

Rake bonding

We have had plenty of moisture this summer, and it seems like the rains come about the time the grass at My Two Acres really needs a trim. So when it finally did get cut, the clippings all over the lawn were pretty thick. We don't have a bagger for the lawn mower, so the cherubs ended up raking for a couple of hours during the day, and then my son and I raked some more in the evening.

I gotta tell you, there's nothing like a little time behind a couple of rakes to help you bond with your teenage son!

In fact, it was probably one of the best times I have had in a long time. We talked about family, about summer jobs, about how he doesn't have a cell phone or get to do as much stuff as friends his age get to do, federal regulatory creep on farmers (I' m not kidding!) and all kinds of things. And after we were done, we sat on the back step with the dog and just kind of hung out and jawed about how goofy our dog is.

It's one of those rare moments that I'm going to remember for a long time, mostly because I really felt like I was listening to him and he was listening to me. And it was all good.

With a teenager, I don't know how often that happens.

But I'm grateful for it.

Dawn

After a rain

You know, it's not like we need a lot of moisture in North Dakota right now, but there is something so wonderful about the smell of the outdoors right after a rain. It smells a little like dirt, which just reminds me of growing up on the farm, which makes me feel right as rain, which...I think you get the picture.

My tiger lilies looked pretty awesome after the rain, so I just had to take their picture!

Hope you all have a safe and wonderful weekend!!

Dawn

I talked with a flooded rancher

I did an interview with a rancher who lives along the Missouri River. This rancher has has been ranching and farming for 40 years, starting when he was just 13.

Thirteen! My son is 13.

But this farmer, this soft-spoken entrepreneur and self-described "crazy man" who was planting 22-inch row corn way before it was cool, who has been reading, studying and learning for the last 40 years, to be the best rancher he could be, could lose it all if the Missouri River doesn't recede pretty substantially before freeze up.

Here is just a portion of the interview I did with Keith Suchy of rural Mandan. His home pasture, the place where he winters his cattle, has been under at least four to five feet of water since May. He is hoping he won't have to liquidate the herd, but if he does, he says simply, "I hope I can find a home for them."

I'm hoping things turn around quickly for Keith, and many others like him, who have lost so much in this summer's flood.

Dawn

Wordless Wednesday: Sundays

From the mind of my 9-year-old. It's always something new!

What do you do?

It didn't occur to me until I read an article by Jason Jacobson in Prairie Business magazine this morning, that I don't have a good answer for the question, "What do you do?" I have, on many occasions, been asked, but my sputtering response was probably pretty boring. And if I remember correctly, there weren't many follow-up questions to my sputter, and the conversation kind of died. (And since I'm not a very good conversationalist, I can use all the help I can get!)

The concept is simple, really. In the article, Jacobson relates an encounter with a chemist that really made an impact on him.

And the way the chemist helped him get it was through a simply understood analogy. It's definitely worth reading. Most importantly, Jacobson points out that every story is interesting. You just have to tell it in a way that everyone can understand.

So I'm going to work on that. I would love to hear how some of you describe what you do, to others.

Dawn

Things you do on the first day of the month

I don't know if you do this kind thing too, but instead of new year resolutions, I realized not too long ago that I was subconsciously making new month resolutions. I guess for someone who really hates -- and subsequently refuses to make -- new year resolutions, this is the next best thing. Smaller time frame, less chance for distraction, that kind of thing. And instead of once a year, I get to "start over" on all the resolutions I failed to keep every month. For people with short attention spans, and lots of "do-over" needs, I highly recommend this approach.

So, in honor of it being the first day of July and all, I brought all those subconscious resolutions to my conscious mind and I thought I would share them with you....

1. I am going to lose those five pounds that somehow glommed onto me in January and decided to take up ("they" think, anyway) permanent residence. I was thinking of taking them on a drive, and then accidentally leaving them somewhere so they couldn't find me again.

2. I am going to be more patient when I think I am in a much bigger hurry than anyone else could possibly be.

3. I am going to spend more time outside. (Now that we actually have had a few days that are above 50 degrees and not rainy, I'm thinking this is one I will DEFINITELY be able to keep.) And I am going to cajole my children into spending more time outside as well. We might just have to sleep outside.

4. I am going to laugh more easily. Since I'm not a brain surgeon, I don't need to be so serious all the time. And maybe, just maybe, brain surgeons are really funny people when they aren't performing brain surgery.

5. I'm going to be more helpful. (This goes back to #2's "I'm in a hurry" patience thing.) Instead of saying, "I don't have time to do that," I'm just gonna do it.

Whew! I'm exhausted! (Okay, not really. Maybe my #6 should be: I'm going to be a little less overly-dramatic!)

Do you have any new month resolutions? If so, I'd love to hear them!

Dawn

Hawk show

Yesterday, I complained about not seeing my hawk friend. Today, I got quite a show!

As I was approaching the intersection that has the light pole, he/she landed. I quickly turned onto an approach and photographed it...

Then, as I started driving again, it took off from its perch, swooped across the road and down to the ground and grabbed its prey. I was like, "OH WOW! THAT WAS AWESOME!"

But, I couldn't stop because cars were coming, so this is the best shot I could get. The circled blurry spot is the hawk, sitting on its prey. It looked right at me as I drove by, almost as if to say, "Here you go! Take your best shot."

Sometimes, it helps to publicly complain, eh? I only wish my shot could have been better!


Dawn