PHOTO HUNT SATURDAY: TRIANGLES

PHOTO HUNT SATURDAY: RIGS

Photo credit goes to my daughter Jamie, 2007, she has the nicest telephoto...

I couldn't find this week's photo hunt theme...so I made one up. I'm "tard"....(gettin' ready for my niece's bridal shower, lotsa work to do!) so here's a cool photo of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico...it's awesome and wish there were more so we wouldn't have to depend on loons of the highest order for our greatest source of oil, and our president would perhaps stop bowing to the KING OF SAUDI ARABIA for godsakes!

I would love to tour one of these, but I'll have to settle for specials on "Dirty Jobs" or some show like that to learn instead of seeing it with my own eyes. I respect the guys who tough it out on these for a month or more at a time!

PHOTO HUNT SATURDAY: Hands

Go HORNETS!

(My son's hands belong to #53)

The hands that belong to my daughter and son-in-law; taken on their wedding day.

PINK PHOTO HUNT SATURDAY: FOUR

Go to WHISTLESTOP CAFE for more PHOTO HUNT SATURDAY photo partipants!

Four beautiful dahlias from last summer. These were in a storybook-type garden where my niece wanted some of her senior pictures taken. A gorgeous, still pond was in the yard with a beautiful curved footbridge that led to a small island on which was a welcoming weeping willow tree, a bench and some flowers. I could imagine sitting out there with a book as a gentle breeze blew. Back in the yard were many flower borders and more than a couple flower gardens and a gorgeous vegetable garden as well. The yard was like a little paradise and the homeowners certainly had a gift for landscaping their gem of a yard. Pretty nice to look at in the throes of late winter in Michigan!

PHOTO HUNT SATURDAY: Space

Photo courtesy of my daughter, Jamie. It is of a particuarly gorgeous Alabama sunset from her perch on top of a mountain where they live.

PHOTO HUNT SATURDAY: Thankful

THANKFUL: FOR THE CROP FARMER WHO PLANS, SOWS, CULTIVATES, WORRIES, PRAYS, FINDS PARTS, FIXES BROKEN EQUIPMENT, PLANTS, CULTIVATES, SPRAYS, PRAYS SOME MORE AND REAPS THE HARVEST. AND HE BEGINS PLANNING FOR NEXT YEAR BEFORE HE PUTS THE CORN HEAD ON THE COMBINE; NO MATTER HOW BAD THE MARKETS OR THE PRICE OF FUEL. A FARMER MUST CONSTANTLY MUST DO ALL HUMANLY POSSIBLE TO GET THAT CROP IN--IN SPITE OF THE WEATHER, THE GOVERNMENT, AND PESKY NEIGHBORS WHO COMPLAIN ABOUT THE DUST OR THE SMELL--OR ABOUT THE MUD FROM THEIR TIRES MAKING A MESS IN THE ROAD?

The word thankful always draws the picture to mind of harvest, and I would like to say that I am personally thankful for the hard-working farm families who make possible this land of plenty. Farming is a thankless job sometimes for many reasons but when you live out in the fields...

and are able watch close up the long, long hours the men are in the fields, what a couple hours of bad weather can do to a crop that's been maturing for a couple of months, those seasons of unceasing labor: spring, summer, and fall: I can say that I'm thankful there are families whose men choose with loving hearts to carry on the family tradition, in spite of the gamble they take.

I am also thankful for their support system: their families, especially the wives, who help with the planting, worrying and praying, cultivating, and the harvest with meals taken to the field, running the grain trucks to and from the fields and to and from the grain elevators...all the many, many things they do and sacrifices of free time to help their men with this important job.

Where would we be without the farmer?

PHOTO HUNT SATURDAY: Warm!

Photo by Jamie B



Ahhh....this theme today is cruel! It's in the twenties, the wind is howling outside the window and we're in the middle of a snowstorm! But at least I can think about the salty breeze, the sunshine and soft, sugary sands of the beaches at Gulf Shores and wish I were there! (Photo credit goes to my daughter ;~)

Saturday Photo Hunt: Nautical

Moonrise behind the Whitefish Point lighthouse in Chippewa County, MI

A gigantic iron ore freighter glides by...

Don't let her fool you: although beautiful, Lake Superior doesn't give up her dead...

Families left these memorials for their loved ones that went down with the Edmund Fitzgerald. Click on photo for a better view.

Whitefish Point lighthouse in silhouette at sunset

Photo Credits go to my daughter, Jamie....she's quite the budding photographer. My favorite is the one above: a silhouette of the Whitefish Point Lighthouse: the oldest active lighthouse on this lake, was shot at sunset on Whitefish Point on Lake Superior in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It is also the location of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum.

All the other photos were taken at the same location. The bittersweet homemade memorials are from their families to a few of the local sailors who perished on the "Edmund Fitzgerald" that went down in the gales of November in lake in 1975, before she could even send out a single distress signal. The legend of this lake is many lost sailors and buried ships. There's also an excellent museum in Sault Sainte Marie that you would enjoy and there are lighthouses and many historic markers all along Lake Superior. Even more eye-opening is to visit this lake in November when the winds or gales are blowing, sometimes you can hardly believe a sailor would be brave enough to be on the slippery cold deck of a ship, when you can hardly stand up on shore!

PHOTO HUNT SATURDAY: BRIDGES

The MIGHTY Mackinac!

PHOTO HUNT SATURDAY: Furry

Amish farm work horses in a snowy pasture one morning....

PHOTO HUNT SATURDAY: Chipped!

See the chipping paint? This is the only remaining old outbuilding on the place. When we still had the chickens, this was their home. You can still see the old nests through the window, as well as their waterer.

When we first moved here, there were many old barns or buildings, each in their own state of disrepair. We were told that when the farm was established, a log cabin was built, then the farm buildings. The house actually came last because it was more important to get your farm underway than it was to have a real house. So the barns were many years older than the house.

The wind out here and the weather had done away with any of the structures being viable, we would have saved them if we could. One by one, we've had to, for safety reasons, get rid of building after building. But we've kept this, the dear old milkhouse, even though it leans somewhat and the roof shingles (all shakes made of wood) blew away long ago. We threw some tar paper up, made it a new door, whatever we've had to do to keep it here as it's one of the first things you see when you pull into the driveway. I hope it lasts for many more years.

Saturday Photo Hunt Theme: AFTERMATH

This is the aftermath of a good Spring storm! There'a double rainbow in this photo, but it's hard to see the second one, it was much more pale. The second rainbow starts just to the left of the tallest tree in the photo.

The earth is drenched and smells very satisfied, the birds are happily singing from the safety of their nests having just eaten their fill of fat earthworms. The grass responded to the rain and has turned up the intensity of its hue-- even greener than it was before the storm; the seeds the farmer has planted in this field--just days earlier--are bathing in the moist and warm darkness, softening up in the fresh-smelling earth, just waiting for that tendril to break through the seed's tender skin and point its way toward heaven.

This photo hunt is from Sandi of WHISTLESTOP CAFE COOKING, a blog you might like to visit for great old-fashioned southern cooking recipes, here's the link below!

Enjoy....your Saturday, your weekend, and your family and photo hunt aftermath.

http://whistlestopcooking.blogspot.com/

And as a bonus, here's a photo of the aftermath of a visit from good old JACK FROST...just to keep it real here, and seasonal! This weed, hanging full with a harvest of frost, stands in the same field as pictured above, near that old sign: just six months later. Doesn't it make you shiver?

Click to enlarge and notice the sparkling snow behind the weeds. I have never in my life seen frost this heavy and I spent an hour or so just going all over the yard taking pictures of it. I will share more of those photos in a post all their own. They ended up being some of the prettiest pictures I think I've ever taken!