Come and Gone

This collection of sunny yellow posies were all taken during a recent visit to the Old Salt's brother in Columbia, Missouri.  I was so surprised to find this field full of blooming sunflowers in mid October.  I have no idea what the other yellow blooms are but I found them along the riverbank at Eagles Bluff Wildlife Preserve.  

Fall has come and gone if this giant Maple tree is any example.  This collage contains photos of the same tree taken two weeks apart.  This Maple sits in the field behind my house. The shots were taken at different times of day from different spots in my backyard. 

The leaves have blown into my yard and those of my neighbors to be raked up and placed at the curb for collection.  If you enlarge this photo, you will notice that the bare tree is still the favorite resting place of all the robins that feed off the insects in this field.  

While autumn is not my favorite time of year,  I have to admit I am more partial to the look of this tree when the bare limbs are silhouetted against the evening sky.    

Linking to:

 Mosaic Mondays

Mellow yellow Monday  

Sit a Spell

   It has been a somewhat strange week around our house.  Several situations have conspired to change our normal nocturnal habits.  As a result the Old Salt and I have been up and about in the early morning most of this week.  I posted a few days ago about our visit to Lions lake to photograph the sunrise.  This morning we took advantage of the cooler weather and went for a stroll around the historic district downtown.  

I noticed many of these old houses have an inviting space where folks can get together with their friends and neighbors and sit a spell over a cool drink. 

Grab your glass of ice tea or a tall pitcher of sangria, sit back and enjoy a few of the relaxing spots we discovered during our early morning walk. 

Based on the two streets we walked today it certainly looks as if white, red or a combination of the two are the most popular colors in this part of town.  

This bench happens to be right outside my own front door.  Each of you are invited to stop by any time and sit a spill.  Heck, you may even find my old fashion southern iced tea to your liking.   

Linking to:

Mosaic Monday  

Ruby Tuesday 

Rednesday

Airy Old Barn

If your'e a regular here you know we travel to Omaha often to visit my sister.  On a trip about two years ago, a late start had us expecting to hit downtown Omaha during the height of rush hour.  My sister suggested we take a different route that would add some extra miles but avoid traffic.   During that detour I noticed an old barn beside the road that I could see light through in many places.  Conditions that day prevented my getting any decent photos so I planed to stop again on the return trip. Well, best laid plans of mice and men ...as they say, that didn't happen.  Nor did quite a few more trips.  I was afraid that by the time I actually got to make that detour again the old place would have fallen down and been hauled away.

Last March the hoped for detour finally happened and I was delighted to find the old relic still standing.  It sits close to the road on highway 50 outside the town of Weeping Waters, Nebraska.

The Old Salt swears that one day I will get arrested for trespassing in pursuit of an old barn.  But, this wasn't the day.    

The barn was close to a house.  So, we pulled into the driveway and knocked on the door to ask permission. Finding no one home and since we had to drive right by the barn to leave, we paused and  I snapped away.  

I said this old place had light shining through it everywhere.
I didn't go inside, I snapped all my shots from the open doorway.


I'm going to assume this old barn was replaced by these two that were a few hundred feet behind it.

Linking to:
 Barn Charm 
Mosaic Monday 

Restroom Art

I have written several posts about the family outing we had last week at Onondaga Cave State Park .  One can be found at Color Connection and the other at Pink Saturday.  

I'm amazed that a few hours spent enjoying nature and the sunshine could give me so much  material for this blog.  But, the last place I expected to find something blog worthy was in the restrooms.  When I entered the Ladies' restroom and found a mural covering the stalls I knew I had to find a way into the Men's room as well. 

I don't usually take a camera into restrooms so I had to go back to our camp for my camera and the Old Salt.  Between us, we captured the following: 

 Front of the Ladies' room stalls 

Each restroom had one of these plaques acknowledging the artists 

Lets start with the ladies room.  Only the medal partitions were painted. The concrete block walls were painted white.  Please keep in mind it 

was not easy taking pictures in such a confined space. 

 Stall One only had a medal wall covered in flowers.  

The toilet paper holder was painted as the center of one bloom. 

 Stall Two had both walls covered in butterflies. 

I never did figure out what was supposed to be on the inside of the door,

 but, it was such a dark color I could not get a good shot of it.  

 Stall Three had a brightly colored door and more blooms. 

Now for the Mens Room 

 Here we have the front and outer wall of the two stalls 

The door of the first stall was just the dark paint seen here.  

There was no design.  Since this artwork was done as a school field trip 

I'm guessing they ran out of time. 

 The door inside the first stall had a fisherman at sunset.
 A large duck was flying by on the inside wall.  

The inside of the door of the second stall was covered with the orange leaves in the bottom corner of this collage.  The two inside walls were painted with the fish scenes. 

I don't know how many students worked on this project or their ages. I have to admit  I liked the artwork in the Ladies' room better than the Men's.  The Men's room was small and dark to begin with and the artwork seemed to make the room seem smaller and darker to me.  But, for work done by high school students I was impressed.  I also have to applaud the person who conceived the idea for this project and the effort that went into getting permission from the state to do the work.  

I am linking to Monday Murals 

And Mosaic Monday 

Watermelon Carvings

Years ago my sister and I owned a catering business together.  We catered mostly wedding parties but my favorite kind of function was the smaller house party where we could get very inventive and creative with the menu.  That small catering business lead me to buy and open a  family style restaurant where I served a Sunday Brunch Buffet so I could continue to do those creative types of dishes.

One of my favorite things to do (in season) was a watermelon basket.  I could get rather creative with how the melon was carved.  But, recently a friend sent me one of those e-mail forwards that can be very popular.  This one featured a variety of carved watermelons that were entered into a contest at a watermelon festival that was supposedly held somewhere in Italy.  I googled the information and found these same photos posted on dozens of blogs but after much trying could not find the original source.  

So please note: these are not my photos and I can not give credit to the carvers or the photographer.  I can not even give credit to the place where this festival was supposedly held.  But, these pics are just too good not to share. Since there are so many I have but them in a collage or mosaic form.   

Of all these carvings I feel that I could only do justice to trying to copy these last  four

So, does this inspire you to head to the fruit stand for a nice big watermelon?

How creative could you be with one of these wonderful summer treats?  

I am linking to Mosaic Monday