Summer's glory

Summer is in all its glory here in the Black Hills. The abundant rain has led to a profusion of flowers and greenery everywhere you look, even though we are almost into August! We are spending a week by Rockerville at Rushmore Shadows Campground. The purple flowers are bee balm (monera), the round white blobs are some kind of fungal growth under the oak leaves, the purple coneflower has a dark brown top, the white flower is a sego lily (its huge! and perfect!) and I took a picture of the very precious wild strawberry. When I ate it, it was like an explosion of strawberry taste; very lovely and sweet, unlike any strawberry I've eaten at the store. They are very tiny and hard to find, however. Ron and I have been picking wild raspberries; they seem to like to grow by the burnt downed pine trees in the fire areas. John came Sunday and prospected with us - you can see we found a little gold! I kept the fine stuff and he got the vial to show off. Ron took a pretty good picture of me so I thought I'd show it, although I'm squinting a little in the sun. This last picture is by request; for Ron's birthday in March, I gave him a quartz rock and a bunch of little metal figurines - a metal detector man, a snake, a cactus, a coyote, a wagon wheel, etc. Ron glued them on the rock and then melted solder in the crack by the metal detector man to imitate gold. It looks a lot better in person, you'll have to stop by and see it on the fireplace mantel.

Thunderstorm!

Wow, we really had a big storm move through last night! At the beginning of the storm the lightning bolts were streaking down right by our house with earsplitting thunder. The house was vibrating with each one. Then the wind-driven hail and rain came. Thank goodness the hail wasn't big and didn't last long. But we had lots of rain all at once - the rain gauge at our neighbors measured 2.25 inches. So lots of flooding at our subdivision and in town along the Fall River. Behind our house is an intermittent creek that runs from a spring north of us in wet years. Well, because of the drought it hasn't been running for a long time yet this morning it was a raging torrent! The picture I took was from the living room window and shows how red the water is from all the soils washing into it from the hills above (our dirt is light brown). But because of Ron's good engineering and construction (and a little luck) we didn't have any flooding in our house or any destruction of our driveways. My tomatoes are a little flat and the petunias got pruned some, but I'm hoping that will encourage them to flower more and produce (the tomatoes were growing but not flowering up to this point - a little tough love from mother nature might do the trick!)

4th ofJuly in Lennox, SD

We visited Ron's kids and grandkids in Lennox over the 4th of July. The sunrise was pretty spectacular with all of the smoke from Canadian wildfires. Camping, swimming, fishing and geocaching at Newton Hills State Park was the plan for the first few days. Myra and Katelynd got swimming lessons from Grandma and Grandpa, and Katelynd caught a VERY big white-bellied bullhead she named Bob. On the 4th I entered the 5K Firecracker Race, but walked it. I had about 10-15 people behind me at the finish! :) The parade was next, and little Myra made out like a bandit with all the candy they threw at her! At the end, she also got a little ride in Grandpa Gene and Grandma Peggy's stagecoach. Their horses were so beautiful - Dolly and Polly. Its a wonder how Dolly can see with all that curly hair! Myra zonked out for a while - her necklace was her horsie bridle and she would gallop around, so full of energy! I forgot my tripod so couldn't get any good fireworks pictures, but did manage to get the fireflies in action; if you look closely at the last picture you'll see green streaks zooming through.