Milo

Most crops are either gone or are ugly by the time fall comes. Wheat already has been harvested by July. Combines are mowing down corn and sunflowers. Sunflowers are the most beautiful crop when they are flowering, but they are the ugliest when they are ready to harvest. No field looks worse than a field of drying sunflowers. The stalks and heads are shriveled and brown, a very depressing sight — except to the one who is about to reap his harvest. Corn is not impressive in the fall, either, although shocks of corn make wonderful fall decorations. I love to look at corn when it’s green, stalks and tassels waving in the wind, but dead stalks aren’t the same. Fall corn looks best after it’s harvested. The money is out of the field and into the elevator.

Milo, however, is at its most beautiful just before it’s harvested. The seed heads range in color from purple to every shade of brown and tan. Several years ago, a friend gave me a bunch of corn and milo stalks for an outdoor fall bouquet. It was beautiful. The squirrels thought so, too. My bouquet didn’t last very long under the squirrels’ admiring attention.

Apparently, milo is not a good bird feed ingredient since squirrels love it so. But I don’t mind feeding squirrels. I think they are funny and enjoy watching them. Anything that makes me laugh is worth attracting.

Lavender

I love the light and colors of fall. As the nights lengthen, the purples, reds, oranges and yellows of autumn take over from summer’s greens (if we have enough rain) and tans (when we don’t, a more usual condition). I enjoy those deeper jewel tones. I love spring, but its pastel palette isn’t intense enough for my preference. Give me the stronger colors of autumn, the last colorful explosion before the muted white and blue palette of winter.

Autumn’s low light dusts the landscape with a luminescent glow. Light in the fall is more beautiful than light in any other season. Or maybe we appreciate it more as we watch the days fade away ever more quickly into long nights?

This plant may be named “lavender”, but I love its pure purple.

Long live fall!

Sunset

Many of the best sunsets occur when a storm is on its way. Such was the case Tuesday night. I watched rain clouds forming when I came home that night. I had to find a good vantage point from which to photograph the sunset. Finally, I stood on an Interstate overpass and aimed at a farmstead on the horizon.

The camera didn’t do justice to the sunset, so I began to enhance the photo in Photoshop. I used both cooling and warming filters, then dodged and burned the image until it became what you see now. Ansel Adams had to spend hours in the darkroom enhancing his images; I’m only following in his footsteps.

Shooting at the car show, yeah

Hubby and I attended our community’s annual car and motorcycle shows Saturday. I love photographing the vintage vehicles. I love the bright colors and the sculptural forms. Saturday’s light and weather were perfect, a true photographer’s heaven.

However, car shows have one very great disadvantage: flocks of people. Several great shots were ruined by a pair of inopportunely-appearing legs or other body part. Sigh.

In the hubcap photo’s case, I wanted the legs to appear in the foreground. This picture just says “car show” to me. Here are the brick street (the inspiration for my blog’s title), the cars and the people enjoying the cars. And I think the elongated reflection of the man walking past is funny.
This hood ornament on the flaming hood is the kind of image I’m always searching for. I love the bright colors and I’d like to intensify them further. I enjoy the hood ornament’s streamlined form and the contrast of chrome with the bright paint. The hood ornament bird seems to be swimming with the colors streaming out in its wake.

On safari

We were in the middle of nowhere on our Sunday outing. Hubby decided he would dress in his safari hat. I’m not sure where he thought the lions were, but he looks like the big game hunter in this hat.

We were more likely to see a rattler than any kind of big cat. Fortunately, no snakes made their appearance.

We were walking in a ravine when he stepped into a side gulch and told me to snap this photo.

This hat was ironically a gag gift in a game of “Dirty Santa” at Christmas 2005. He wasn’t supposed to like it, but he certainly does. He had chances to take away other people’s gifts, which I thought were a better choice, but he would have nothing to do with anything but this hat.

Do all men have a “big game hunter” hidden deep inside?

Range on the home

Hubby and I went on an all-day outing with our friend Tonya yesterday. On our return, I saw this shed. The pattern of the roof’s shadow on the side of the building attracted me and I pulled off.

“My wife is attracted to these old buildings,” Hubby explained, “and is always having to stop to take pictures of them.” When we pulled into the drive, we found that the shed’s door was blocked by a range. Strange.

Oh, well. I’ve seen lots of strange objects in abandoned buildings.

I got out to take the pictures I desired. As I circled the building, he yelled out the window, “You could call this picture ‘Range on the Home’!”

Of course, that called for a song:

Oh, give me a range
Where the buffaloes are strange
And the deer are all deranged
Where often is heard
A tune with new words
And your ears are not safe,
No way.

Range, range on the home
Where the deer are all alone
Where often is heard
A tune with new words
And your ears are not safe,
No way.

Hubby said that this was awful doggerel, but he was laughing so hard that he could hardly read it.

Calling 'The General Lee'

While on a photo safari the other day, we saw this building on a hilltop. It looked interesting, so we went looking for a road to it.

We found the road — and a "bridge out" sign. We couldn't resist seeing what this "bridge out" looked like, so we drove around the barricade. When we saw orange flags in front of a dip in the road, we got out and walked to the bottom.

The road stopped. It was gone.



We gingerly approached the gap, being careful to stay clear of the crumbling edges. The only evidence left of the departed bridge was an exposed culvert. The area had received some heavy rains which apparently overwhelmed the culvert and took out the dirt encasing it.



Parts of the culvert had been unearthed and pushed downstream.



Where was The General Lee, The Dukes of Hazzard’s Dodge Charger, when we needed it? We could have soared right over that obstacle if we’d had that famous TV car on call. And if it came with Bo and Luke Duke, so much the better! Hubby would probably insist on Daisy Duke, though, and her presence just would not do. Guess I’ll have to pass on the Brothers Duke, but flying over the obstacle in that car would have been great.

A girl can dream, can’t she?

Dust Bowl Blues

Hubby and I watched American Experience: Surviving the Dust Bowl a few nights ago. Grandma's stories of life in the Dust Bowl years returned vividly to mind, made more real by the footage of that time.

Many people fled the Dust Bowl conditions, packing their belongings into whatever motorized transportation they had, then driving off with their house door standing open.
They were "Dust Bowl Refugees".

But many stayed, including my grandparents.

Dust filtered into everything. People caulked their windows with rags. They hung wet sheets in front of their doors. And still the dust filtered in.

Grandma reminisced about hanging wet towels above my aunts' beds to keep dust out of their lungs. They still coughed black phlegm.

When she served meals, she covered each plate and serving dish with wet towels, but they still had to eat grit with their food.

My grandparents' hired men did not get cash wages, just room and board. That was enough in those days. At least they had a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs. Many did not.

My great uncle was caught in one of the terrible dust storms and died of dust pneumonia. Pneumonia was epidemic during those years. Aunt Betty never remarried.

No wonder Woody Guthrie recorded "Dust Bowl Blues".

We read "The Grapes of Wrath" in high school, about a family who fled Dust Bowl conditions for "the promised land" of California.

I asked Grandma once why they stayed on the land.

"Why didn't you flee?"

"This is our home," she said.

Alone in the endless grass

Sometimes we can get a glimpse of what life was like before modern conveniences arrived, of the isolation and back-breaking work our forefathers and foremothers endured. Such is the case at this set of abandoned buildings. The corner of the building in the foreground might have been a bunkhouse. The main house is just visible on the horizon at right.


Civilization barely intrudes on an endless sea of grass. Little topsoil is present in this area. Grass barely disguises limestone. Farming would have been an exercise in futility. Those who lived here would have raised livestock, which require lots of pasture land. Except for the buildings on the horizon, these plains dwellers would have seen no human habitation. Only the wind would have kept them company.

The wind is hard on High Plains dwellers today. What would it have been like for someone alone in the endless grass to listen to the wind's howling day after day? This house was cut from the native rock, but it couldn't have been impervious to the noise of the relentless wind.


At some point, power came to this house. Many farms and ranches were not hooked to power lines until the 1950s. How long did the family who lived here wait for the blessings of electricity and telephones? How long until manual labor was eased? How long until they could reach out and touch someone through the miracle of the telephone? The advent of power and electronic communication, no matter how primitive they seem to us now, would have been cause for great celebration.

The world had come to the lonely High Plains hilltop.

Tilting at windmills

I love the lines and shapes of windmills and how different angles and perspectives change the windmill's appearance.



This one is on an abandoned farmstead far out into the country. I wonder how often the inhabitants had been stranded by blizzards and how long their isolation had lasted. Maybe that's why the place is no longer used? The people who lived there just couldn't take the isolation any more?
The farm buildings and the windmill structure were falling apart, but the wheel and its gears worked just fine. Aeromotor must have made a good product. Windmill's gearbox does remind me of a nose.

I know of a bank that has a logo almost exactly like this, except reversed.



When I took a photography class many years ago, the professor told us to practice the use of perspective by taking pictures in old cemeteries. This windmill works as well as any cemetery I might find. I haven't quite figured out yet how to change the autofocus zones on my new camera. I didn't intend to have the tree branches in focus instead of the windmill. I mistakenly pressed too hard on the shutter and shot the picture when I hadn't intended to. I rather like how this "mistake" turned out.



This is what I intended to shoot in the first place. Just changing the focus changes the entire mood of the picture. I wonder how well the windmill actually works with all this foliage around it. Wind was calm when I took this picture, so I can't say.



Same windmill, different angle. I stepped into the structure and shot straight up. I found the lines of the structure and the chain fascinating. I don't know what function the squared-off wires serve, but those wires and the chain were an interesting addition to the standard windmill structure. Out of curiosity, I changed the image to black and white. Original is so monochrome that I couldn't tell the difference between the color picture and the black and white version.



This windmill picture took a bit more doing. I stepped into the structure, but the view straight up wasn't too interesting. When I hooked my legs around its legs and leaned backward, the picture became much more interesting. I had to shoot with one hand while holding onto the windmill with the other. Position was rather uncomfortable, but entirely worth the results.



Same windmill, different angle. I loved these clouds. The fluffy clouds made a wonderful contrast with the sharp windmill angles. But somehow the color masked the contrast. I tried changing the picture to black and white, but was entirely dissatisfied with the results.



When I tried sepia toning, I was very pleased. But sepia toning was only the beginning. I played with the photo filter, shadow/highlight and exposure adjustments in Photoshop to get these results.

Don Quixote, eat your heart out!

Windows and doors part II

The few strands of wood hanging down from this frame make me think of strands of hair falling into the window's eyes. The sky dominates the landscape here on the High Plains. Many of the early settlers felt oppressed by the sky's vast expanse. The shed and window frame humanize the sky's scale, but only slightly.

Beneath our vast dome, we can find it easy to feel like ants on the cosmic scale. And I suppose we are. But our Heavenly Father finds us unbelievably precious.

Precious in His sight.

Precious enough to send His Son to die for us.

For those who have a relationship with His Son, Jesus Christ, the universe is a friendly place, no matter its vastness.

Windows and doors

As a photographer, I am drawn to windows and doors. What mysteries are in these old buildings? What stories could they tell? What is hiding behind the buildings' eyes?


Here is a disused wellhouse, full of junk. Abandoned buildings carry a sadness about them. They speak of time gone by, of people who have departed, of failure, of emptiness. They die of grief, missing their inhabitants, longing for their usefulness, slowly disintegrating.


This window even has a tear falling.


The red door looks out of place in this brown environment. I did not add the red in Photoshop. How did red, the fastest color to fade, survive years of abandonment? Is the building holding onto hope even though the door to its future is closed?

I like to look out of the windows and doors as well, to see what I can frame.


Sometimes I even catch a friend!



Maybe it's just my imagination, but this picture feels ominous. I took this picture on a very windy day, so perhaps I just felt exhausted from trying to stand out in the wind.

I intended to add a few more examples, but Blogger doesn't want to cooperate. Maybe I've used my limit for this post. Guess that means you'll have to return.

Snow on the tulips

I have a proverb about the climate here: "Snow until Tax Day; frost until Mother's Day."

A different proverb applies to yesterday's weather: "Every rule has an exception."

First came the wind. As I watched out my classroom window, the power lines twirled like jump ropes. Then rain blew in, then snow came down sideways. From my recliner last night, I watched the snow stack up in layers on the window.

Hopefully, nothing of importance froze. I didn't think to unhook the hoses from the spigot last night. And my tulips look pretty sad this morning.

Oh, well. We desperately needed the moisture and spring snows melt fast. Forecast high today is 59 and the weather is supposed to climb back into the 70s tomorrow. In a great blessing, the ground temperature was high enough that we don't have to scoop. Hooray!

And I hope that a twist on another proverb will also prove true: "May snow brings June berries."

Tower of the Plains

Blogger has decided to behave today and let me upload more pictures of Nebraska's state capitol.

The capitol dome is covered with gold and topped by a statue called "The Sower". Mother told me that the gold was stripped off during the World Wars and used to pay for them. The dome was simply painted with metallic paint thereafter. After the wars, the state regilded the dome. She said that the dome was noticeably less shiny during and immediately after the wars. Babylonian ruler Hammurabi, the man depicted on the corner, promulgated one of the first known law codes. Cuneiform letters are below his bas relief.



This is a view of the second level. The cutout reliefs are of the Magna Carta, and two other scenes, perhaps the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

The Magna Carta signing is the center panel.



Dad said that much of the building was paid for by voluntary contributions from the people of Nebraska.

I have not been able to confirm either story.


This is the south elevation of the building. Previous picture is a detail of the building's upper left cornice with the dome beyond. We arrived around 5 p.m., so these are state government workers going home for the evening.

I had forgotten the craftsmanship and design that had gone into the "Tower of the Plains". It was a joy to see such beautiful, meticulous work, especially on a day when the light was so beautifully even!

Nebraska state capitol

My husband and I went to Lincoln with my dad for medical tests. We had just enough time to visit the state capitol's south side. This view is from the southeast.

For me, a native Nebraskan, Lincoln is a piece of home even though I've never lived there. The heart of every Cornhusker probably turns to Memorial Stadium, home of the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Mine does, too, but this time I wanted to see the capitol again.

I wish I could have walked all the way around it and photographed it from all angles, but time was short. Maybe someday I'll be able to give this building the time and attention I'd like to give it.

I intended to add more pictures, but for whatever reason, Blogger won't let me do it today. So we'll have to try again later!

Dust Bowl house

The light Wednesday morning was just perfect for picture taking. Unfortunately, we had miles to go before we slept. But I still couldn't resist this stop. This house had attracted my attention for years and the light was too good to miss.

I turned the color photos into sepia toned ones using the built-in actions from Photoshop CS3. The sepia tones remind me of the Dust Bowl years.



My grandparents, who lived through those years, would probably prefer not to be reminded.


I also photographed this house in 1991 or 1992. If I find those photos, I'll be interested to see the changes in the house.