Pictures from Antelope Island, Utah

A tree in a corral at Garr Ranch on Antelope Island. This tree has probably given shade to a lot of grateful animals over the years.

Poppies and iris blooming at the ranch. Loved the contrast!

I've always been a fan of layering mountains. These islands lie north of Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake.

We estimate that we saw about 400 head of buffalo yesterday, many of them babies. We could hear them rumbling and grunting as they made their way north along the water's edge on the east side of the island.

Sunset at the Antelope Island Marina as seen from the causeway. Makes me think of Jimmy Buffet songs.


So much beauty so close to home! Antelope Island is one of my favorite places, but I was eaten alive by mosquitoes last night while taking these photos. I am now covered with baking soda paste from head to toe. Still, I would have to say it was worth it to take a mini vacation for a few hours.

We waited for the sunset, then realized the sunrise would be beautiful there as well, peaking up over the Wasatch Front. Maybe later this summer...

Two Cows and an Old House Near Woodruff, Utah

Barn and Curious Cow Near Randolph, Utah

Bear Lake, Utah on Mother's Day (Eve) Drive

My mother likes to take very, very long drives on Mother's Day, so today (the day before Mother's Day) we drove from our home to Bear Lake via Logan Canyon, then came home through Evanston, Wyoming. We saw feral goats, antelope, deer, a chipmunk, and lots and lots of horses and cows. The color of Bear Lake is always amazing -- so many blues and purples. We had expected to find green spring up the there, but I always forget that spring comes later in the mountains.

Daffodils Are Up...

No, those are just paper flowers!

About half of them were made by some sisters in my ward, the other half by Abby and me, for our Relief Society Birthday Social / Dinner tonight. Another lady in our ward invented them and actually published a book about making all kinds of paper flowers out of ordinary copy paper, which is inexpensive, readily available, and curls well for petals and leaves.


There are about 70 daffodils in these pictures, but imagine happening upon ten thousand of them on a lakeside walk, as William Wordsworth did. He tells the story in this poem from 1804, which has emerged as my favorite poem of all time, I think (I published it in this blog last spring, too):

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:

I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Sugar Factory Coming Down...Slowly

I was out practicing with my new camera today and took these pictures of a local landmark, which is being demolished very slowly with a small wrecking ball. Giant chunks of concrete defy gravity, suspended in webs of rebar. This used to be a very large sugar factory when our city was rural. It was one of the largest sugar beet factories in the world at one time. Now it has been deemed seismically unsound, too expensive to bring up to code, so it must come down. I finished taking pictures and I was driving away when I looked up and saw the door swinging open at the top, so I changed my lens and, voila! I could see inside. Obviously a very drab, gray day.

Summertime Pictures

Back from Girls' Camp

I am back from girls' camp and will write more ('blog') later.

Home Sweet Home Again

Pictures: Succulents at Disneyland (we have no succulents here, as far as I know), Friday afternoon traffic on the 405 freeway in Los Angeles , and the beach at Corona del Mar on Saturday. It was a lovely beach and town, but I am still suffering with a crispy sunburn - the most painful sunburn I've ever had. Ouch!

It was a nice non-vacation. I'm beginning to figure out that we, as a family, really do not know how to vacation. We go places, yes, but then we run ourselves ragged. There's really no rest until we're home again and our lives return to normal (usually days later, when we've caught up with the laundry).

I never go anywhere (and I mean ANYwhere - not even to the grocery store) without a notebook and a pen, and one afternoon in California I found myself whiling away a few minutes by myself in the car with the window down, so I scribbled down some of the smells of California: a flowering bush, green grass, dust, and exhaust fumes.

Los Angeles is a HUGE place! Our own valley, by comparison, is a manageable size. I'll never complain about traffic again.

The most fascinating place we visited was a yachting surplus store where they sold new and used nautical charts, sails, propellers, roaps, flags, compasses, brass plaques, pullies, etc. It was definitely not for tourists, and we landlubbers were in the way. We stopped in originally to see if they sold t-shirts. I was hoping to replace my long lost Frank's Fisherman's Supply t-shirt that I bought in San Francisco in 1981.

It was good to be in California, but it's always good to be home.

More Images of Tennessee (Back Home Now)

Gone Fishin'...I Mean, Gone to Tennessee

Stream of Conscience Ramblings...

(About the photograph: I took this picture along the road south of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota last summer. Most of the pictures I use on blog posts are not my own, unless I label the post 'Photography,' in which case the picture is original. All of the pictures I use in the side bar are my own original work.)

Today I'm going to force myself to make a personal post about anything that comes to mind while I'm writing it. Frequent readers of this blog may have noticed that I rarely really 'blog.' Blogging is like journaling, and we've been taught to keep our thoughts to ourselves, to keep our diaries under lock and key...Is it because our thoughts are dangerous, or because they're valuable...? I don't know why.

For me, I guess it's because a blog is on the WORLDWIDE WEB and I can't monitor who reads it or how they interpret it. On the one hand, a blogger wants lots of people to read his/her blog. Why? So that he or she has greater influence in some cosmic sense. On the other hand, bloggers tend to be quiet types. I may want to shout something from the rooftop, but I want to do so without making a noise which might disturb someone. I was raised to be, above all else, a nice girl. I wouldn't want to post anything offensive. It's easier, then, not to post at all - at least nothing that I have to acknowledge is 100% my own thinking. Afterall, someone may disagree with it or be bothered by it.

With this blog (as with anything I create) I want to lift myself and others to higher attitudes, thoughts, and actions - not by preaching, but by setting before us some of what is good or beautiful about life. It isn't all wonderful, no, but the world is full of people who will point out what's wrong with it and what's unfair about it - I don't want to do that. I choose not to add to the negativity of the world as much as I can avoid it. Sometimes I simply can't avoid it and fall in with the complainers, the nay-sayers, and the cynics. I can be as sarcastic as the next person, and more sarcastic than most. It's my debate training, I think. I can see both sides of most every issue.

For everything that's said about the value of a good example (all of it true, I might add), I have certainly learned a lot from the negative examples in my life. You learn consequences either way, if you're observant, unless you insist upon experiencing all of the consequences, good and bad, yourself. I am one of those people who could learn from the mistakes of others without making them all myself, which saved me a lot of time and untold misery.

As a child I used to interview myself all the time (like Oprah, only long before Oprah - probably the Donahue era), pretending to be an Olympic ice skater or a movie star or a widow...those are the three interviews I remember best. This exercise helped me imagine what life would be like in someone else's shoes - what triumphs and regrets they would have experienced, what everyday life for them would be like. Even today Scott is often amazed by my ability to practically 'experience' the hypothetical...I guess I still have a very active imagination.

In recent years I've found myself admiring seemingly negative qualities in other people. For example, I have admired people for their irresponsibility. Why? Because they are not 'burdened' with a sense of duty. They are given more latitude, because no one expects them to be anything other than impulsive. Of course I can see that this characteristic causes them a degree of suffering, too (often a great degree), but who can say whether they suffer more for being irresponsible than I do for being hyper responsible? It takes time and energy to dot all those i's and cross all those t's (but probably not as much time and energy as it would to undot them and uncross them and start over...) I would not choose to be irresponsible even if I could, and I'm not sure that I can. It's just interesting to note that, as with everything else in life, irresponsibility has its pluses as well as its minuses.

Another Picture from Downtown Salt Lake

This is a former popcorn factory on 21st South near 9th East in Salt Lake City. I thought it had an interesting old faded sign.

Why Do I Like This Sign?

I took this picture behind a men's clothing store in downtown Salt Lake. I actually saw it days before and returned with my camera to take it, but WHY? I can't explain that part. Anyway, I hope you like it, too.

Emerging from the Fog

I am emerging from the fog that is the holidays. Christmas is slowly coming down, even more slowly than it went up. The pantry and refrigerator have been restored to operational order. I am almost caught up with laundry. My husband, in desparation, cleaned the master bathroom yesterday, but I should be on top of things soon. (Not that there's anything out of the ordinary about Scott helping out -- he just usually has more patience.)

I find that I can only 'blog' in earnest when most of the systems of my life are working. They have been idle lately, but I have a great hope that this week everything will get 'back to normal.'

So, readers, if you are out there, thank you for checking in. I will reward your attentiveness with a pretty picture for your viewing pleasure (taken in Columbus, Indiana on a family vacation in 2005), but check back soon for actual commentary.

"It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" at Our House

Fall in Millcreek Canyon, Utah

Sherpa at Home