Hoosiers Ate My Brain

Back Home Again in Indiana

Back again from a two-week road marathon including many points east and west. New York was fantastic even for this time of year and Oklahoma, well, what can I say. The wheat is in, the grass is high, oil is over $50 a barrel and it rained twice all in a week. Local ranchers say the grass is better than they've ever seen it. It should be a great year for cattle. Every morning, I'd get up and go walk on the 1-mile jogging trail that circles our local lake and park with my 88-year-old father. Nice chances to catch up, relax, work in the 2.5 acre yard, and even take a nap every day. I saw many old classmates and friends and came home with a bunches of mosquito bites from pruning trees (mostly Russian Olives) all day Tuesday. Our nearest neighbor has started a vineyard and finally has about 125 vines trellised now. He's fenced them off, but our year and his are full of rabbits, squirrels, birds, dogs and more. Most lovely was just the chance to sit on the front porch with a book and a big glass of iced tea and watch the world go by: the bird who in a seeming battle with a tree branch flies away with a huge caterpillar in its beak, the ants collectively carrying back a huge beetle, the jackrabbit frozen on the lawn not realizing that with so much rain, the now-green grass is ineffective at concealing his motionless brown body. With no humidity, the temperatures notched up into the 90s but you couldn't tell -- not like 85 or 90 here in Indiana which is just miserable. It sneaks up on you, though, and you have to physically watch out for it. My father's father died of a heatstroke on June 30, 1918 or so after working in a field of ripe wheat. He was a very young man with a two year old who climbed off the tractor, sat down by the barn, and died.

It stormed almost every night -- lots of lightening and wind. We're close enough to the Rockies that we get those big pushes of air coming down from Colorado. But every morning dawned fresh and clear. I think I love it more not living there. And even with the heat and humidity, it's good to be back to my own home in Indiana.

posted by braingirl @ 7:23 AM