Country Churchyard

It's warming up. A little bit. It's in the low 40's lately. And there have been peeks of sun. The peas I planted so hopefully in mid-March are six inches tall,  growing in a strangle in their planters in the greenhouse. It's still too cold to set them out. It's going to be a thing, untangling their roots and trying to set them out. I've never started peas in the greenhouse before. Maybe it's simply not done. I'll find out soon enough. It'll work or it won't.

I have some nice snow pictures and I'd better hurry up and get them posted before, you know, daffodils burst forth and birds start building their nests in the freezing cold, because they can't wait any longer.

Lately when it snows I take off with  my camera. It may just be on the way to town, but I'll take the back roads and shoot. These spring snows don't last long and I love them for that, and for the sudden lace they throw over everything.

I wonder if anyone is still planting catalpa trees. They seem like relicts of a bygone time. Does anyone say,  hmm, I'd like to have a catalpa in my yard?

There's a little church perched high above Stanleyville that I've always wanted to peek into. I can think of only one of these tiny country churches that's still used, and that's Lower PawPaw Methodist farther up the road. Sometimes you can hear the bells from our house on Sunday morning. This one's sitting silent. Such a nice building, it's a shame someone doesn't use it. Such churches stand witness to the old graves all around them. Nobody tears them down until they literally fall apart, but even then the graveyards are sacred and left untouched. I'm glad for that. They have a purpose, even if all their inhabitants are forgotten by most.

What a view these people have. I wonder if they rise like smoke up out of their graves and sit and look at it just before sunrise and sunset. I would. 

The older cemeteries are full of Germans from the Old Country, their inscriptions auf Deutsch.

In the mowing and the frost heaves, some stones inevitably get dislodged, displaced, orphaned. What you do then is lean them up against the church.

There's a moment of blue before the clouds close in again.

I snatch it

and peek in the window to see the cold still pews, waiting. These are nicer than most, with the curved sides.

I watch the winter light play across the landscape.

This would be nice to paint, with its limited palette. I forget how much country there is around here, how it just goes on forever, and how little of it I've explored. There's always something nice waiting when I do.

I peek in the trash can and find used lilies. So someone remembers and puts fake flowers out, and thinks to throw them away when they fade.

I turn for home and pass the dairy farm, little plastic igloos waiting for the calves who are separated from their mothers and fed from bottles as soon as they're born. Sigh. What a weird way to raise a calf, with a plastic outhouse and a bottle for a mother, never to know the loving scrub of her rough tongue on its skin. Imagine carrying a baby to term and then having it taken from you so you can keep being milked. It's a wonder they don't lose their minds, both mother and calf. Maybe they do.

 I'm thankful for fields and broken skies to look out over.

At home that morning, I couldn't see past the bird screen on my studio windows.

but out here, everything's lace.

My favorite shot of the day, an old truck and a redtail. You can hardly see him, but he's the black dot in the leftmost tree.

I've decided spring isn't coming this year. That way, it'll feel like a bonus when it does.