Nature Woman

I saw this bee sleeping one morning on a closed Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus) flower.

And at the same time, this bee, who was all covered in pollen, was hard at work on this open Rose of Sharon flower.

Ever since I lived in my first home I have been hanging laundry outside. The first time I did it I was so excited I washed everything in site. My Mom came to visit and she couldn’t believe how much laundry I had hanging out. From this experience I learned not to load up the line too much because stuff doesn’t dry as quickly. I also learned that the sun actually gets rid of stains on white cloth.

This summer it has been really tough to hang stuff out on the line. Every time I do, it rains. But I keep persisting. After all, there’s nothing like the clean smell of fresh sheets and clothes dried on the line.

Oh, and I use hardwood clothes pins made in the USA:

Yes, I should sew a clothes pin bag, really, it can’t be that tough!

I usually hang everything out on the line, but Saturday it rained, so I saved washing the sheets until early Sunday morning.

What about you? Do you hang laundry outside, at least part of it?

Today Mom and I took a tour through the Darwin D. Martin House complex which was designed and built by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1903-1905. Darwin Martin became a millionaire working as an executive at the Larkin Soap Company in Buffalo. In 1902 he commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build two homes, one for his family and one for his sister and brother-in-law. The complex is under restoration and a visitor center is being built, so it will be fun to watch the progress over the years. We weren’t allowed to take photos inside, and the photos I could take of the outside include the construction fence.

The Darwin D. Martin House and Pergola

As I’m sure you know, Frank Lloyd Wright thought organic in his designs. Notice his use of horizontal lines to represent the relatively flat land of Buffalo.

The pergola between the Darwin D. Martin home and the conservatory. It has no windows, so it was nice and breezy. Note the bird house on the top right of the pergola, meant for purple martins to nest at the Martin home. LOL. The openings are so large, though, no birds have ever taken up residence in any of the bird houses.

I love Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs. This design is one of his Prairie House designs even though Buffalo isn’t considered part of the prairie.  I love the urns, too.

It is taking a ton of money to restore this old beauty, but it is worth it.

My Mom picked up the May-June-July issue of Mary Jane’s Farm a few weeks ago and I devoured it in one night (after she was finished with it, that is). I discovered her latest book Mary Jane’s Outpost - Unleashing Your Inner Wild and was reading through a bit of it tonight. It brought back quite a few memories. Living out in the country when I was young I spent a lot of time outside. One of my many favorite memories is of my older brother and me setting up the telescope to check out the moon and the various constellations. And then setting up the pup tent (or not) to sleep under the stars.

I’m on the right, my older brother on the left. My grandmother took this slide of us on a morning after we had slept outside in the pup tent.

While I really wouldn’t feel comfortable sleeping outside these days either in a tent or not, I still love my fresh air year round and I have to sleep beside open windows.

And you’ll hear more memories that reading Mary Jane’s Farm is bringing to the forefront, because I love to do many of the things she writes about in her magazines and books.

My boss and some other people from work went to Darien Lake to see Tim M. on June 6th.

Beforehand they were making a big deal about his butt. So I told them not to come back without butt shots.

Well, sorry, I’m not really impressed, but they are, and that’s all that matters! So since they are, I figured I’d share with you.

Okay, while my friends down south are wishing for some rain, here in my part of the country we are getting so much rain I’m beginning to feel like I’m living in the rain forest. So yesterday it rained 3.2″ in an hour right before rush hour, and this is one of the three lakes I encountered on the way home.

Okay, this is where it gets really scary. I mean I was *scared*

While the guy ahead of me went through it like no tomorrow, I crawled through it, and I have an Explorer. But I didn’t want it to die on me.  I mean, it was deep.

It took me an hour to get home. It usually takes a half hour. And I won’t discuss what I encountered when I got to my street. Okay, I will, but I didn’t take any photos. 75mph winds had come through my area, knocking down trees and knocking out power, until 1:17am this morning. I had to listen to chain saws cutting up the trees up to that time so the local power company could do its work.  So I am running on very little sleep.

Anyway, I wish I could ship our excess rain to my southern friends!

Last week we also had a pet show at work. The lady at the place where Coraggio was purchased brought some of her animals to the center. I don’t have an affinity for little dogs, but I just have to show you this little dog that weighs all of three pounds. I didn’t take these photos:

Can you barely stand the little tutu it is wearing?

And I wish I had a photo to show you of it near this big dog, because the three dogs are friends:

The little dog in this photo sleeps on the back of the big dog.

The teeny dog has a special carrier:

This one I fell in love with - while he’s not as cute as Coraggio, he’s still very cute:

Don’t you love that little white belly?

Coraggio was going nuts over the pets, and he was checking out this next pet:

What the heck are you supposed to be?

Whoa, cool! I didn’t see this bird! I had already gone back to my office by then:

There were some cute little kitties, and some cute little kiddies holding them, too!

As you probably already guessed, the reptile guy showed up at work the other day. Since I think reptiles are cool, and since the boss asked me to take photos with her camera, I showed up. I’ll say right now, I really don’t like the camera she has. But the reptiles are cool, so here we go.

I think this is some kind of gecko. I hate the date printed on photos.

A little snake. Yes, I touched all of these creatures with no screaming or squealing like some of the teachers were doing.

Not a reptile, but one of my little girl friends, enjoying the reptile show. Here she is telling me *something* - you know how hard it is to understand a two year old unless they’re your own.

A lizard. Those spiky things are just for show. They’re actually very soft.

The same lizard, with a 16 mo. old touching him, and a teacher’s death grip on the child’s arm. Man, these teachers need to relax a bit.

A cool snake, who liked his tummy tickled.

A little alligator who was a little anxious.

Last, but not least, the big boa that got wrapped around my neck.

Isn’t it pretty?  Sorry, the quality of the photo stinks!!

Last night we went to CMAC to see the RPO’s Out of this World: Star Wars and The Planets, with conductor Christopher Seaman. During The Planets portion of the performance, images from NASA and the Hubble Space Telescope were showing on the movie screen,

while the RPO performed Gustav Holst’s amazing planetary orchestral suite. Talk about being in heaven, literally! It was awe-inspiring, to say the least. I hope they recorded it on DVD so we can see it again.