Flint Hills Hike

Chase County Butterfly Milkweed

Chase County Flint Hill Mid June

Chase County Flint Hills Morning

Mid June we wandered over to the Flint Hills Region in Kansas. Its one of my favorite places on Earth, especially when the wildflowers are in bloom round mid June. There really is a steady progression of colors all summer but the hills yell 'look at me' the loudest at this time. The hills are the remains of creatures with names like crinoid and forminifera, who lived here some 220 million years ago during the Permian when a great inner sea lapped at the states eastern and western borders. Who ever said that Kansas is flat has never hiked the flint hills.

Ponies Race off

Crawford County "Ponies Race Off"

This is what used to be our dining room, its now my wife's studio. She paints anything that sits still for a while. My wife's mother raised nine children in a tiny farmhouse. To find a little peace and escape she would quilt, her work is beautiful. My wife is an educator in charge of several hundred elementary students. She paints, it gives her a sense of serenity and escape. The kids at her school think her works cool so do I.

Crawford County "Sallys Chair"

This is a chair she painted for our youngest daughter.

Crawford County Purple Cone Flowers

Maybe they cant read.
We live out in the middle of a pasture on about 3 and 1/2 acres. My wife and I have spent the last ten years adding fruit trees, raised beds for vegetables, water for birds and letting some of it go to meadow. The meadow is my favorite, in the spring I mow paths along bunches of wild onion and false garlic (i think), the aroma is wonderful. Were committed to not using pesticides or herbicides and try to plant as many native plants as possible. This was on old fence gate we had salvaged along the way and planted in it the middle of a flower bed. On some level we hoped it might keep the grasshoppers out. I think chickens would work better.

The Shade Tree

Bourbon County Fort Scott

Sometimes a good place to be is in the shade.

New Beginnings

Chase County Flint Hills Barn

Photography has always been important to me. I remember being a young boy in Brooklyn and having a small camera that I bought for around four dollars. I took photos of alleys, trash cans, fire hydrants, pigeons, and people. My younger brothers and sister became my sometimes unwilling subjects mugging in Halloween costumes or posing as cops and robbers in my fathers cop hat. Some of those photos have survived and through the years Ive always kept a camera close. Kansas was my destination for college to become a biologist. I fell in love with the sky and a girl. Our children are grown now and off to college. As I look back at my photography I think the best photos I took during those years when they were growing were of them and my wife.
Lately I have turned my camera back out from home to the beauty that surrounds me in nature. This photo blog is about that exploration.