Weekly Photo Challenge: Twisted

Twisted contrails from a US Air Force Thunderbird in the sky over Scott Air Force Base, Illinois.
To see more of this week’s challenge, click Twisted.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Liquid

Liquid, liquid, lots and lots of liquid in the form of a torrential downpour clogged street drains causing the rain water to back up a foot deep into the street. The pressure of the rainwater coursing through the sewer caused the water to back up and spew upward out the culvert. We were lucky. The water did not reach our house. The houses in this photo were not so fortunate and had water in their basements.
To see more of this week’s challenge, click Liquid.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Place in the World

My place in the world is anywhere my husband is. It’s wonderful to say that as it wasn’t always that way. We’ve come a long way in the last ten years. This place is the flat look out over the Missouri River at Klondike Park in southwestern St. Charles County, Missouri.

To see more of this week’s challenge, click Place in the World.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Unlikely

 

Such a perfectly composed photograph of two people who obviously have a very close connection. I stumbled upon these two purely by chance as I was walking by and it is unlikely that such a moment would be replicated again. Garden of the Gods, in the Shawnee National Forest, Herod, Illinois.

To see more of this week’s challenge, click Unlikely.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Lines

To see more of this week’s challenge click Lines.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Prolific

Prolific. What an appropriate word for what we go through each summer for several weeks. The white tufts from the cottonwood tree in our backyard and those that abut the creek bed down the street from us, fly through the air much the same as snow does in the winter, and piles up the same way. A fact I learned today…our tree must be a female, as only the female trees shed their cottony seeds.

To see more of this week’s challenge, click Prolific.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Awakening

Awakening is a re-emergence of something dormant. Who would have thought that by putting the bottom of the celery bunch in a water would cause the center of the plant to regrow! I was amazed and it continued to grow, that is until the day I forgot to water it.
To see more of this week’s challenge, click Awakening.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Smile

Northern Barred Owl or Hoot Howl

I was driving home from work one evening and glanced to the side and saw this beautiful creature sitting in the tree. Naturally, I had to pull over and I was so excited that he was just seemingly sitting there patiently waiting on me to take his picture. Really, really made me smile.
To view more of this week’s challenge, click: Smile.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Rise/Set

Riding into the Sunset

I think almost every motorcycle enthusiast has on their bucket list a trip to Sturgis, South Dakota. Each year an estimated 500,000 motorcycles descend on the small town of Sturgis to attend their annual festival.  We were fortunate to attend and rode as much and as long as we could.

To see more of this week’s challenge, click Rise/Set.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Favorite Place

I was once asked, when setting up an online account, what was my favorite color. The gentleman I was speaking to was amazed that I didn’t have a favorite color. Thinking a little further, I realize that I’m one of those people who doesn’t have favorites, or maybe I just can’t articulate it. There are things I like more than others and places I enjoy more than others.
But when thinking of my favorite place, I think I’d have to go all the way back to my childhood to my grandparents farm. It was the place where my mother was raised and it stayed as a farmstead until the mid 80s. I was very saddened when my grandmother decided to sell the farm; it had been in my grandfather’s family for over 100 years.
It wasn’t a large farm, only about sixty acres. It had a couple of barns, chickens and cows. Grandpa grew field corn and we always had a good time popping the kernels off the ear. Mom came from a fairly large family, six brothers and one sister.
Growing up, some of the best times I can remember is having large family picnics with all my cousins at Grandma and Grandpas farm. We’d play in the barn, play softball in the yard, feed the chickens and jump from the hayloft. I admit that I only did that once. We’d hunt for fossils in the creek bed and swing on the grape vines. There is just something about wide open spaces.
Intellectualy, I know that farming is a tough life, but it has always been something I’ve been drawn to. Whenever we go out on the motorcycle or when I make an annual fall photo tour, it’s to the farming country I gravitate to.
This isn’t a photo of my grandparent’s barn, its just one I’ve photographed on our many motorcycle rides.

To see more of this week’s challenge, click Favorite Place.