new food in an old machine

There's a vintage vending machine in the waiting area of a tire and vehicle-repair shop here in The Small Town. I sat there this morning, resisting the urge to spend money in either this machine or at the Daylight Donuts shop across the street.

cake please

Yesterday was National Donut Day. The cake variety is my favorite, especially apple cider cake donuts. Today I ate a plain cake donut with chocolate icing for breakfast. Oh, and glazed donut holes. One of my fond memories is of my mother, sister and I purchasing donut holes at the local German bakery when I was a child in northeast Kansas. There was also a Daylight Donuts shop in town and it even had a drive-through window. 

The small town where My Darling Husband and I currently live has a couple of special-order bakeries and a Daylight Donuts shop. This morning we walked by to pick up breakfast after leaving the farmer's market. Both the donut shop and the market are downtown. A good thing about small towns is that they're walkable, so any donut calories can be exercised off!

them cows need schoolin'

The school/daycare where I work is just outside The Small Town and a small herd of cattle lives next door. The youngest children, including my kindergarten charges, enjoy watching them sometimes. I have ample opportunity to explain where our milk and beef come from. Today when I went to work, I was regaled with the tale of the cows' great escape this morning. They got through their gate and were grazing toward the school's playground! The principal and a few teachers shooed the cows back into their meadow. Would have liked to have seen that.

early Easter colors

This house is a few blocks from ours. I call it the Easter house. Look at the house color, the pink bush by the front porch, the purple redbud tree, the yellow forsythia bushes, and the white tulips. Oh, and the yellow-flowered tree behind it. It's pretty colors all rolled together like Easter eggs in dye baths.

time for the redbuds

In southeast Kansas where My Darling Husband and I live, a sure sign of spring is the redbud trees. They are in bloom now. I see more redbuds in this area than in the Kansas City area where I used to live. Along with daffodils, crocus and muscari, the redbuds are a much-anticipated harbinger of warmer weather to come. An Even Smaller Town near us has a redbud tour. Hey, you have to make your own entertainment in small towns sometimes, and it's a joy for horticulture aficianados.

let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

We have snow! It finally snowed in southeast Kansas last week. What a refreshing sight to see, after envying all the other snowfall in other parts of the US. After the dry autumn we had, we've needed this snow. And yes, I need to put our Christmas tree away. My Darling Husband's birthday is in December, but prior to Christmas. This time around I waited until after his birthday to put up the tree, just as his mother used to do when he was growing up. It seems like such a waste of time to have it set up for only a week or two, so I've waited until way past the New Year to take the tree down. It's going in the box this weekend.Or I could leave it up and decorate it with hearts for Valentine's Day. Just kidding, Mr. H.Cutie Dog is quite fond of the snow. First thing on his list was to eat it.
When he was a stray, it was winter. There was still ample snow on the ground when we brought him into our home. So I had been curious how he would react to the snow this winter.

My Darling Husband forwarded this funny email to me:

Why It's Great to Be a Dog

1. No one expects you to take a bath every day.
2. If it itches, you can scratch it.
3. A rawhide bone (or a rag in Cutie Dog's case) can entertain you for hours.
4. If you grow hair in weird places, nobody notices.
5. You can lay around all day without worrying about being fired.
6. You don't get in trouble for putting your head in a stranger's lap.
7. You're always excited to see the same people.
8. Having big feet is considered an asset.
9. Puppy love can last.

sign of spring #4

Wasps.

I'm quite sure there's more wasps around here than up in The Big City. Perhaps it's due to our more southerly location. Last summer, My Darling Husband advised me that he sprays the inside of the garage every year with wasp spray to keep them from building nests in there.

Wasps everywhere.

Ok, not plague proportions, but I've spotted at least three inside our house this last week. I never see them fly in when we're going in or out the door. I don't know how they get in, but they belong with their buddies outdoors. They meet their Maker instead.

Tonight I suddenly heard one buzzing (that's always how we spot them inside...suddenly buzzing out of thin air, as if poof! wasp abra cadabra!) two feet behind me in the office where I sit, innocently minding my own blog business. I cried for help, and My Darling Husband came to the rescue with fly swatter in hand, just in time for that wasp to fly to the next room.

That room happens to be our storage room that happens to have a lot of stuff in it, so I'll probably be looking for something in there one day soon and happen upon that wasp and poof! it'll come screaming at me at top speed, stinger first. Or hopefully it'll have met it's Maker by then due to natural causes.

sign of spring #3 or, a tale of three lilacs

Lilacs. The word itself is pretty. Add the delicate yet stable physical beauty and the wonderful scent, and you've got yourself an old-fashioned charmer. They remind me of my childhood...grandparents...playing in Mr. & Mrs. Mace's (elderly neighbors I grew up next door to) yard that had no fence...and like Alicia, the scent reminds me of the Midwest--home.
One set of my grandparents always had a lilac bush or two in their yard (other grandpa would've mowed them down, so other grandma dared not plant any). When we went for a visit, I and/or grandma would cut some lilacs to decorate the house. The lilac bush in the Mace's yard served as a hiding place for frequent games of hide-n-seek with the neighborhood children. Sometimes we would just plop ourselves on the grass or cement wall next to that lilac and pass the time.

The lilac pictured above is compliments of a friend here in The Small Town. I'm currently trying to start a new lilac bush from a cutting off hers. The plan is to plant it near our bedroom window so when we have the window open during lilac season, a west breeze will send the scent into our nostrils at night.

The vase with the lilacs on it is an heirloom from my mother's ceramic-painting days.

The blue lilac in the painting on the wall was done by a friend of my other grandparents some decades ago. So even if other grandma couldn't keep plants alive thanks to other grandpa, at least she could see them on her walls!

purple inside and out or, sign of spring #1

When there is a grape hyacinth bouquet inside our house, that is the signal that My Darling Husband is about to give our lawn it's first mowing of the year. Since I can't have these lovely purple heads just mowed down, I decorate the table with them when he says "it's time to start mowing". There were already some grape hyacinths planted in My Darling Husband's yard when I married him, then I planted more last year. I can see it now: a grape hyacinth and daffodil meadow in our front yard. Grape hyacinths are popular in this neck of the woods. There are many yards in our town where you can see these growing naturalized. Cheri has a lovely landscape photo of grape hyacinths on her blog A Joyful Handmaiden.

anouncing Easter in a small town

My Darling Husband and I spent the Easter weekend with my family in The Big City. When we came home, I glanced at Sunday's edition of our local newspaper.My eyes immediately fell to the top of the front page and I was pleasantly surprised. You know you're in a small town when the local newspaper editor is unafraid to declare that He Is Risen!
I have an educated guess that the editor of The Big City's newspaper would never allow this.

CutieDog very truly likes going to his "grandparents" (my parents) house. He gets to play with his "Uncle Dog" (my parent's Jack Russell Terror)...

and he gets to be a spoiled "grandog". See, he's not allowed to put his paws on our furniture here at home. He soaks up the extra allowances there. The first time we visited my parents with CutieDog, he tried to get onto our furniture upon returning home. This second time, he surprised us by minding his manners when we got home.

Smart and cute. Good choice, My Darling Husband.

pick me! pick me! PLEEEASE!

Yesterday and today are National Adoption Weekend. It's a pairing of the Petco store with local animal shelters to promote and sponsor pet cat and dog adoptions. Petsmart is having theirs next month.

A local animal shelter is where one of my Christmas presents came from. My Darling Husband surprised me with him. I'd been chirping on forever about adopting a dog, waiting for just the right time (the moment M.D.H. says yes) and just the right dog. "Right dog" to me = lap dog. I was thinking Sheltie, Schnauzer, terrier size. M.D.H. grew up with larger dogs, so we compromised and are now the pround "parents" of a medium dog. I planned on adopting a dog from either the local animal shelter or from someone whose dog accidentally produced offspring.

I like this accidental canine offspring. He is part Labrador Retriever and part Border Collie. Around blogland he is known as Cutie Dog. Although he isn't exactly lap size, he does like a lap to sit on occasionally. You big baby.

our home is free because of the brave

Not our house (stimulus my foot) ...our home. "Oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, o'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave."
Veteran's Day in small-town Kansas. The photo is of the picture in our local newspaper today. We are free, so far, because of these brave fellow Americans. From our founding to Ft. Hood, freedom is not free. Thank you to those who served, and died, and are currently serving, to protect our freedom! Thank you to my granddads, their brothers, my dad and my Big Little Brother.
And by the way, there are 14 dead victims at Ft. Hood, not 13. One of the victims was pregnant.

we'll keep the light on for you

They'll keep a bed for you too, if needed. This is the sign at the police department of an even smaller town near our Small Town. I tried to get a better photograph of the neon sign, but haven't taken the time to figure out the camera. Hopefully you can distinguish the letters. If not: it simply states "Police Dept" in neon lighting. It's very quaint for a police department to still be using their neon sign from the mid 1900s. I like it. The town is saying "we're not too proud to use a working vintage item. We don't need to spend money we don't have on a new sign."

The neon light blasting a hole in the night darkness reminds me of paintings by the American artist Edward Hopper. He juxtaposed light and dark. Ripple Effect has an excellent review of his works.

every day, life is peaceful in a small town

sigh. faint. A celebrity read my blog! Well, a well-known local anyway. Mr. Wyckoff himself, whom I quoted here, saw that post and he promptly sent me this photograph of him and his bank staff dressed for Halloween. Even small-town bankers and accountants like to have fun.

It's a bird...it's a plane, no...it's SuperWitch! She flew smack-dab into the electric pole in the countryside. She almost made it to town. I've seen these witch dolls attached to chimneys, trees and other tall things in The Big City, but there was just something hilarious about driving home through farming country recently and suddenly spotting one fastened to an electric pole. As if the witch was flying cross-crountry and had a mishap almost in the middle of nowhere!