There is an old cattle chute on my in-laws farm. This old chute was used for many, many years by my father-in-law and my husband. It has stood firm for probably 50 years. I have photographed it during every season. I love the old chute and the road that winds beside it. The road leads back to the barn and then winds on down to the pond. We park our camper just a couple hundred feet to the east of the chute so I have seen it in the evening light and the early morning light. I have photographed it with blistering sun and covered with snow. I wish that I could show you some of those photos but they were all lost when I sent my computer off to be repaired. All I have are the photos I have just recently taken. Here are a few from this fall.
Evening
Evening
Morning
I love things that endure. Things like love and marriage. This old chute reminds me that although once useful, all things eventually become old but still remain beautiful. I hope that I can remember that as I deal with aging parents. They are getting old and even though they feel like they are useless I want to always treat them as the things of beauty that they are. They have withstood the test of time, they have worked hard and now they have time to rest. Lord help me to remember the old cattle chute the next time I get frustrated.
We recently had the pleasure of keeping one of our grandsons for the weekend. All by himself! Usually his older sister is with us so he was especially happy to have Nana and Papa all to himself. He followed Papa all over the place and they fished, loaded the deer feeder, sat in the deer stand and watched for deer and cook burgers for us. On Saturday we got up early and made pancakes for breakfast and then he decided he wanted to look for treasures. He found some old metal parts of tractors and other unidentifiable items. He gathered them all up and told me he was going to make a ferris wheel. Well, okay……..
Mind you, this boy is just 5. Looks like he has a pretty good start on that Ferris Wheel. Then he and his Papa went out into the “forest” in search of more treasures. They ran upon what appeared to be the remains of an old vehicle. Coach thought it was an old Model A. He remembered it from his childhood. It was all tangled up with a tree trunk growing right up through what would have been the hood.
You can see the “spine” of the car running across the bottom of the photo. They started digging in the front end and actually found the engine block.
Then they dug around the back-end and found some old wheels, a hammer mill and even an old cream can. All these “treasures” have been left in the woods for another visit. We convinced Kader that these things had been in the woods so long that they needed to stay there. He reluctantly agreed. He really wanted to take them all home with him and put them in his toy box. His mother was glad we convinced him to leave them there.
Then the big man and the little man got a call for help. Coach’s brother had shot a buck and needed help hauling him out of the plum thickets. So we loaded up on the 4 wheeler and off we went. Across the dam, past the pond, and through the pastures and trees. We found BIL (brother-in-law) huffing and puffing as he pulled and tugged his big buck toward the pickup. After helping him get the buck to the road our little man decided he needed to check this creature out. He looked in his eyes, in his ears, under his tail, bottoms of his hooves, and then ran his little hand down his side. YUCK! He about freaked out when he pulled back a hand with blood on it.
Then the Big Man let the Little Man hold the deer up just like the guys on TV do.
He helped them gut it and clean it and then told me that he was never going to kill a deer because it is too yucky. I have a tendency to agree with him.
We finished out the day by doing a little fishing and then grilled some hot dogs and listened to the coyotes howl until we went into bed. When his parents came to get him the next day he cried because he just wants to live at the farm in the camper and spend all the time finding treasures and fishing. Sounds like a deal to me.
I love spending time with my grandchildren. Especially when I can spend one on one time with them. We don’t get to do that often enough though since we have so many now but every chance I get I want to spend quality time with these precious kids. I remember my grandmothers and the wonderful times that I got to spend with them. They taught me about unconditional love and about having patience. I loved them with all my heart.
I am so thankful that my Big Man aka Coach is so willing to take these little ones and teach them the things that a man needs to know. I can work with the girls but the boys need his knowledge and his attention. He teaches them not only about hunting and fishing but also about respect and good manners. He teaches them to be men of integrity. I am so thankful that my Big Man loves all three of my Little Men. Just like he loved our own Little Men and helped them to become the wonderful Big Men that they are today. Am I a lucky girl or what????
One final photo of my Little Man. I love this photo because he looks so sweet and innocent. Yeah, not his normal pose……
I can’t take credit for this photo because his 13 year old sister took my camera out and took his photo in my yard one day. She is really good with a camera but that is another post entirely.
Saturday one of our little granddaughters celebrated her 5th birthday. She told her parents that she wanted a “Dorothy” party. When they did a little digging they found out that she wanted a “Wizard of Oz” birthday party. They did a lot of planning and decided to hold the party at a corn maze. What better place to “follow the yellow brick road” than to wind your way through a corn maze. I had never been there before but every year around this time you can drive by there and there will be dozens of cars and school buses and hundreds of people wondering around. Over the years it has grown to include other activities and buildings to hold parties. Here are a few shots from our delightful evening.
You can see that the corn was pretty tall and we could easily have lost a few kids had we not outnumbered them 2 to 1. The older siblings had already run off and left us. These little tikes were having a ball until someone – Masson’s daddy – jumped out of the corn and scared them to death.
This place has to be a virtual money making machine! There wasn’t much out there that cost too much to build. The maze, I’m sure, requires planting and watering and then they use a GPS unit on their tractors to carve out the design in the maze. This is the design they used this year.
Here in Western Oklahoma we don’t have a very colorful autumn. Oh, we have color but just not a variety. I took my camera with me today and looked for some reds, yellows, oranges and greens. What I saw was some browns, almost browns and a few yellows. Here is a photo of a tree on our main street in our little town. It is a beautiful tree and probably one of the few in our little town that actually puts on a show for us in the fall.
When I got home I noticed – duh, it was there all the time – a tree in my neighbors yard. The sun was shining on it just right and it was beautiful!
Wait, what do I see right there on the lower left of that tree………is that some red? Let’s look a little closer….
It IS red! I lied…….we do have some red autumn leaves in Western Oklahoma. Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit. You’re never too old to learn something new about your neck of the woods.
Several months ago I blogged about getting my flower beds ready for spring planting. Suddenly it’s fall and I am loving how things have grown and flowered in some of my beds. The remarkable thing about it is that they have been so neglected for the past 2 1/2 months. I haven’t been able to trim, weed or work in my beds due to all the surgeries so everything has been left to either thrive or die. Some of my flowers have bloomed and died but many have been flourishing. My sweet potato vine that I planted for filler has absolutely gone wild. It’s grown all through the beds and up onto the porch. Coach has bundled it up and thrown it back into the beds and onto the yard and yet it continues to grow up and onto the porch.
The sun has returned to Western Oklahoma today so I grabbed my camera this morning and headed out to snap a few shots of my beds. To see where we started you can look here. Now for the reveal……………..
A front view of my house: 
Shrubs need trimmed and the trim on the house really need painted. Maybe I’ll tackle that next spring.
The flower bed by my back patio. Look at all those strawberry plants behind my little angle statue. Next year should be a good year for fruit. 
I wish I could figure out a way to hide my air conditioning unit and all that electrical stuff and yet allow access to it in case it needs worked on. Any suggestions? The blue pot was full of tomatoes but they have been long gone. I love this porch in the mornings but in the evening it is generally too hot out here to enjoy. We have talked about enclosing the porch for years but just never could agree on what we want to do with it. I would like to put my office in the south end and make the north end a sitting area. That would require Coach to build me a deck or patio outside for our huge outdoor dining table. Coach just wants to enclose it and leave the table and swing out there. I’m thinking “living area” and he’s thinking “enclosed porch”. Thus there is a stand off at our house so nothing gets done.
Then we finally get to my favorite part. I bought this little chair at a garage sale a few years ago and it has been several different colors. This year I painted it lime green. Along with my bright yellow bench it really brightens up my front porch.
The sweet potato vine has grown through the chair and through the table legs behind the flower pot. The leaves are huge and beautiful. I love the pumpkins and the pink mums. The mums have kind of been choked out but still managed to stick their little heads up and bloom. The crab grass flourished too but I did manage to get some of it out before I had to quit working in the beds.
My favorite season is Spring because of the promise of new life but I also LOVE fall and all the colors that it brings. I hope that each of you are enjoying the beautiful fall colors and having a wonderful weekend!
