We decided to get breakfast out of the way on the way home — anything to delay tackling Laundry Mountain. At 6 am the restaurant was full with shoppers taking a breather before going back out again. The couple next to us were playing with their new camera and cell phone. Other diners were armed with yesterday’s ads and planning their first line of attack. What slackers! 6 am and they hadn’t hit the stores yet.

There is nothing I want so desperately that I would shop on Black Friday. I did tell Jack that I thought it would have been fun to do it just once with my two sisters when we were younger and still buying gifts for tons of people. Now, I’m happy to take a pass.

It was a busy week here with Christine, Nick and Carrie visiting. Having a 10-year-old boy around who goes nonstop is quite a change for us and we enjoyed every minute.  The first thing we did when we got back from depositing him at the airport was to take a nap!

The week started on Sunday with tickets to the musical Wicked. It’s the first musical where I enjoyed the dialog — some very clever — better than the music. A fun show but no memorable songs that you come away humming.

Monday we took a picnic to the park even though it was barely 60 degrees out, before swinging back down to Kansas City and going to dinner and a college tournament basketball game at the Sprint Center. Our $10 seats were excellent and if it hadn’t been for the idiot sitting two rows back who yelled the whole time, the game would have been a blast. Perfect way to entertain a a sports-crazed 10-year-old.

Tuesday, back to KC and the College Basketball Experience.

We’d been holding off going there until Nick visited so we were glad they had extended hours because of the tournament. There’s plenty to see and do if you’re a fan or a player.

If you want to see how many free throws you can make in a minute (for instance) it’s worth the price of admission.

Ditto for three-point shots.

Or compare your wingspan or shoe size to some of the college greats.

See how high you can leap to catch a ball.

Get out on the court for a pick-up game. Lots of guys were reliving their glory days in high school or college.

There’s a College Basketball Hall of Fame that’s worth some time as well.

And for the record, I suck at free throws.

A quick side trip to check out the Cosentino’s downtown market (mmmm, lemon bars) and home for a dinner of Father’s Specials (bratwurst, dill pickle spear, swiss cheese, mustard on toasted rye) and to watch more basketball on TV. I passed on the basketball and watched something inane while knitting.

Wednesday was a long walk around the neighborhood before taking Christine and Nick to the airport and hitting the couch for a nap (see above).

I already blogged Thanksgiving and that brings us back to Laundry Mountain.

Oh and the cats? Not so much lovers of children. Even though Nick wanted to be friends they spent the week under the couch, hiding in the bedroom and otherwise generally making themselves invisible. They’re still skulking around corners today making sure the coast is clear.

Sunday’s water lily photo was taken at Powell Gardens, Kansas City’s botanical garden and home of this bug-eyed lady. I stole my title from them.

It’s always a moment of zen to go to Powell and we don’t do it often enough. We ambled through the woodland trail, relaxed in the shade of the water garden and enjoyed the perennial garden where the day lilies and hibiscus were at their best.

New this year is the Heartland Harvest Garden exhibit, an “edible landscape”, which is a fancy way of saying veggie patch, to “illustrate the journey of food from seed to plate”.

It’s unfair to call it a veggie patch because it’s so much more. There are apple, pear and peach orchards that wind around brick sidewalks next to a vineyard interplanted with hybrid tea roses that act as “canaries” as an early alert on soil problems. The seedling greenhouses were empty, and I need to go back to explore the author gardens (based upon the designs of famous garden/landscape writers) more.  There are acres of vegetables laid out like quilt squares and a new barn that will be used as class rooms and resource center.

The only hokey thing I saw were the two resin Missouri mules. Not happenin’ for me but it was part of the kids’ gardens under development so I cut them some slack. Get real mules people.

I’m looking forward to watching it grow in the coming years.

I took lots of photos and I’ll feature a few of the better ones over the next couple of weeks. For now, here are a few highlights.

By the way, the sky in these photos? It was just that color on Sunday. Totally beautimous day.

On the woodland trail

In the vineyard

Looking through the gardens

Apple core(t) yard

Last week we took a little trip to Iowa for a checkup on Jack’s fake ankle and since we were in the neighborhood, visited the Amana Colonies, a community of seven villages where residents practiced a communal life. United by a common religion known as the Community of True Inspiration, the villagers came to Iowa in 1855 from Germany, after first settling in New York. They built thriving villages where residents received a home, medical care, meals, and schooling for their children. The adults were assigned jobs by the village councils; the men worked as farmers or skilled craftsmen, the women worked in the communal kitchens and tended the gardens.

The communal way of life ended in 1932 in response to modern pressures; the Depression and the desire of the younger villagers to change their way of  life. The villagers received shares in the Amana Society, a profit-sharing corporation which managed the farmland, mills and other businesses. The Amana Church still survives and the Colonies were designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965.

The highlight for Jack was the Amana Furniture Shop and the expert craftsmanship of their grandfather clocks, bedroom sets, rockers, kitchen tables and much more. One bedroom set that I liked would cost about $16,000. Maybe in my next life.

A small walnut dresser in production

After the furniture shop we spent most of our time going through the Heritage Museum, a complex of 3 original buildings where you can view exhibits about the Colonies and their people. No pictures allowed or I’d show you marvelous knit items from the  exhibit on needlework housed in the old schoolhouse below.

The little brown building is the schoolhouse privy

There were gloves and baby bonnets knit in cobweb yarn with seed beads so small they looked like a spot of ink. Men’s knee-length work socks in sturdy brown wool. Many crocheted items as well as quilts.

Both boys and girls went to knitting school where they learned to knit socks for their families and mittens that were sold to provide extra money. The gift shop had a pair of old two-color woolen mittens on display that had a  star pattern on the back and another pattern on the front. Unfortunately the only mittens they had for sale were done in acrylic and were still selling for $35 or $50. Disappointing.

We also saved the Woolen Mill for next time which wasn’t a disappointment for me since I’ve been there before and they concentrate on blankets and other woven goods.

Trellises for growing grapes for wine

The Colonies produced much of what they needed to survive and became known for their fine craftsmanship. They farmed, produced wool and calico, made wine and beer, raised sheep and other livestock. Today it’s an interesting mix of tourist schlock and history.

Actually, our first stop after grabbing lunch was actually this place. Two thumbs up on the maple nut fudge and one thumb up on the peanut butter fudge (mine, all mine).

Then Jack wandered over here and scored something sweet for breakfast the next morning.

It sounds like we ate our way through the colonies. We probably would have but only actually had time to make it to Amana which is the largest village. We saved some food (and history) for next time.

We’ll go back again sometime to the other villages since we’d like to see the communal kitchen in Middle Amana and the agricultural museum in South Amana. We take things in small bites  these days, particularly if it includes fudge!

A tuckered-out Amana resident

is actually a peony bud. Doesn’t it look like a big ole red rose? When it opens it looks like this:

This is the Hephestos Daphnis peony which is part of the peony garden at the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology.  My friend E and I took a stroll through the garden last week and out of all 125 species of peonies this was my favorite, which is saying something. The blossom looks like rich red leather and I couldn’t stop ooohing over it.

After spending an hour in the garden we walked through the library and marveled at the exhibit of early microscopes and made our way to the rare book room where the librarian was kind enough to show us around. Their oldest book is more than 500 years old. Chickadees, I saw a first edition of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species as well as later editions in German and French, which are hardly old (1859) in comparison to some of their collection but still left me awestruck. I felt very uneducated and immediately came home and read the front page of the newspaper instead of the funnies.

Not that it helped.

By the way in this house, we say PEE-uh-nee, not pe-O-nee. I know there is disagreement over which to use, but my mother always pronounced it PEE-uh-nee so I figure the petals shouldn’t fall far from the shrub. Or something.

The Farm Barn

Before I left Vermont two weekends ago, I spent part of a day at Shelburne Farms. After a weekend of wedding activity and gaggles of people, I was looking forward to some time in a peaceful setting.

Approaching the Farm Barn

Even though I grew up in Vermont I’d never been to Shelburne Farms before. It wasn’t organized as a nonprofit organization until 1972 and I was away at college then. Here’s an abbreviated description from their brochure:

Shelburne Farms is a nonprofit environmental education center, 1,400-acre working farm and National Historic Landmark. It was established in 1886 as the model agricultural estate of William Seward and Lila Vanderbilt Webb. …Shelburne Farms maintains a Brown Swiss dairy herd, a cheesemaking facility, and a seasonal inn to help support its education work.

It also has some wonderful walking trails which is where I spent nearly 3 hours. From the Welcome Center I took an easy walk to the Farm Barn and enjoyed the Children’s Farmyard complete with (free-range) chickens, pigs, alpacas, cows, sheep and goats –and kids of the human variety. I watched the cheese making for a while and then sniffed my way over to the bakery but left before I could succumb to the cookies and bread.

Have coop, will travel. At the Farm Barn

I headed around the back and up the trail to the Lone Tree Hill and Farm Trail, ready to stretch my legs over 5 miles of trails.

The weather remained misty and foggy all day, limiting the opportunity for scenic views and much photography. That helped to ease my frustration when my memory card filled up when I was two miles away from the spare. I know I missed spectacular scenery from the top of Lone Tree Hill where, instead of Vermont’s rolling mountains, all I could see was fog filling the valleys. And coming down out of the woods into the meadow with the fields gently falling to Lake Champlain, I could only imagine what it would look like on a clear day with the hills burning red, the fields still holding their summer green and Lake Champlain sparkling blue at the foot of the meadow.

In 3 hours of walking I encountered only 6 people but the weather probably had something to do with that. I walked through woods, across fields, down by the lake, up the farm road and finally back through the sugar woods where the sap lines are in place for next spring’s maple sugaring season.

Sugaring woods

There are a number of buildings I’d like to explore next time I go, including the Dairy and The Inn which serves afternoon teas two days a week (reservations required). There are other roads and trails that I still need to explore as well.

My final stop was at the store in the Welcome Center where I bought a pound of their one-year-old Farmhouse Cheese and a cider doughnut (yum) before heading for the Burlington Airport and the trip home.

General admission gives you the freedom to wander without a set agenda (like me) or you can sign up for the guided property tour which costs a little more and include wagon rides through the grounds. There are separate admissions for the Breeding Barn Tour and the Tea and Garden Tour at the Inn.

If you’re looking for thrills and chills, go to an amusement park. But if you like beautiful scenery with some history thrown in and great walking trails besides, give Shelburne Farms a visit.

To a girl from Vermont, there’s a lot of nothing out on the Flint Hills of Kansas. Nothing but acres of prairie tall grass.

And cow poop.

Produced by this guy and his brothers.

And if you’re looking for a tree to pee behind, you’d better be prepared to hold it for a while.

Where we were
My friend E and I went hiking at the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in the Flint Hills of Kansas a couple weeks ago. It’s 150 miles from Kansas City on U.S. 50, west of Emporia, Kansas. The Preserve includes a 125-year-old farmstead, complete with 3-story limestone barn, stable, home and school and 11,000 surrounding acres of prairie. The Nature Conservancy bought the majority of the acreage in 2005 and the National Park Service owns the farmstead. Together, the two organizations partner to run a truly outstanding destination.

The Conservancy leases the acreage for grazing in the spring and early summer before the cattle head for the feedlots. Hence the herds. At first, it’s a little disconcerting because there are no fences between you and the beef (with horns) which the ranger has warned you are wild and shouldn’t be bothered. Until you realize their flight instincts are better than yours.

Looking at the rolling hills it’s easy to imagine where the phrase “amber waves of grain” comes from. While eating our lunch we looked over miles of green hills without a building in sight. We talked about what it must have been like as an early settler to end up in this lonesome landscape, having travelled thousands of miles from the overcrowded cities of Europe. The nearest human is miles away. If an accident happens, a child gets sick, a tornado strikes, where do you turn for help?

It took an amazing amount of courage for early settlers, men and women, to make their homes here.

These wide-open spaces do tend to make the imagination work overtime.

The wildflowers added splashes of color and bird song provided our hiking music. The day was overcast, in the 60’s with a light wind, which made it ideal. When the temperatures hit their peak in August, it’ll be brutal with no sheltering shade. Not a place to be without your own supply of water.

There are a choice of trails for visitors, depending upon your activity level and interest. We walked the backcountry trails including the 6-mile round trip to the scenic overlook. We followed the gravel road even though I was hankering to head cross-country and short cut the route to the overlook.

We walked and walked and walked, so we ran out of time to check out the farm buildings. Sometime soon I’ll go back with Jack to explore the farm more closely and take the 90-minute bus tour for non-hikers.

If you go
The brochure describes the backcountry trails as moderately difficult. We did two out of three of the trails and with hiking boots, didn’t have any problems. It had been raining the day before and there was no avoiding the mud, but there’s no climbing involved and the elevations are gradual.

On the trails….
there is no traffic noise.
there is no shade.
there is no potable water.
there are no toilets.
there are no picnic tables, benches or bus stops.
there are no phones.

This is the wilderness as much as any forest. Instead of trees there’s tall grass. And wildflowers. And birds. Beautiful vistas and whistling winds. Open horizons. Snakes (although we didn’t see any, the ranger warns about them). Solitude. Mud if it’s wet and I imagine dust if it’s dry.

You should visit. 

What others have to say….
The New York Times has an article describing the Preserve, the Flint Hills Scenic Byway, Wichita and visitor information for the area.

The Nature Conservancy has information on field trips and events on their Preserve page.

 Rte50.com also has excellent pictures and more information from a visit in 2007.

Thank you, E, for letting me use your photos of the winding road, the tree and the barn.