Well, I guess summer isn't officially over until the end of September, but it sure feels like it. There is a chill in the air, and we actually had to turn on our heat yesterday morning. Wil resists turning on the heat like it might cause the plague or something. It took me pointing out that Rowan's fingers were turning blue for him to allow me to set the thermostat at a whopping 65 degrees. Ooooh, tropical temperatures here! Not!
Lola is sad to see the summer go. I put away her pool, and cleaned up her water toys. She asked me this morning if we could have another summer. I told her that we would have to wait a whole year for another one. Unfortunately, Lola thinks her birthday is always just around the corner, and that Christmas is always next week, so the concept of an entire year is out of her grasp.
I got a lovely break from work last week...6 days off in a row! Wil had to work, however, so we were looking for things to do since the weather was so crummy. I happened to be breezing through a gem book looking for info on garnets, when I stumbled across a page about opals. It mentioned that there used to be an opal mine in a small town nearby. I was pretty sure that the town had long since disappeared, but I knew that there was a road with the same name near here. I drove the kids over to my mom's and picked her up for a road trip.
"We going on an adventure, Mama?" Lola asked...to her any trip in the car is an adventure!
We drove to the road I was thinking of, and sure enough found evidence of homesteads and a grain depot that marked the spot where the town once existed. I was driving down a gravel road when suddenly my mom spotted an old iron gate amongst the thick bushes off to the side of the road. We backed up and got out of the car to explore. The gate marked the entrance to a cemetery! The trail up the hill was overgrown with wild grasses and rose bushes. It was eerily quiet and very peaceful. We trecked up the hill and found very old headstones and grave markers hidden in the thick brush. It was obviously uncared for, but strangely pretty there. Hundreds of iris grew in the grasses. This place must be beautiful in the spring. I can only imagine the hundreds of iris blooms among the gravestones.
We spent about 1/2 an hour exploring the cemetery. Lola thought that this was a great adventure and helped us find the old headstones in the overgrowth. Of course she had no idea the significance of the special ground we were exploring, but she seemed to enjoy the outing. I took several pictures of the lonely burial ground hidden in a thicket in a wheatfield in the middle of nowhere.
The kids and I came home refreshed somehow from our experience on the hill. I spent the rest of the day feeling blessed that we live in such a pretty place, and thankful for our family and our lives.
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