Just a few Midwestern photos

So remember I made that quilt, and I said that it was inspired by Iowa, in particular the farming area where my parents are from and where I spent a lot of time when I was growing up. Well, it was on my mind because I took my vacation there this fall, and went to a harvest festival in the town my grandparents live in. So I thought I’d show you where the inspiration came from.

So yeah, the inspiration is obvious. I can’t really emphasize enough how much my summer and winter trips influenced me while I was growing up. Even my family didn’t know that until I said it on this blog, though. I’m not a particularly communicative person, apparently.

Southeastern Iowa is beautiful. This particular area is close to the Mississippi River, which is my favorite body of water (I’ve even swum parts of it, which I think about now and - ew! snakes! fish! tugboats!), and has, as far as I’m concerned, the best weather ever. And if you think Iowa is fla, it’s really not (cue Dar Williams song the Hills of Iowa).

The fall leaf photos you’re seeing now are from Geode Park maybe 10 minutes from my grandparents. It’s a state park around a lake. It would be a rather forested area if it weren’t for all that farmland, but all that farmland makes that an easy fact to overlook. They have maple trees, obviously, which are my second favorite tree behind aspens. Aspens win because there’s nothing like sitting in an aspen grove on a breezy spring day and listening to the leaves chime. I recommend a porch on a mountainside in an aspen grove in Colorado. Really.

I had a pretty relaxed time - went hiking a couple of times, did some sewing, went shopping with my grandparents, and my aunts and cousin came down over the weekend. There was a parade and lots of food (and the amount of baking was ridiculous). One day I took a trip down in to Illinois to visit where my other grandparents used to live, and where they and many other relatives are now buried. I don’t get many chances to wander around there, but I wanted to show Jeff around, because I have a lot of memories there, too.

I think it’s interesting, as I get older, to think about the things that ended up influencing the way I think about the world now. I’ve lived in a lot of places that I think have influenced me. Yet all the factors seem so disparate, and sometimes I think end up existing in sort of tenuous harmony in my mind. In my adult life I’ve chosen to live in three of North America’s largest cities, yet when my mind seeks artistic inspiration it turns to … pastoral Iowa? Okay. Sure. Maybe if I lived in pastoral Iowa you’d see me drawing my inspiration from Manhattan, then?

In any case, fall in Iowa certainly offers a lot in the way of busy farmers working to get hundreds of acres of grain corn and soybeans in before the first freeze. It was a very wet summer and this put off planting and caused Other Bad Agricultural Things (clearly I’m not a farmer). I visited a stretch on the Illinois side of the Mississippi where the fields had a foot of standing water - anyone remember when it flooded in Iowa? That water hasn’t all gone away months later.

Hey it’s me! I’m big on detailed self-portraits, eh? This is sunset on the Mississippi … it’s about a mile wide here. *sigh* Such a beautiful river. In summer there’s a nice little farmstand on the other side near there.

Now that I’m finally getting to taking care of pictures and trip stuff, and my 65+ backlogged emails, and my office-craft area looks less terrifically and horribly messy, I might actually get back to that crafting thing. Unfortunately, you know what one result of my big House Cleanout was? I found all those pesky clothes I’ve been meaning to mend, hem and alter. Isn’t that just a terrific joy? </sarcasm> I have sworn I will get to some of this though, and not just create new messes, which seems to be what I’m most skilled at.

Until I make it back to the computer, I bid you adieu