What's a dazzling urbanite like you doing in a rustic setting like this?
- Blazing Saddles
Okay, that's a pretty broad exaggeration, but it's one of my favorite movie lines. The scene is just behind the house on the farm where my wife grew up. I'd be lying if I said I knew what the machine on the right did, except the spout on the side puts corn kernels into some kind of hopper. The corn isn't quite as high as an elephant's eye, as the old song has it, but it's getting there.
Out on the prairie in rural Kansas, where Mrs. C grew up. There was a semi-annual reunion of the descendants of her great-grandfather, Jurgen Kruse, German immigrant, Civil War soldier (which got his citizenship) and farmer. Granddaughter Ellie came along. She was bored with all the old people sitting around and yakking. My brother-in-law, who now owns the farm with his wife, took the kid out to the pasture to feed hay to the cattle. Big fun.
Purple skies and purple paint at the Fourth of July carnival in Webster Groves, the town where I live. City Daily Photo members from around the world drape themselves in the royal color at https://citydailyphoto.org/2026/07/23/august-gallery-purple/ .
On our way out to Kansas farmland for Mrs. C's semi-annual family get together. We always spend a night in Missouri's other major city on the way. Granddaughter Ellie is with us and wanted to stop at Legoland. We don't have one in St. Louis. She thinks she may be getting too old for it.
We have had doves using a nest under the eaves of our porch, which I think was built a few years ago by robins. They hatched a pair of eggs in late spring (https://tinyurl.com/4rjcmzny). Doves can have more than one clutch of eggs in a season and two more little ones showed up recently. They have been out of the nest for a couple of days. I think this is one of the parents and a chick waiting for dinner.
Over to Kansas City today, then out to the farm for a family event.
I drive by this place occasionally and it has always seemed mysterious. Plain facade of a building on the edge of the Soulard neighborhood, near the huge Anheuser-Busch brewery. So I looked up the website, https://www.sbacstl.org/, and it is stranger than I thought. Not my hangout.
A gate in the flood wall along the Mississippi, part of the graffiti-permitted Paint Louis section. The river lies just beyond the trees. I've never seen this gate closed, but then I wouldn't drive by if the water was that high.
