Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
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A recent trip to Colorado gave me time to enjoy the fall colors before a hard freeze zaps the show from shrubbery and trees. The burning bushes were an intence blazing red while many trees dotted the landscape with gold and rust tones. It was breathtaking and we were traveling west, not into the eastern United States known for the fall show of colors. Arriving at home and looking out my kitchen window, the temperatures had dropped enough while gone to drain the last color from marigolds and...
Retired social studies teacher Laura Nelson is used to seeing her small town send its children, and its dollars, off to bigger cities. "We tend to go that way," to Lincoln and the Omaha metro, where her nieces and many former students live and shop. But lately, from her seat at the cafe table where she meets friends most mornings for coffee and an omelette, she's witnessed a reversal of fortune. City folks are spending their money in her hometown. "The cafe has managed to bring them up here,"...
Looking out my kitchen window, my eyes seem to travel to plants and blooms in the tones of orange, rust and burgundy. It's October and I just can't get enough of the warm colors of fall. Even the kitten that plays in the flower garden has orange in its calico-colored fur. We know the weather is going to get cooler, but somehow we are never ready for the chill and then the freeze that ends our growing season. I'm not sure just why the flower colors are so much brighter preceding a frost, but...
It's 55 degrees this September morning and I'm greeting the day with a cup of hot cocoa. I'm a cocoa fan rather than a cup of hot coffee. Despite the cool temperature I have my kitchen window open as I peer outside at the flower garden. Crickets can be heard singing a serenade which I hope is their goodby song. Of course their song also means goodbye to the bright, warm summer days. The plants are transitioning into fall as some of them have lost their growing vigor. Yet others seem to blend in...
Did you realize that there are flowers that evoke different emotions? Looking out my kitchen window, I usually smile as I look at my flower bed. When walking in the garden, I smile too, unless a weed catches my eye. Early in the mornings is my time to clip a bouquet to bring inside and keep that flowery smile going throughout the day. Currently, I have a bouquet in a vase with the printed verse, "Friend You Make Me Smile. "I have clipped and placed in it what I think of as the happiest of...
Looking out my kitchen window, it's bloom time in the garden and I want it to continue all year round. The only way to do that in Nebraska is by getting out the camera. It also means being patient as you sit in the garden on your favorite bench. You have to wait for when there isn't a breeze, when the sun goes under a cloud and then, move and move fast to get that perfect picture of that gorgeous bloom. Snapping those photos is a challenge as who doesn't want the perfect photo? I head to the...
BEV WIELER I’m watching the water sprinkler go back and forth out my kitchen window. Outside the birds are enjoying the light mist of water in the garden. They sing what I call their happy song. Oh this is living the dream for me. I’m retired and sitting on my patio enjoying the warm weather and looking over the flower garden. The peonies and iris had a long bloom season and are loosing their color while lily flower pods show color as I wait for their blooms to burst open. Annuals continue to gr...
BEV WIELER April showers have brought May flowers and I can hardly wait for blooms that fill out the rest of May and lead us into June and summer in the garden. There was a little set back recently with frost warnings for the morning of May 11. While the spring planting of impatients, geraniums and a variety of petunias has been underway in my rural West Point garden, Mother Nature sent a reminder to put the brakes on. It was full speed on the eve of May 10 as boxes, empty flower pots and...
BEV WIELER It’s April and I’ve walked through my garden checking if bushes are leafing out and watching as each day more color appears on tulips buds. Tiny grape hyacinth flowers seem a much darker purple this year and I’ve clipped a huge bunch of them to place in little glasses placed around the house. My yard isn’t the only place spring is appearing. Garden centers are bulging with plants and the color is eye boggling. The best laid flower garden plans are trashed the minute you step into th...
I heard it, then what followed was the rain. We are in the first part of March and I feel it was a spring thunderstorm as I was hearing thunder. Before I woke for the day, I just knew I would be able to look out my kitchen window and see green grass and robins. Spring isn’t quite here yet, but as I stepped outside that morning, I could smell the damp earth calling to me. Despite the thunder and rain, it’s early enough in March that there are still memories looming in my mind of a ground hog pre...
The sign outside the lone bar in Royal reads Last Chance Bar and Grill. For some area residents, the name might have sealed the business's fate. Thanks to a Phoenix-now-Plainview couple, the local eatery and watering hole is experiencing a renaissance, of sorts. Lisa Meisner and Polly Anderson hope to reopen the Royal Bar and Grill in March and anticipate the place will remain a gathering place for locals, while alluring new customers who venture along U.S. Highway 20. A trip to Nebraska in Dece...
A blanket of snow covers the view out my kitchen window and inside the numbers on the outdoor thermometer are frighteningly low. On my kitchen counter, a willow branch is covered with soft puffs of pussy willows. Roots have sprouted and the willow twig is ready to plant. Brrr, planting during the cold snap sure wasn’t on my mind these days. What a long blast of cold we were dealt this month. The only good part of it was that the moisture from the snow should help when plants shoot up this s...
I’m enjoying the now view of my flower garden out my kitchen window. If you are wondering what could be worth looking at out there, I’ll try to describe it. Despite being covered with white fluffy snow, I see swags of greenery and pots filled with clippings of evergreens. The red bows still add a pop of color to the scene. The snow is deep enough that the decor will probably stay through February. There is bird bath with open water, where birds perch and dip their beaks in for a drink. Clo...
My house has a deep nutty aroma wafting from the kitchen. It’s pine cones in the oven. I’m getting ready for the holidays and that includes baking pine cones. I don’t have a family recipe for them. I use them for decorations. I was lucky to find three varieties of pine cones in my backyard to collect. After a good dunk in water to help clean them, they are placed on aluminum foil covered baking sheets and popped into the oven at 275 degrees for about two hours. Now the house smells wonderful! Th...
While I count my blessings each and every day, I have never cared for Thanksgiving. Bad memories tend to resurface. Like how the smell of turkey roasting in the oven reminds me of three-year-old LuAnn, who was ill with influenza, tried a bite of turkey and couldn’t keep it down. Grandma Fields understood my pain, and every year, she also baked a ham so people, -er, I could have another choice. Simpler times then. In 2003, my husband died from a pulmonary embolism, two days before T...
The final annuals have been pulled and perennials that still stand in the garden are drained of color as November is here. There does remain one spot of color as I look out my kitchen window. The flowering kale or ornamental cabbage is still in a fairly good form even after the recent ice storm. The medium green outer leaves surround the rich purple center that has evolved as the plant continues to share color. Flowering kale blooms are actually just the colored leaves or are known as rosettes....
Growing up, Thanksgiving was pretty laid back in my house. As I've mentioned before, I grew up in Oshkosh, but both of my parents were born and raised near Valentine and that's where most of their families still lived. My dad worked for the local power company; he and a lineman were the service crew for the area. Someone always had to be there "on call." He worked over Thanksgiving so he could take Christmas off and spend it in Valentine with family. So usually, it was just Mom and Dad and me. O...
Greetings, SAM readers. For the past two weeks, I have shared a breakdown of the differences between news articles and editorial items, after SAM began a partnership with Trusting News, a project of the Reynolds Journalism Institute and American Press Institute. We worked to devise strategies that promote responsible and ethical journalism. One goal I established, through the project, is to provide a breakdown of what makes a news article, an editorial and a column. This week, I will address...
There’s a rustle as I walk through the flower garden. It’s autumn and leaves are scattered on the ground. Moving indoors and looking out the kitchen window, the color in the flower garden has changed as the weather slowly creeps into cooler days and nights. It’s the kind of weather that makes a person want to cuddle up in a favorite sweatshirt and stoke a fire in the backyard fire pit. I’ve resisted the urge for the wood in the fire pit due to the extreme dry conditions and low dew point in the...
With the recent rain, I’m able to look out my kitchen window and still enjoy color in the flower garden. Just a few weeks ago I was ready to pull flowers out and hope for the best for wintering over perennials. It’s surprising what almost two inches of rain can do. All summer I dumped water on the beds. It takes rain to really make the color pop in the landscape. I realize we aren’t out of the woods yet. It will take a lot more moisture to bring up our water table. Plants need deep watering. Tha...
The landscape is changing outside my kitchen window. The greens have started to take on a different tone. Many flowers are reaching maturity. In the vegetable garden, red tomatoes fill the line of tomato plants and potato plants are drying down. It's only August and I'm not ready to give up summer. Nor am I ready to write out Welcome Fall on chalkboards or wood door swags. Summer, please hang on. I welcome the cool evenings and mornings, but just maybe they were a bit premature. I've looked...
When Scott and I were newlyweds, I spent a lot of time in the kitchen, concocting recipes, using him as a guinea pig for my culinary creations. Most mornings, he’d swing the tractor into the driveway and stop for breakfast around 8:30. Usually, I’d dish up eggs over easy on perfectly toasted wheat bread, or if I felt ambitious, pancakes from scratch, topped with sweet butter and homemade strawberry syrup. Stuffed, he’d head out to feed cattle and I’d clean up and start lunch prep. Some days, t...
A look out the kitchen window into the flower garden this morning revealed the usual lilies, zinnias and petunias in bloom. The tiger lilies green buds hang down waiting for their turn to open. In this hot, dry season I’m lucky to have color. Listening to the spit, spit, spit of the sprinkler rotating on the vegetable garden, I move to the patio for a bowl of cereal and hope something new might be blooming in the flower garden. Then I saw it, the garden phlox is starting to show color. Late last summer I planted two. I’ve had them before, but a...
I know the old saying: April showers bring May flowers. I also know we need showers month after month, but I don't like being held in the house by rain showers. It's May and I want to play outside. I do want the rains but have never figured out the happy medium, as to when it is to rain when needed, so I can be outside. If it rains at night, it's muddy during the day. Hmm, what to do? I suppose those rainy days are the times to look out the kitchen window while I dig into indoor chores. Or, I...
Garden fairies are so fun if you have a little one with you in the garden. As I look out to an early spring garden, there isn't much color other than sprouts of green iris. The garden fairies haven't been to work yet. I like to share with young garden visitors the tales of garden fairies. We even have a tree with a door and windows for the fairies. My story is that garden fairies give the blooming flowers their color early in the morning. Now wouldn't that be something to see out the kitchen...
