Spring In The Country: Part 3

Okay, one more time! I figured I would throw up one last download of pics I've taken on a recent ride. Spring is about played out here now. Farmers have been planting beans and the corn has emerged. Flowers are in the ditches and all the trees have leaves now. Spring has sprung, as they say, and it sure feels like Summer now. So, here's the last "Spring In The Country" post for 2016.

The first cutting of hay I've seen this year.

The day was about as perfect as one could ask for. Warm, little wind, and bright sunny skies with a few puffy clouds passing over head. A week ago I was freezing in the gales of the Almanzo 100. Saturday I was basking in Summer-like warmth. What a difference a week makes!

A barn quilt and a metal serpent!

I pass this farm on the West side of Burton Avenue going North just before crossing Dunkerton Road. You should go by here if you live in the area. This fellow has a lot of metal sculptures in his yard made from scrap farm implements. I get a kick out of them every time I go by.

Going steadily up against a light North wind.

Rest stop.

I ended up crossing East on Gresham Road. I stopped at a bridge without railings (!!) and there was a nice wooded area off to the South along a creek and an abandoned rail line. I heard copious amounts of songbirds and I scared up a couple of deer.

A reminder of Iowa's glaciated past

 

I found the huge rock piles I've past by a bunch of times catching my eyes on this ride. Iowa has been ground down by glaciers over thousands of years by the various phases of the Ice Age. That action brought a lot of rock along with the glaciers and when they melted, they deposited these huge rocks and many millions of smaller ones that farmers have "rock picked" out of the soil over the past 150 years or so that this land has been tilled. I probably passed a half dozen of these monster piles of rock just on this ride.

The ditches are starting to become speckled with clumps of these pink, whitish, and lavender flowers.  

Stopped to reload the planter.

I had a great ride Saturday. It wasn't all that long, or spectacular, but as I often think to myself, it is good medicine for the mind and the soul. I made my way home through down town Waterloo, hit the house, had a great lunch, and mowed the lawn. Then I settled in to watch the race on the television and called it a night. But the best part of the day, for sure, was the bike ride to start it all.