Astounding on July 4

"What was the most astounding thing you saw today," asked my wife Susan, about my drive into eastern Oklahoma County on July 4. I started to say nothing really...I'd gone to take photos of flags and a wooden caboose, and just to hunt. I came back with some photos, but nothing really remarkable, except time to myself to think and look.

But then it hit me. I was driving south on Sooner Road and turned west the wrong way on 36th Street. I went over the Canadian River bridge and came to something unexpected...a Buddhist temple. I drove by determined to turn around and take a photo, and at the corner, not a quarter mile from the temple was a Baptist church in Forest Park.

I thought... this symbolizes  what July 4 is all about... not a "Christian" nation, but a nation where people of all or no faiths can be welcome. People who are independent, and are free to follow their beliefs. Then I drove south to 23rd Street , through Spencer and Choctaw and east until I'd come to Harrah, giving up on finding anything else.

And there, getting ready to turn around, I saw the second most remarkable thing of the day in front of me. At the Harrah postoffice, Old Glory waves, but right under it was the POW MIA flag. It always attracts me, but you don't see many in this state...usually on homes of Vietnam vets who've lost buddies long ago. In New Mexico you see them everywhere, including over your head as you walk out of the Albuquerque airport. But here, in Harrah, some patriots have given the flag official designation.
Independence Day!

Peach orchard reverie

Stratford peaches in the bag, new ones, a lemon, plus the
essential ingredient of a morning drive into the country.

Peach cobbler season... fresh juicy delicious Stratford peaches from the Edmond Farmer's Market last Saturday. Fourth of July coming up...perhaps not enough for an entire cobbler for about eight people.

I call father-in-law Jay Henry about driving to Harrah to get more peaches from the orchard he's visited for years. He calls and finds the orchard is open at 8 a.m., so I drive across town to get him about 7:15, and off we go, through the morning rush  hour traffic, till we turn off I-35 into the morning sun on 23rd Street....

Into a different world. Yes, Choctaw commuters are passing us heading west to work in OKC. Soon though, the four lane gets quieter, over rolling hills, past places I want to stop and take photos of, but I don't have a camera, and we're heading to peaches.

North on Luther Road, past new houses, into the quiet countryside. Hay fields, soybeans, corn, horses in yards, blackberry orchards, peach orchards. We arrive at the gate just as it's opening, and our tires crunch down the gravel road into the 300 acres of so of orchard on rolling hills. On both sides are peach trees, many of them only a couple of years old, others already picked. Signs mark rows marked  as to varieties...Redskin, Topaz, more than I can remember. A hail storm two years ago devastated the orchard, Jay says, and it's just now recovering.

We stop and ask where to pick, and get directions from teenagers working the stand. Half bushel paper cartons to put our pickings in. $30 if they're full. Most of the peaches we see are small and not ripe, and where we're supposed to pick is a disappointment...hard and not tasty. We see other pickers and stop and ask, and eventually get about a quarter of a bushel...small, just getting ripe.

Not what either of us had envisioned, but they go in the back of the car and we wend our way home through the backroads, past cemeteries, more fields of hay and soybeans and corn and more...a peaceful, rural way of life only minutes from the madness of morning metropolis. Back to his home, and I pick out just a few peaches to add to my cobbler brew. They're smaller than the Stratford, and not quite as tasty, but by 10 a.m. I'm back in Edmond. I slice up a few, licking the juice off my fingers, thinking about cobbler...my recipe and others'. 

I know one essential ingredient has already been added...a morning conversation of memories and sights that will add flavor to the cobbler.

Barn yet again

15 by 22, watercolor, 300 pound d'Arches paper--Oklahoma county barn

Barn, again

The Years Go By, 11 by 14, 300 pound d'Arches paper

This was my fourth try of the old barn I photographed last summer in eastern Oklahoma County. Finally switched to good paper, and that makes a difference...and I learned more about color.
Here's the inspiration: