Yellow Wildflowers

After 2 spring seasons here in Kentucky I have noticed that the fields that have soybeans in them from summer to late fall have yellow wildflowers in them in the spring. I checked some wildflower websites and found that they are ragwort and buttercups. The first photos are of the ragwort, which has a kind of daisy look to the flower. The buttercups are a five petaled flower that looks kind of shiny and holds dew drops well. They are not the kind I was used to seeing in New Mexico and as a kid in Texas. These are smaller but just as pretty. I don't know why these yellow flowers come up so thick in the fields in the spring. I do know that most of the soybean farmers use a weed killer, (which I don't approve- seems as if they could just plow them under) to kill them these wildflowers and then plant the soybeans. I prefer the organic way of growing things.

 Ragwort

 Buttercups

Most of these fields are around my house. This is Ziva sitting at the edge of our property with the soybean field behind her.

Sunset After Rain

Twice this past week we had a surprise cloud-burst of a rainstorm.  The first 2 photos is of the rain through one of my windows followed by photos of the sunset to the west of us.

The next afternoon we had another rainstorm (the new and our Weather apps gave no indication that we would have these storms). This photo is of the rain. My little weather station said we had wind gusts up to 35 miles per hour. I thought some of my smaller trees were going to break they were so bent over. At the worst time we couldn't even see out the window for the rain and hail.

Then the sun came out and we had another beautiful sunset.

Now the weather station on TV is saying we are having a heck of an outbreak of rain and hail storms clear across the United States. There have been several tornados but without so much of the damage they do sometimes. I hope there are no more of these surprise storms and no more tornados.

Old Churches

Old churches seen while visiting the Petersburg, West Virginia area. This one was the oldest.

This one wasn't all that old but had a nice view where it was sitting on this hill.

This was probably the newest one. I didn't get close enough to see any kind of a date on it.

These last photos should have been with the first church. They were inside the church

Visiting West Virginia

We drove from our home in Carrollton, Kentucky to Petersburg, West Virginia to visit my husbands sister this past week. We went on a drive around the country side and I took photos of old houses, barns, and the landscape. First 2 photos are of a rest area we stopped at on the way to WV. It was almost postcard pretty. I think these trees were crabapples but not sure.

 The dogwood trees were in full bloom.

There was lots of fog when we were driving into WV and some on one outing.

This lilac was next to an old abandoned house.

There were wild phlox everywhere we went.