Meadowlarks and New Calves

The last two Sundays were as different as night and day. Last Sunday there was so much snow and mud that both churches we attend cancelled services. 

Jonathan and the children had managed to get home from Pierre on Saturday,  despite terrible roads, bringing me a pot of tiny narcissi to place in the window! They parked our van at our neighbor's place, since it was so weighed down with building material that, in Danny's words, it would have shot "like a rocket" down our steep and slippery hill of a drive. 

  On Sunday about noon, coming home from the church up the road where we attend when Lakota Chapel cancels, we arrived at the gate to discover a whole flock of meadowlarks all over our snowy, muddy driveway!  

Perhaps a couple dozen at least. We listened to them serenade us, watched them flutter here and there with their bright yellow Sunday ties! 

 It was just so amazing. 

That was in the middle of weeks of Danny spending each morning helping a rancher friend find and tag new calves just like this one which we saw from our kitchen window this Sunday over in our neighboring rancher's field.  

Danny and Jonathan are also doing some remodel work for the same rancher, traveling back and forth on about ten miles of muddy road! This is what their vehicles look like when they are done!

The weather seems to waver here between winter and spring, but ticks are already showing up,

a pair of swans had returned and were swimming on a little lake on our way to Sioux Falls the week before, 

 and Jonathan's seasonal allergies are driving him crazy all over again.

 

A day or two before the snow storm, there was a very bad grass fire across the border in Nebraska at the Nebraska National Wildlife Refuge. Danny was gone for hours helping to fight that.  Runs in my mind about 10,000 acres burned.