Flyover State

Jet streams made a huge Zorro-like "Z" and crisscrossed the Kansas sky. And I wondered about the people who were zipping along at 600 miles per hour. Do those people look outside their windows and wonder what's going on under the blanket of clouds some 35,000 feet below them?

Are they like the sandhill cranes who fly close to the moon?
Some of those travelers may believe the Great Plains are just a place to fly over - a way to get from one coast to the other.
But life down here as as real as the gravel that gets lodged in my tennis shoes as I walk down our dirt roads. Some days, I get caught in the shadows as the sun plays hide and seek. I may trudge along, not giving a lot of thought to the beauty that is all around me. But spring scenes during the past few weeks have opened my eyes again to the beauty. So has reading the book, One Thousand Gifts, by Ann Voskamp, and her blog, A Holy Experience.

Beauty truly is in recognizing the small things:
Morning dew on flowers has been a welcome sign after last summer's record heat and drought. We pray that this week will bring some much-needed rain to our wheat crop as it continues to mature.

Pear blossoms were like clouds surrounding an American flag blowing hard in the Kansas wind.

Forsythia blossoms gave a splash of yellow like the sun to a cloud-filled spring sky. 

The fragrance and beauty of blossoms greeted me as I made my way toward home.


And the purple of the hyacinths welcomed me to my front door.

As spring has come to Central Kansas, those naysayers who think we're just stuck down here in the flyover states just don't know what they're missing. Give me the "middle of nowhere," as Jason Aldean says, in his song.

Note: These images have been taken in March and April. Most of these blooms and blossoms are long gone now, but little reminders of God's creative genius continue to come to the County Line in this "Flyover State."

I am reposting this with a link to another Kansas farm wife's blog, Alive and Well in Kansas, this morning. Living in the "middle of nowhere" is also about helping your neighbors after a tornado.