Van Gogh Colors in Kansas

 

A quote by Danish-French Impressionist painter Camille Passarro stopped me in my tracks during our day at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City. Or maybe it was the pinks, purples and blues of the sky, hidden behind stark, leafless trees in a wall-size painting. 

I didn't know anything about Pissarro before our visit. But the quote inspired me to do a little research. The quote ties in with another of his reflections: "Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing."

It went on to say these quotes "reflect his artistic philosophy that true beauty does not depend on grand or inherently majestic subjects, but rather on the artist's unique vision and ability to perceive and convey the character of everyday scenes."

Now I can relate to that! 

So can some Kansas poets. When we visited the Kansas State Fair this year, I saw several placards that featured poetry with the theme, "There Is No Place Like Home." Later, I learned that the state fair poetry was part of a project spearheaded by current Kansas Poet Laureate Traci Brimhall. She partnered with Kansas 4-H groups to collect poems from Kansas students. This was the third year for the project, but it was the first time I saw them on our trek throughout the fairgrounds. (You can see all the poems at the poet laureate's website by clicking HERE. I love several of them!)

Sunrise, September 29, 2026

One of those poems was:

Van Gogh Colors in Kansas 

by Janice Northerns 

Thick slabs of gold hold up the cobalt sky 

in a vacant landscape. It’s the loneliness

of the prairie, the solitude of flyover country.

You, urban girl, sneer you’d never live here:

Kansas is no place like home to you.

Yet somehow each visit finds you drawn

to another quirky store or a house

you long to own. This place, patient

with secrets, waits for your gaze to linger

long enough to find the sunflowers, acres

of welcome ready to catch you as the blue-black

night, steeped deep in stars, calls you

to a memory you didn’t know you missed.

Isn't it amazing how life intersects in these random messages?

"Everyday scenes" are part and parcel of life here on The County Line, smack dab in the middle of "flyover country." 

Sunrise looking west, August 27, 2026

But why would I want to escape these "everyday scenes" that are so extraordinary, here "on the loneliness of the prairie," as the poet says. 

Sunrise, September 29, 2026

They are nature's Impressionist paintings, served up as a rich banquet before I even can finish a cup of coffee. 

Sunset, August 26, 2026

When I'm in the prairie ... when the wind blows a soft kind of sound almost like music, I think I hear big orchestras with lots and lots of people playin' all kinds of horns and violins, drums and things and it goes on and one for a long time - comin' and goin' with the wind ...

Gordon Parks
Kansas Poet and Novelist

Sunrise, August 27, 2026

Even though we love our "little house on the prairie," we also enjoyed getting away and touring the museum. 

We found the Monet Water Lilies I was looking for ... with a little help from a docent. I'd seen it on another trip to the Nelson-Atkins, but it had a new home this time. 

Water Lilies was created between 1915 and 1926. On the museum placard, it said Monet transformed his pond in Giverny, France, into a vast, living subject. 

"Its fluid rhythms and botanical abstraction reflect shared ideals between Impressionism and the "New Art" movement. Both hold reverence for nature and blur boundaries between environment and art."

The interpretation of the painting tied right into the nature, environment and art theme from Pissarro - just another subliminal message tying life together. 

Afterwards, we visited Andre's, a Swiss chocolate shop nearby, where we both had coffee and Randy had a rum ball. The place mat and much of the packaging had yet another art form: Scherenschmitte, a traditional Swiss paper-cutting art. 

Then, we got to spend time with Brent and Susan over the weekend ... and with grand dog, Clover. If only our 'Cats could have pulled off a win vs. Cincinnati on that football Saturday. 

 

Take a Photo Holiday

Take time to smell the roses ... er, the yellow wildflowers?

 

Take pictures as if you were taking a holiday in your own life.

That was one of the photo prompts from the book, "One Photo a Day Keeps the Doctor Away" by Joost Joosen, which Brent and Susan gave me for Christmas last year. On the same page was this Alexandra Horowitz quote:

Together we became investigators of the everyday. ... In this way, the familiar becomes unfamiliar and the old becomes new. We do have the ability to pay attention. We just forget how to use it. 

We're all quick to share the moments from the highlight reel of our lives. Maybe it's the visit from our grandchildren. The beauty of a National Park is sure to generate dozens - if not hundreds - of photos. But there is no shortage of beauty hiding in plain sight along our normal routes.

Several times, I drove past those yellow "flowers" at the corner where I make the turn onto the Zenith Road. But on a day when the clouds were like a 3D painting on a bright blue canvas, I made the time to stop.

The same clouds and sky provided a counterpoint to the green alfalfa field and hay bales.

They also gave me a different backdrop for my sunrise tree ... even though it was the middle of the day and not sunrise.

When I took my "photo holiday," we were coming back home from a Labor Day trip to the Stafford golf course. 

I spent a lot of the time reading my book. But I also took a few photos with my favorite model, framed with some natural "decor."

It's not often that it's wet enough in August to find mushrooms on the golf course!

All the rain this summer has offered other unusual August photos. Last week, we had a total of 3 inches of rain, and Peace Creek was uncharacteristically flowing.

This was the scene at our new bridge - which is done, by the way! 

On the Zenith Road looking east

I always like looking at Peace Creek from a view on the Zenith Road, too. 

On the Zenith Road looking west

 It's certainly prettier with water than without!

August 10, 2022 - from the Zenith Road

To prove that point, here's a photo from August 2022. (For the record, the water is back down this week.)

Last sunset of August 2025

 Sunsets are always an opportunity to take a holiday in my everyday life. 

First sunset of September 2025

Storms that went north and east of us provided the drama in the sky last evening.

We only see what we look at. 

To look is an act of choice.

--John Berger 

 

 

 

***

I love the nature all around me. But the "highlight reels" of life can be fun, too. K-State football games have been part of my life since I was a little girl. 

The drone show following the home opener win was certainly worth commemorating with photos.

It may have been man (or woman) made, but the formations were certainly worthy of a "photo holiday." 
 

 

Prairie Sunset Finale: Symphony of the Flint Hills

There couldn't have been a more fitting theme for the 20th and final rendition of the Symphony in the Flint Hills. The concert - Prairie Sunset - was Saturday, June 14, at the Evans Family Ranch in Chase County, Kansas. The wildflower-dotted rolling hills and overcast sky provided the dramatic backdrop for this grand finale concert of the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra set in the Flint Hills. 

 

It began in 2006 with the mission to heighten appreciate and knowledge of the Flint Hills tallgrass prairie. 

Rooted in these hills, like the enduring bluestem itself, Symphony in the Flint Hills, Inc., works to build awareness for the last stand of tallgrass prairie. ... The landscape's stone, soil, flora, fauna and skies above pull on our souls and care for us, and we are called to care for this place in return. ... We envision a future where our efforts encourage people to strengthen the Kansas prairie by sustaining the region's unique culture and landscape.

From the Mission Statement - Symphony of the Flint Hills 

This was not downtown Kansas City - by any stretch of the imagination. While city drivers sometimes have to dodge potholes after a brutal winter, they don't come across too many signs like this:

 

There was only one way in and out of the concert venue, set in the pasture in rural Strong City. It created a different kind of traffic jam as vehicles made their way north of U.S. 50 and down roads white with the dust of the area's limestone. (It took us 2 hours to travel the seven or so miles from the highway to the pasture.)

As we placed our water jug and program between our lawn chairs, we saw evidence that this was a working pasture and felt right at home. (For the uninitiated, those are a couple of dried cow patties.)

 

After 20 years, the concert volunteers had the logistics down to a science. Once we arrived, we quickly parked and caught a ride on a pickup-pulled wagon to the tents set up in the pasture. 

Unfortunately, because of traffic, we didn't arrive in time for any of the afternoon seminars. 

 

They delayed the concert start for 30 minutes, hoping to get more of the concert goers to the venue in time to hear the opening strains of the Celebration Overture by Peter Boyle. That same piece had opened the 2016 version of the Symphony of the Flint Hills - the only other time I'd attended, that time with Brent. This was Randy's first time, since he had been baling in 2016 and couldn't make the trip with me. When he saw it was the final opportunity, he got tickets to celebrate our 44th wedding anniversary. 

 

It was the perfect gift and well worth the wait.  

While making our way from the highway to the concert site, we'd seen lots of wildflowers lining the ditches in a rainbow of colors. I did think about jumping out of the car to take photos, but didn't. I didn't find as many in the pasture itself, though I did take photos of a few. 

 

This was right by our seats. It was still standing at the end of the night, surviving all the visitors.

During intermission, I wandered over to an electric fence for some photos of the prairie beyond.

 The purple lupine was a favorite wildflower.

The Flint Hills are part of the tallgrass prairie. In Kansas, they stretch from Marshall County in the north down through Riley, Geary, Pottawatomie, Wabaunsee, Morris, Lyon, Chase, Greenwood, Butler, Elk, Cowley and Chautauqua Counties and then into Oklahoma, where they are called the Osage Hills. These 5 million acres comprise the largest expanse of tallgrass prairie in the world.

The Flint Hills began as a vast inland sea 270 million years ago, which left scattered limestone and shallow soil behind. With the rocks less than a foot down, this part of the prairie was spared the plow and left in native grass. It’s the prairie mosaic that author William Least Heat-Moon called “360 degrees of sky.”

While it certainly isn't the mountains of Colorado, it's also very different from the stereotypical flat lands of Kansas. 

I'm a fan of clouds during sunset because they provide such a vivid painting as the light seeps through them. It was a constantly evolving scene as the light of day began to fade into a mild Kansas evening. 

 

The light and shadows played hide-and-seek in the gentle nooks and crannies of the rolling Plains covered in lush grass after plentiful spring rains. 

 

Kansas City Symphony Conductor Daniel Wiley directed a program that also included John Henry and Saturday Night Waltz by Aaron Copland, as well as George Gershwin's Summertime and Dvorak's finale from The New World Symphony. As the orchestra's notes rose and fell, it certainly seemed like the perfect celebration of music and nature's beauty. 

I am used to seeing cattle in pastures, but watching the cowboys drive the cattle across the landscape while an orchestra played was a little different from our 4-wheeler round-ups. (My photos aren't great of the cattle drive and cowboys.)

As the concert came to an end, the 8,000 or so spectators, donors and volunteers stood and sang "Home on the Range," a tradition of Symphony in the Flint Hills.

I thought about the words to a less-familiar verse of Kansas' state song, "Home on the Range," words that we'd just sung in unison:

How often at night when the heavens are bright

With the light from the glittering stars

Have I stood there amazed and asked as I gazed

If their glory exceeds that of ours.

Yes ... indeed.

We didn't think there was any need to hurry away from the concert site. We decided we'd much rather take in the after-concert activities than sit in the car in stop-and-go traffic. 

 Lots of us watched the powwow dancers. The area now known as the Flint Hills was once the ancestral homelands of the Kansa (Kaw) and Osage Nations and the traditional hunting grounds of Siouan, Wichita and Pawnee people who relied on the great herds of bison once so abundant there. 

Country singer and Kansas native Logan Mize had sung his song, “Welcome to Prairieville,.”with the symphony. After leading the audience-participation rendition of Home on the Range,  he moved to the beverage tent to entertain into the evening. 

 We didn't get home until after 1:30 AM, but it was worth the late night (early morning). 

The Flint Hills don't take your breath away. 

They give you a chance to catch your breath.

Jim Hoy - Cowboy and historian - 1939-2025 

 

What a wonderful grand finale! Thank you to all the volunteers who made it possible.  

As directed, I didn't record any of the concert. But with no wind, the sound was spectacular. I found this short clip online - just in case you're interested. (CLICK HERE.)