Spring in the Ibex Valley

Copyright © 2007, Andrew Stark. All rights reserved.

 (Click on photo for larger view.) 

 

What makes the water in some lakes green? There’s a white layer of sediment on the bottom, which makes the water appear to be a brilliant greenish blue when the sun shines on it.  Technically, this sediment is called marl, which is made up of clay and fine-grained fragments of decomposed shells.

Saturday's Old Photo

Yesterday would have been my 32nd wedding anniversary. I should probably be posting a wedding picture, but then I’d have to find one and scan it, and I’m just too tired to take that project on right now. This one that’s already in oldest son’s photo gallery will have to do.

 

This was taken about 4 months after we got married, and it was at a wedding, just not our wedding. In this autumn wedding, I was a bridesmaid for my friend Jo-Ann. When we drove down to Pine City, Minnesota on Friday night, the trees were in full fall colour. Overnight on Saturday, the wind started to blow, and when we drove home on Sunday morning there was not a leaf left on any of the trees.

 

Those were the days when a Minnesota bride could choose a pattern and material and count on all her bridesmaids being able to whip out their own bridesmaid’s dress. You can’t see from this photo, but the fabric was a sheer voile type, and the dress was fully lined. I wore it for several more years whenever I needed something a little formal, so it wasn’t one of those bridesmaid’s dresses that never gets worn again. 

 

At this point in our marriage, we’d already had the only knocked-down, dragged-out fight we ever had—the nasty one over whether Gerald Ford or Ronald Reagan should be the Republican nominee in 1976. Once we got that earth-shaking matter settled, resolving all the other issues that came up was a piece of cake in comparison.

Saturday's Old Photo

Monday is Victoria Day, so this is what my kids call “the May long weekend.” I’ve been doing yard work and spring cleaning, and paying very little attention to the blog. But since I skipped the Saturday’s old photo last week, I can’t skip it altogether this week, can I?

 

What I’ll do, to make up for my negligence last Saturday, is post two photos this Saturday. I wanted to find a photo to show my two oldest children when they were younger and I couldn’t decide which one of two possibilities to use, so I’ll use them both.

 

These two were born two years apart, and they were always very good friends.  In the photo on above, they are almost four and almost two years old. You can see what a big kid youngest son was. At this time, he weighed almost as much as oldest daughter even though she’s two years older. But she was definitely the older sister—very bossy, but also very protective.

 

On the right is another photo taken a couple of years later when she was six and he was four. I love it because they are holding hands—you can click on the photo to see that detail—and when I remember them together as younger children, that’s how I remember them. Oldest daughter was always watching out for her younger brother, and leading him around by the hand was one of the ways she watched out for him.

 

Once when they were only four and two, we lost them in a store and couldn’t find them anywhere. When we did find them, they were outside, just ready to cross the busy parking lot to get to our car. They had been looking for us, too, and had concluded that we must have forgotten them and left them behind. Oldest son was crying, and oldest daughter was holding his hand, talking very reassuringly to him, and watching for a safe opportunity for them to make it to the car. I don’t know what they’d have done when they got there and found that we weren’t there and the car was locked!

 

What you see in the background of this bottom photo is an old dredge that was used for  gold mining near Dawson City.