Spring Flowers

One of the great joys of Spring time is the abundance of beautiful flowers popping up. Admittedly many of them are what most people call weeds and will go to extremes to eliminate them in their backyards. But even these "weeds" were made by God for us to enjoy, at least for a little while. Here are some of the photos I took this least week of some of the early spring flowers. God's beauty and glory.

Not a wasted Trip!

My goal for today was to work at the Barron Church. There is quite a bit of cement caulking to be done to keep the rain out of the building, so I loaded the van with tools and stopped at Menards to pick up some cement patch. Everything was great until I got to church and realized that I forgot my keys at home. I couldn't get into the church or the shed, so the next best thing was to head home and try to take a few photos on the way. There was no sense in taking the usual way home, so I took the side roads. It was not a wasted trip! The side roads had plenty of little ponds, frogs and a lot of turtles, not to mention the wild flowers were popping out. Here are a few of the photos I took today and yesterday when I visited Crex Meadows. I just love Spring!   

Walk in the woods!

It has been months since I have taken a walk in the woods. It has either been snowing, too cold or too slippery to take the walk. Finally the other day was just right - "not too cold or not too hot,but just right" said Goldilocks. But for taking photos everything was just a dull spring brown and not a lot of color. As I looked around I thought this was not a photographer's paradise. Then I remembered rule one: There is always something to take photos of and turn into a thing of beauty. In this case there were textures every where in the leaves, dead tree bark and the trees. After I took these photos they sat on my computer for several days and I almost put them in the recycle bin. Then last night I began to re-look at them and edit them. Here are some of those photos from the walk in the woods. There is some beauty in everything, even the dull woods.God sees beauty in everything - even ME!

Side Roads

This weekend I took a trip to Portage, Wi. to share at a supporting church. On the way down, I took the "back way" avoiding Highway 90/94. The time at the church was absolutely great and a real blessing. To save time I decided to return home via the highway. WHAT A MISTAKE!!! After just a few miles everything slowed down to a slow crawl, traveling about 5 mph with a ton of traffic. After about 20 miles of this I had enough and exited (as soon as I could) and got off at New Lisbon and headed north. It would take me longer to get home, but at least I was moving and not sitting still. It wasn't long until I realized that God had a reason for the short cut. I followed the Little Yellow River for several miles and was blown away at the view, especially with a fog on the river. It was simply amazing and beautiful. It was also a great time to take photos. Farther down the road was the barn with the reflection in the water and also the barn in the field. When I got to Cornell and started to cross the bridge I was the single tree and the fog on the river. Of course, I stopped and snapped away. It took almost 7 hours to finally get home, but God provided some great scenery on the way.  Here are a few of those photos. Enjoy and God Bless. (The first 3 barns were taken from the Portage area.)