Lovely Moon Flowers

I can hardly wait until late summer each year for the moon flowers to bloom.  There is no sweeter fragrance or delicately detailed petals that is known to me.  Like so many things that have such awesome beauty, they are short lived.  Each blossom only lasts one night and then they are gone.  I've tried many times to bring them inside wishing they might last a few days and bring their sweet fragrance with them but they are stubborn creatures.  They refuse to relinquish their nature.

Union Pacific Steam Engine #844

The Union Pacific Steam Engine that stopped in WaKeeney as a part of their anniversary celebration in August.

 They just couldn't wait to 'blow off a little steam'  to impress the crowd.  The railroad has  been a part of WaKeeney's transportation system just as the Smoky Hill Trail, the Butterfield Overland Despatch Trail, Highway 40 and 283 and Interstate 70.  No longer is there a passenger train that stops in WaKeeney but loads of coal and wheat regularly pass through.  Occasionally you'll see rail cars loaded with wind generator propellers headed to a new wind farm.

FROM THE INSIDE LOOKING OUT

 I love the textures of this old house and the way the light plays through the windows.  Sometimes through the nearly frosted glass and other times through the unobstructed no glass/fresh air view.  Each frames a landscape as neglected as the house itself.  Is it laziness that things are not in order or is there a certain beauty in the untamed?

OLD HOUSES

Old houses are fascinating.  Do you ever wonder what the people were like that lived here?  They had no electricity and no running water and heated with a wood stove.  The old rusty water pump still sits proudly under the windmill.  On those quiet days when there was no wind to pump the water was when they had to pump it by hand.  There hands must have been strong and raw telling the tales of the early pioneers.