Nice 4th and Baler Photos

Good 4th last night. Sat on our ridge with a fire and 70% homegrown food (have never successfully grown marshmallows), just enough breeze and woodsmoke to keep the mosquitoes and gnats in fly-by mode, and for miles in all directions, amateur fireworks (some of which get bigger every year).

Have never been a fireworks guy. Don’t care to play with them, and figure you might as well light five dollar bills and throw them to the wind. But yesterday I harrumphed and approved the expenditure of $16.50 toward a simple grab-bag batch. We parsed them out over the evening between homemade campfire pies and watching the bigger bursts in the distance. Saved a bunch of colorful ones for the very end. And after watching the 11-year-old dance across the yard writing with a sparkler in the dark, after hearing the four-year-old’s peals of laughter at the colorful ones that spun in the driveway…well, sometimes a guy has to unbend a little, huh? We spread that $16.50 out over two hours and while I stood holding my wife’s hand in the dark as the last colors fizzled, we did the math on any number of other manufactured entertainments and figured we took the cash for a decent ride.

Earlier in the day my wife and daughters went to the river with friends while I stayed home to write, move some chickens, and help my neighbor (same guy who did this) bale a batch of hay. (Later that night when we were going to make campfire pies and realized we didn’t have any bread, I ran back over there and he lent us half a loaf – there’s yer rural barter system in full effect).


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