A single engine airplane has been flying over the vast fields that surround our acreage. My guess is it’s a training plane or a very adventurous solo flier. The same thing happens each time it appears overhead. First we hear it, then locate it up in the sky. It begins the same aerobatics each time, a steep vertical climb until it can not go any higher, the plane turning over and beginning a plunge straight down, wings spinning, cutting the engine as it drops faster, plummeting toward the ground until the engine restarts and the plane evens out, flying horizontal again. Along comes a barrel roll, some normal flying, then flying upside down, then the vertical climb and plunge again. For around half an hour it repeats these maneuvers until it flies off to the north from where it came, only to reappear in a few days and do it all over again. If I am outside I can’t turn away from the show, I have to watch it flying about. The most thrilling part is when the engine is cut and the plane begins twirling straight down to the ground and you are convinced it will crash into the corn or bean fields and send up a huge Hollywood explosion until, bbrrrrrrr, the engine starts again and the day is saved. Maybe my fascination with all of this goes goes back to a favorite film of mine when I was a kid in the 1970’s called The Great Waldo Pepper. The air scenes in the movie used real aircraft, which gives a realistic dimension missing from films using models or CGI. A young, handsome Robert Redford is in the staring role as a barnstorming pilot during the 1920’s. Now, years later, I can look up and watch my own Waldo Pepper.

After the cold spell we experienced earlier this spring a heat wave moved through for several days, with some highs in the nineties, causing us to water the flowers and garden daily. We had to replant part of the garden as the rabbits ate some of our tender little plants and the birds dug up some of our green bean seeds. We made cages and grouped our garden crops together in them, which is keeping the rabbits out for now. I know we have at least three rabbits because I have seen them all together at the same time. Both our dogs Marley and Steve love to chase the rabbits, while Steve has become fixated on them, stalking in front of the machine shed, waiting for them to come out from underneath. I have considered live-trapping them and driving them a few miles away to set them free, but then they could become someone elses problem. Another solution is just to shoot them on the acreage, but so far I am resisting that urge, so as of now we are trying to live with them. We have a robin with four chicks in a nest built on top of one of our outside lights. A thrasher can be heard daily singing its ever changing song, and it is nesting in one of our big ash trees. Recently Shelly took the dogs for a walk along our road and they were flushing pheasants out of the ditch. The birds were so startled they forgot to fly away for a moment and instead ran into to a cornfield, scooting along the rows as they made their escape.