Peacock on a Sunday Afternoon

I downloaded some pictures from my wife's camera and found this one of your blogger communing with our visiting snapping turtle. (By the way, the t-shirt was a radio station freebee from last year's County Fair. If I had to hand out an endorsement, it would be Dr. Pepper or maybe the cheap diet ginger ale from Giant.)

Today would have been my father's 73rd birthday. I went down to the city for Church, and after teaching my high school sunday school class, went on to Arlington Cemetery, where he is buried together with his mother and father. Through a quirk of fate, Arlington is his family's graveyard. His father, my grandfather, died at age 48 when Arlington was just one of a number of government cemeteries and not yet our national shrine. My grandmother, left a widow with a son to support, found out that her husband's brief service at the end of the first world war qualified him for a funeral beyond what she could otherwise afford and provided a grave site only a few miles away from her home. Thirty two years later she was buried in the plot she had reserved next to him. At my father's death, his own time in military service allowed him to be buried together with his father. It is a beautiful spot with the finest company imaginable. I believe he would be pleased.

The Turtle wins!

Sheep v. Snapping Turtle

After hanging out on the lawn, our turtle friend turned and strolled over to the cluster of trees where part of the sheep flock was resting.

We had a surprise guest this afternoon when a snapping turtle walked across the lawn up to the front of the house.

Sheared sheep with lamb.

Dottie, the woollier one on the right, is a bottle lamb, hand raised by a friend of ours this winter when she failed to thrive at the barn. She is, perhaps, a little too people friendly.