I moved with my family to Missouri when I was sixteen. It was to a little university town and we pulled in at two in the morning. I local officer pulled us over and asked us what our business in town was. LOL. We were parked in front of the general store (yes, they do/did exist). I fell in love with the village (they called it a city) instantly and stayed in love with it. I attended university there, married there, helped upkeep a farm there, had my kids there and moved from there twelve years later because of a divorce and relocating closer to family. I still call Missouri "God's country". It's hauntingly beautiful and yes can be brutal all at the same time. I did find it hard to be accepted at first. I found the locals distant at first, but once you fit in..........you are accepted. The employment opportunities outside the large cities are brutal. I found the taxes for everyday living (including tax on food and garbage cans) foreign. The rents were high, and it was hard to eke out a living. If I returned there today with my degree in nursing, I have no doubt I'd find a job about anywhere. It's not a posh place to live, but if you live a simple lifestyle and are interested in quality of life over quantity the areas away from the metropolises are very open to enjoying a good life. I would consider moving back in a heartbeat and miss it still.

Stop in at the Hotel Seville in Harrison AR for a sandwich in the bar. Hotel was built in 1929 and they renovated it a couple years ago. Jasper to the S of Harrison on Rt 7 is another great ride and small town. Full of hills and curves. Buffalo River to the S & E of Harrison has some great canoeing. There is a 225' tall waterfall you can hike into but I swear it's uphill coming and going. Eureka to the W of Harrison is another old town to see with great drives around it and plenty of shops although it has gotten touristy. Bull Shoals Dam and the information center on the hill above the Dam. Bull Shoals Lake, Norfork Lake, the area around Mountain Home AR. Peel Ferry takes you across Bull Shoals Lake from AR into MO. Flippin AR S of Bull Shoals Lake, just so you can say you've been to flippin' Arkansas. The 1850'concrete arch Cotter Bridge over the White River in Cotter AR. Rt 5 S from Mountain Home to Mountain View. It follows White River and has small interesting towns along it. Salem AR W on Rt. 62 out of Mountain Home is another nice drive and quaint town. A lot of these small towns and homes are built using native stone. I love them. North of Salem is Mammoth Springs at MO border. To this desert native it looked like a whole lot of cool clear water just being wasted down a river. In MO just N of Mountain Home AR area are some old mills on rivers or springs. http://www.ozarkmtns.com/milltour The Rockbridge Mill converted the old mill barn into a bar with a wooden patio looking over the stone dam. You can sit there and watch the fishermen catching trout below the dam. On a hot day with the big barn doors open, a cold brew in hand, and a cool breeze off the water it's a hard place to leave. They have weird hours and days they are open so best to call ahead. That North Central AR has a lot of beautiful country. You can google a couple of those names and check them out. What gets a guy from the desert in AZ excited might not be as exciting to a person from the land of real trees and 10,000 lakes. If you happen to be towing a motorcycle I can fix you up with some people that will show you around the back roads of that area. Oh ya, don't forget the little restaurants with their pies, cobblers, and biscuits & gravy. If you don't gain 5 lbs. you're not doing it right.

We were on our way to the farms in Henry County. I looked it up, and Henry is just NE of Mercer and share a little bit of the boundary. The farms, one is just two miles north of Bishop Hill on a hard road, and the other one is maybe 1/2 mile away on a road that used to be dirt but now, I don't know what, they used to oil it but think it might be blacktop. Well, now I see a couple, Aledo and Viola, Keithsburg are familiar but don't remember being through Kburg. My ex sister-in-law lives in New Boston. We'd take different routes, usually the road through Cambridge and sometimes the road out of Coal Valley, past Orion and then a long straight stretch with a dip where you could see about 2 miles and on into Alpha. In that stretch and off to the right were some woods, and I suppose we were trespassing, but that is where we found the JIP's, trillium and mayapples. I never found any morel mushrooms but wild grapes and made jam. We would stop in Alpha and eat at an old diner which used to be a railway car, think it is no longer there. But I think we went an unfamiliar route that day and could have been in Mercer County, but I thought the sign said Edwards Creek which could run into Edwards River. Now it seems that it WAS Edwards River. I doubt I could find the bridge crossing the river again unless I asked my second cousin in Galva; he might know. It's hard to catch asparagus when it is still a short stalk. Sometimes there will still be some at the base of that, tall, airy foliage. One time I walked or rode my bicycle from my grandmother's in Galva out in the country a short ways and found some, would have had to break it off as I doubt I had my pocket knife with me, and my grandmother cooked it. I'd also grind corn into meal in the barn, shelled it off the cob with a corn sheller, and put it through a large grinder you worked back and forth by hand, have a photo of it, will see if I can find it. It's up in the haymow at the barn on one farm. The barn on the other farm burned down as did my grandma's house after she died. My granddaughter won $50 for her photo of the corncrib which was on a local credit union calendar one year. If you can find some seeds, that would be fun. I think the usual cultivated variety is Martha Washington. You saw my place, and I have already sowed black raspberries and currants. Maybe we will have to move to one of the farms. Seriously. And I finally found Edwards River, and it winds around just near the farms in Henry County. I contributed these maps from my old atlas years ago to USGENWEB. The link to the Mercer County map follows, and the link to the Henry County Map is at the useful link. On the Henry County Map, zoom it up, scroll down almost to the bottom, and you will see the river in Lynn Twp and Andover Twp. Then there is a fork, and it winds SE down near Bishop Hill in Weller Twp. The corncrib, my father and grandfather built during the depression on their farm (my grandfather bought the other one). They are close but different twps, and I can never remember which is in which. I don't know how I get off on these tangents, so many memories when I was a little girl. That is great about your mother being your mentor. This post to assemble the links and photos, took me here, there and everywhere, so now I have completely lost my train of thought and what else I saw in your post. Here is the link to Mercer County. It's easy to miss in the mess I made of this. The link to the Henry County map is just under the corncrib photo. Here is a link that might be useful:

Brian- Good remarks. Sounds like the junk that my office was producing before I came and whipped the plant pallet into shape. We were spec'ing tons of Spring Snow Crab, Red Maple and Ash like we had no choice. Thing is, most LA's take few if any hort classes and when we get in the real world we are more concerned about grading/drainage design, wall details and paving layout to get too into researching what trees to use. LA's spend a lot of time figuring out where the trees go, but do not understand the trees well enough to take it to the next level. It's really too bad. In time, I hope to educate my local brotherine and get them to use the trees on the list. One problem is that we are not well woven into the tree expert circles(arborists, extension agencies, educators, good nurserymen). We only cross paths with a few commecial contractors (often low bidders) and we ask them what the best trees are. They typically know trees about as poorly as we do. They judge a good tree by how well it lasts through the 1 year warranty period (hence red maple & ash). I also remind my fellow LA's to go back to their projects 5-10 years after it was completed and to bring their planting plans with them. That way they can see where/how they failed and where/how they succeeded. Dan- Plan review? Around here that is a joke. I know of no city staffers in any of the KC metro cities that have a hort bone in their body (there might be a few, but they are not involved in plan review). Most cities only care that you meet plant count and sizes. The remote chance that someone compares your planting plan to the city tree list would probably be a bad thing since many city tree lists are full of really bad trees and missing many great trees. Thanks for passing the list around. I like hearing that my efforts are appreciated and going to good use.