Wonderful pictures today!! Marcia, maybe those birds are on spring break? :)

Jim, here is S.W. Pa, there is a nearby state park, Jennings Environmental Education Center, that has a 20 acre prairie devoted to the Blazing Star a wild flower. It is accompanied by Golden Rod and the endangered Massasauga Rattlesnake. No, you can't walk through the prairie just around it. It is magnificent in late July/August with the colors of the two wildflowers together.

My brother was born on St. Patrick's Day and owes his middle name to the day. One year he exclaimed: "No more green cake. I'm sick to death of always having green cake." I have found hundreds (maybe thousands) of four-leaf clovers in my life, at least a hundred 5-leaf clovers, and three 6-leaf clovers. a five-leaf clover For the variety shown in ravencajun's picture, that I've always refered to as a "shamrock" I've only every found two 4-leafed ones.

My maternal Grandparents supported their family of 11 working the deep coal mine that was on the land they owned and where their home was built. Of course all the kids as they got old enough worked in the mine. It was wholly owned and operated by the family. That would have been in the early 1900's to about 1940. My Dad died suddenly at age 49, just 3 days before the letter came accepting his application for State Mine Inspector in PA. Heart Disease complicated by black lung took him. He had spent all his working life in the mines mostly as a general foreman and actually teaching night classes in mining in our town for Penn State University.