Some of the most beautiful prairie flowers are white.

This plant is Common Yarrow, sometimes called Milfoil.

White Clover

Clover and grasses with seeds

 Catalpa Blooms

Iris

White Primrose

Clover with seeded grasses, ragweed, yellow hop-clover and Indian Paintbrushes.

 

Black Locust

Dogwood

 

Western Ranch Gates

Wagons wheels are a popular addition to old farm and ranch gates in the Oklahoma countryside. This gate, which I saw near Morris, Oklahoma, has wagon wheels on the overhead bar as well as on the swinging gate and the side panels. Most true ranch gates don't have a hinged gate to close, but rely on cattle gaps to keep livestock inside. Often the gates are built with pipe, painted and embellished with the brand of the ranch. I think of a ranch's brand as a sort of logo.

 

 This gate is quite ornamental with figures of cows decorating the arch and a red wagon wheel gate with a large "S". Perhaps the "S" is for the owner's last name Smith, Stevens, Stokley, or Snider. Perhaps, it is the ranch name, something like the "Big S Ranch," or the "Swinging S Ranch." I can only guess. This gate is one of my favorites because it looks so friendly and inviting. It is east of Okmulgee.

 

This beautiful gate frames the western sky. I think its design says there are some hills and you see the land begin to roll off uphill from the center of the photo and right. The design has a modern feel to it and an optical effect that pulls your eye to the great wide open Oklahoma sky. Can you envision it with a rosy flame of a summer sunset behind it?

 

The Double "B" Ranch? Maybe the owners first names start with the letter "B" like Ben and Barbara. 

It's hard to guess at this brand. It could be the Circle B Ranch. The gate and cross bar frame the sky too and makes the land feel open and unlimited.

Here is something I spotted near Haskell, Oklahoma. An old airport entrance gate.

It is a one-of-a-kind piece of artwork, though looking a bit worse for wear. 

The half-circles build up like clouds and to set it off there are on each side whole circles set with spinners to look like airplane propellers. See below.

This next gate is located along Highway 16 north of Morris, Oklahoma. 

It looks like the owners had painted it red and later tried white. I

love the wagon wheel as a symbol of Oklahoma's pioneer heritage. 

Notice the oil storage tanks behind the gate. Oil wells still dot the countryside out here.

I'm guessing this one is the Lucky B Ranch. 

It might be owned by the Browns or the Bullards or the Bryants.

 

 This green gate is northeast of Okmulgee, Oklahoma off Gun Club Road which turns off Highway 75 

north of town by the Best Western hotel. 

I don't know what the "C" or the "M" stand for, but I like the little bell on the top 

of the gate.I didn't check but this may be at the intersection of Gun Club Road and Prairie Bell Road. 

That would explain the bell.

 

Now for a famous one. Here is the gate of the quiet Allen Ranch near Bixby,

where long-horned cattle were once raised. Don't you love the horns on the crossbar? Later, the ranch was used as a sort of wild west animal park. School children of the area were taken there on field trips. They were taken on hayrides or trail rides and sang with guitar strumming cowboys around campfires or drove through the acreage to see bison, longhorns, and exotics like zebras and camels. 

See the wagon wheel beside the gate?

If you are driving through Oklahoma watch for these ranches and their gates. 

It is a real slice of Americana.

Catalpa Tree of the Prairie

Like clusters of tiny pale orchids the catalpa trees bloom gloriously every May. These trees can be spotted from a distance like tall ladies in pale green ball gowns embellished with white pearls.

Covered with blooms, a row of these trees along a street is like a lineup 

of models in a bridal fashion show.

      Except each dress is alike! 

 

 

The blossoms are lacy and soft, shaped like orchids, each with a patches of dark rust red dots in lines, and spangled with a curl of golden pollen. The flowers pop a few at a time from their round red buds. After a spring shower or a windy day the blooms cover the ground under the trees like a knobby white rag rug.

 

Later, the tree's exceptional leaves, the size of offering plates, provide full and welcome shade from Oklahoma summer's heat. All summer, green bean pods grow and fill out with seeds until they are one and a half to two feet long. A colorful caterpillar feasts on the trees fuzzy broad leaves. 

These are great for fishing I have heard.

The Blooming prairie

This beautiful vine is perched on a barbed wire fence. 

It looks like a honeysuckle vine with pink blossoms.

Indian paintbrushes are a bright addition to spring in Oklahoma. They are a favorite of mine.

The fields and pastures are full of blackberry bushes blooming in wedding white.

 Bluets are a common wildflower that grows in little sprays.

Wisteria is prolific. It covers this wooden trellis. Often it grows wild and drips from trees

like clusters of grapes.

Taming the Wild Prairie

When the wind blows sometimes for days on end, the prairie grasses are a sight that calms and soothes like watching gentle waves quietly lap on a sandy shore. Horses and cattle graze the grasses where once the American Bison lived.

 

 

 

This antique hay rake once helped rake and gather hay for cows and horses' winter food. Fences made of barbed wire outline millions of acres of farm and ranch land. What was Oklahoma like before fencing, telephone poles and electric wires, paved roads and cities? I would have liked to have known it.

Creeks and ponds fill during the spring and dry during hot Oklahoma summers. Ranchers are dependent on these supplies since cattle need plenty of water every day.

Wild rose bushes, blackberry vines, and shrubs crawl the fences and eventually tear them down. The prairie is always attempting to return to its former self.

 

 Here in a tractor graveyard, old machines give up while the prairie lives on.

Wildflowers  like these Indian paintbrushes work their way up with the first warm weather 

along ditches and fence lines.

 

Like the ocean, always moving and changing and full of life, the prairie is filled with birds, flowers, grasshoppers,cactuses, rabbits, deer, coyotes, snakes, turtles and many other animals.

Like the ocean,  it is teeming with innumerable swarms of living creatures. 

You could never learn all there is to see and know of the prairie.  

O Lord, how many are thy works. In wisdom you have made them all. The earth is full of your riches. There is the sea, both great and broad, in which are hordes without number, animals both great and small. O, Lord, you have made them all. 

 Psalms 104:24-25

A Tree by the Water

The rain poured down. The gullies and ditches were soon full and water rushed in torrents. A fallen branch washed along the stream and I watched it go—amazed at the power of flowing water. Lightning flashed in huge bolts that television weathermen love to call “deadly” lightning. There is certainly much drama in a storm!

The heavy rain and hail beat the blossoms from the redbud tree which has cheered us with its pink lemonade salute to spring. Green shows now along its slender branches.  

This morning, below the hill a temporary pond of rain water has a chorus of tree frogs chirping and calling in that rising-falling pattern of cicadas on a hot summer evening. Snowy Egrets and Great Blue Herons stalk the water in solemn procession. Songbirds are busy at the feeders and carrying twigs and bits of grass to their nesting sites—all but the brown-headed cowbirds who wait until the nests are complete and then lay eggs in those to be tended by diligent birds

The old oak tree that supports the tree house and dangles a rope swing is breaking bud. The goldfinches sit among the yellow green almost invisible for the match. They flit down to feast on dandelions that have suddenly sprouted in yellow patches across the yard.

The oak tree will soon be garbed in emerald and its sturdy limbs will be a shady refuge all summer. No drought has reached this tree. Drought summers have killed younger trees and trees that had not put down roots far enough to reach underground rivers flowing with the wealth of spring rain.

Once, they say, these prairies sported no trees, except along creeks and streams. Settlers had to scout rivers to find trees big enough to build houses. My own house was built by pioneers as the Evening Star School. It was built with the boards split from logs hauled by oxen teams from the banks of the Deep Fork River.

River water grows wonderful trees that put down roots and find all the water they need. Strong to stand against winds and floods, these trees are stable and grounded. Our oak grew along Cane Creek. It drinks now from underground streams that flow to its ever-wandering bed.

God wants me to be like a tree planted near rivers of water. That is living water—the  Word of God. To drink constantly from that deep stream will cause me grow strong and fruitful. He means for me to able to survive long hot summers—even the drought summers. He wants me to stand sure in stormy weather when winds whip my branches and tear at my leaves.

The Lord has provided plenty of water. It soaks the land. It swells the ground with its life giving presence. He calls us to be fruitful trees—like the flourishing olive tree, like the cedars of Lebanon, like a green fir tree, like fig trees, like lofty palm trees—not grass or wildflowers that spring up in the night and are soon wilted and faded, or raked up to be burned in a fire.

I need roots that stretch and reach for the deep water—not dependent on the surface water that dwindles as soon as the clouds pass on and the puddles reflect the sky.

This summer I must find time to rest and sit contemplating the beauty of life. More importantly time to become more deeply rooted in Bible study. Time in the Word is sadly often sadly the one activity we need most, but the one we give lowest priority on our summer schedules. We know the importance of keeping our bodies hydrated, yet will we neglect to afford ourselves the spiritual water we need to make it through dry times and stand valiantly through storms to come? I hope not. I hope not.

But his delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by rivers of water, that brings forth his fruit in his season; his leaf shall not wither and whatever he does shall prosper.

Psalms 1:3

Evening Prairie Primrose

The primrose is a delicate pink, sometimes pure white with a yellow center. It is one of my favorite wildflowers. Primrose grows in ditches and along fencelines and pathways where grass is mown and it can get plenty of water. I have seen it fill in a whole ditch so that when the wind blew, it looked like the the ditch was overflowing with foamy pink tissue paper.

The name, of course, is one of the attractions. Evening Prairie Primrose- what a sweet name. There is nothing so mysteriously beautiful as an evening coming on the prairie with choruses of tree frogs and the hoot of owls from the creek beds. The wind beginning to lie still for the night, brings a peaceful calm and the coolness steals in with the fading day. Coyotes howl and yip out in the orchard and a rustle in the garden tells me a rabbit is seeking  his burrow. A cow may bawl at its calf or a horse whinny.

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This patch of primrose is young. It will grow and fill so no green shows- just the pink waving in the warm wind, bowing at us as we pass like little girls in pink dresses curtsying at the end of their dance.

Here is a all white primrose.

The primrose is one of the treasures of the prairie.