My Pretty Prairie Flower

I LOVE the prairie; guess it's the romantic in me, but I have always been infatuated with the idea of the prairie since I was a little girl and read/watched the "Little House on the Prairie" books and t.v. series. :) Growing up in Illinois and living there and in Iowa for the past few years, I could just picture the open miles of rolling grasslands and wildflowers, butterflies, bison, deer, birds, prairie dogs... all as they used to be centuries ago.

About a year before we moved out here to N.C., I asked Rob to "humor" me and we all went to a natural wildlife prairie reserve in central Iowa. It's not that big, relatively speaking, but it was BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!! It was all I dreamed it would be (although being summer, it was almost unbearably hot!).

Being the romantic prairie-loving Midwest girl I am, I, naturally, love these echinacea flowers! So when I moved here to Greensboro, I planted myself one just to have a bit of home to remember my native Midwest by. They made it through the "bitter" winter here (ha, ha, ha) and are blooming away again this year. In fact, they're so heavy with blooms this year, that I had to stake them up with a dowel rod!

So now in the wooded Southeast, I have my prairie corner to enjoy every day for these hot days of summer. And until I can go west and see it again, with my own eyes, I will have this reminder of home.