stormy weather, day 2

The hiccup of warm sunshine toddled on, to return another time, I hope. Just not today. What miserable weather! Still humid, with the occasional massive downpour and not a small number of thunder clouds. I mean, pure awfulness out there! And no, the plants do not need the extra water. We are saturated. Yesterday, as we walked across the disc gold fields, our feet squished in the wetness of the ground.

Whatever good sides there are to this, they are well disguised. Possibly visible only to retired people who have the ability to adjust their schedules and activities when the weather gods decide to mess with us.

Ed and I are indeed lucky. I feed the cats in the small window of non-rain and then hustle back inside. And when the rains come down, furiously, heavily, unrelentingly, we drive over to Finca and settle in for a decadent breakfast inside, with large windows on three sides of the room showing us the mess out there, reminding us how incredibly fortunate we are to live in a world where you can hide from so many of the world's horrors. (A timed release photo...)






So, indoor pics today?  With Snowdrop at the farmhouse? Nothing that asks us to be out and about, right?

Well...

I pick up a bouncy girl at school. The storms had kept the kids inside all day and so perhaps I should not be surprised when she asks me right away -- gaga, can we go to the cow show??

Ah, the cow show. Others would perhaps refer to it as the World Dairy Expo. It's big! It's the elite of the elite cow shows, it's a place where leaders in the dairy industry showcase their innovations. It's so... Wisconsin! I've been taking Snowdrop to it since she was less than a year old. (We've missed only one, when she was two years old and I was out of the country.) At first it was because I was curious about it and eventually -- well, it's really close to her school and so it tempts us!

And it tempts her today.

Snowdrop, there is a threat of rain. Should we wait until maybe... Thursday?
Pleeeeease!

We're lucky. The storms stall. The rain holds off. The cow show it is!






I can mark the progress of her growth by how we go about visiting this mega exposition. This year, there surely is the fun stuff...











But there is, too, a more careful observation of the cow competitions. (Here are 4-year olds, as presented by young people. You'll wonder why they're facing "the wrong way." They're not: it's all in the udders! We learn about this as we listen to the judge extol the virtues of the winning cow's milking machinery!)






(As before, Snowdrop likes to watch from the top.)






There's stuff she remembers from last year: the cow toys, the ice cream...











And the friendly guy who pulls a little train with a tractor to move the young and the old around the huge campus. (On a Tuesday afternoon, there are few people who are not in some way involved with the dairy industry. People are extraordinarily nice to Snowdrop, thinking, perhaps, that she is one of the next generation of dairy farmers...)







(... like these guys!)






Flooding and heavy storm warnings remain in effect for tonight. In other words, we're not done with this stuff.  One can hope the cows aren't frightened by all that's passing through our city tonight. Ah, well: they're mostly Wisconsin cows, aren't they? Hardy stuff. Used to the crazy weather of the Upper Midwest.