Saturday March 1 2008

TWO SURPRISE DAY

Yesterday morning I went into town about 9:30 to go to the Cowbelles luncheon and the Cattleman's Banquet. Charm and Jim, and Gina and Bob invited me to go along with them, and I was the guest of Charm and Jim. Thank you again, dear friends. I have always wanted to go all these years and never have, so when they invited me I said "YES!'' It was a wonderful enjoyable day.

Marilyn was chosen Cattlewoman of the Year at the Cowbelles luncheon. She was surprised. She and Doc are our neighbors, by the way. The Cowbelles always give the Cattlewoman of the Year a piece of artwork, and this year they asked me if I would provide the artwork. I was very pleased to be asked and especially since it was for Marilyn. Congratulations to Marilyn. This was the first surprise and I didn't want to give it away.

This is a photo of the painting. The title is Sorting Cattle and its a 12 x 18 Oil. This was taken from reference photos looking northwest from our yard as the neighbors worked their cattle.

This is the Cowbelles Brand Quilt. My friend Deanne, who you've heard me mention, designs a new quilt every year and it is raffled off at the Cattleman's Annual Banquet. Deanne is a quilt artist. There is a group that helps her quilt. There are over 150 local brands appliqued ? onto the quilt.

Above is a closeup for some of the detail.

So started off the day early, took in the recycling in first thing, then went over to Melita's for a while. She had left a tray at our house that she brought some of her beautiful rolls on to the group of artist friends that came over about three months ago. I had saved some paper doilies for her that I never use, and she uses them all the time, so took those too. She was in the midst of baking hundreds of rolls for the luncheon and banquet, and I watched her pop them in and out of the oven and slide them onto cooling racks. Melita is a bread artist. She showed me her big new computer, and a beautiful large black thin screen monitor. Also they are finishing up a new big swan decoy. Hank carves them and Melita paints them. This one she had brush strokes looking like the feathers, pretty neat.

Then to Rendezvous Pointe where the luncheon was to be held. The Cowbelles were in their meeting. Two of the ladies came out to choose the painting they liked from five I brought. The luncheon was the best ever beef and noodles, with an airy cream pie with strawberries for dessert. The crust was just amazing.

Afterwards headed over to Gina's house and then we went out for a while to try some photography mostly on Pine Street. I'll put them into a photo essay or stick one or two into the blog every so often. It had started to snow so we didn't have the best light, but they give a feeling of Pinedale in winter. We went into the Baymont Motel where a lot of Gina's photos, both contemporary and historical were displayed up and down the halls. We walked through and she told me what they all were. That was very interesting because the old ones were of her parents , family and grandparents ranching in the olden days.

By the time we were ready to go, the wind had come up strong, and although the temperature wasn't frigid, it was chilly. It blew all night and half of Sunday. The banquet started about 5:30 and there were lots of the ranching community, neighbors and other folks we all knew. People were dressed all styles from their cowboy or cowgirl outfits or beautiful beaded or woven dressy coture with their fancy jewelery. Many I seldom see, so it was fun to just say hi and visit. Dinner was the best prime rib I've ever eaten in my life, with all the trimmings and also perhaps the best brownie for dessert as well. They had a good cowboy poet for entertainment, who was also quite a comedian. I got the biggest kick out of Jim who really enjoyed the poet. There were several presentations, as there were at the Cowbelles, such as lifetimes members, and very interesting to me were a lot of the family ranches who had been in existance for 100 years or more were honored by WY State Historic Preservation Office, WY Dept. of Agriculture, WY Stock Growers Assn., WY Wool Growers Assn, and WY Rural Electric Assn. They are called Centennial Farms and Ranches. http://www.wyoshpo.org/ Jim Magagna and Milward Simpson made the presentations - plaques and certificates and large metal signs to post at their ranch. Jim is a "neighbor" south of us and I got to know him pretty well while we were in the mountains for all those years. He ran sheep there, and you might remember it was his place where Judi and I went and recorded the graffiti on the walls of his sheep shearing shed a few years ago.

The second big surprise of the evening was that Bob was nominated and received the Friend of Agriculture Award. The rest of us at the table knew about it, but Bob didn't. He was surprised. (I think) it's the biggest honor that they present He received a large framed and matted photo of Horse Creek that was taken from her airplane by Rita, and corsages for he and Gina with a big bouquet of flowers. (I was supposed to take a few pictures, and spaced that out. But if you go to Gina's blog she might put a couple of them on hers.

The evening ended with the Sundowners coutnr y western band playing and lots of people dancing. Cowboys love to dance and their are really good too.

Gina had invited me to spend the night so I did. It was nice not to have to drive home so late. Don't even know what time we left the party and soon went to bed with a cup of hot tea and the electric blanket turned on getting all warm and cozy. Read and dozed and rested and listened to the wind blow - wondering whether the road was getting drifted in.