The best among Anne’s multiple attempts to catch a busy bee.
Not every chapter of every road trip tells a story. Sometimes it’s nice to relive the evocative imagery on our path. Sometimes it’s a nice change of pace not to elaborate. Sometimes pretty flowers are just pretty flowers.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
Every year since 1999 my wife Anne and I have taken a trip to a different part of the United States and visited attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. Then came 2020 A.D.
Even in an ordinary average year, sometimes you really need to get away from it all. In a year like this, escape is more important than ever if you can find yourself one — no matter how short it lasts, no matter how limited your boundaries are. Anne and I had two choices: either skip our tradition for 2020 and resign ourselves to a week-long staycation that looks and feels exactly like our typical weekend quarantines; or see how much we could accomplish within my prescribed limitations. We decided to expand on that and check out points of interest in multiple Indiana towns in assorted directions. We’d visited many towns over the years, but not all of them yet.
In addition to our usual personal rules, we had two simple additions in light of All This: don’t get killed, and don’t get others killed…
Sure, the General Lew Wallace Study and Museum had authentic Ben-Hur film props and merch, remnants of Indiana history, and the art library of a Renaissance man. It also had a well-kept garden that mesmerized us at least as much as the man-made exhibits indoors. Maybe it’s because we were house-happy and intoxicated on fresh air, not to mention relieved we didn’t have to wear masks outside while our tour guide left us alone to go do something back at the welcome center, but we took far more than our share of flower pics that day. Because summer. Because beauty. Because life.
Flower beds surrounded the Study on most sides. Note the round basement windows mentioned briefly in Part 3.
View from behind the flowerbed in front of the Study. An ordinary residential area lay beyond the far fence.
A few flowers were trapped in humanity’s containers.
We’re not flower experts. At all. I do recognize daisies on sight.
The red ones are probably daisies as well. You might know better than we would.
No, probably not daisies. Not peonies. Definitely not tulips.
Longtime MCC readers may recall when we used to take Anne’s Mamaw to the Indiana Flower and Patio Show every year and bring back photo galleries like this one. We miss those times. And her. And having someone with us who could identify flowers.
What am I? WHAT AM I?
I threatened Google with a hammer and a menacing glare, and it finally confessed the purplish flowers in the mix were echinacea and/or coneflowers. So I officially learned something today.
Whichever the name, their geometrically intricate centers were hypnotic. I get why the bees were so entranced. Besides the pollen, I guess.
To be continued!
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[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for other chapters and for our complete road trip history to date. Follow us on Facebook or via email sign-up for new-entry alerts, or over on Twitter if you want to track my faint signs of life between entries. Thanks for reading!]
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 
I found the sight of these flowers v. calming! Thanks for taking & posting these photographs w/the attached commentary! Stay safe! Be(e) well!
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I see what you did there! You said “BEE well!” and there is a picture of a bee! Well, met, sir! And safety be unto you as well!
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