state fair bulletins...

Glad to report that Butter Cow is still intact.  Now if a giant piece of toast came along, whose to say what might happen.

Here is a photo from the fair:

butter cow controversy...

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/08/12/211386496/iconic-butter-cow-in-iowa-doused-in-red-paint

Won't somebody think of the children....

Because sometimes butter sculptures really arouse passions...

back to yames...

Back in Ames...the garden of doom is a weedy mess.  The weeds and thistles are flourishing.
So far, it has yielded exactly one banana pepper.  Carrots though are a later possibility.  Hooray.

travelin'

Traveling is fun and funny.  People start speaking to you in French and then you're like, I have no idea what you're saying so you must look slightly bewildered and say Sorry I don't speak French.  One very determined young woman who wanted to tell me about puppy mills, and then switched to English to ask me to sign her petition, another lost looking woman, possibly trying to ask me directions to somewhere. Unfortunately could not help her.  Big coffeeplaces and bookstore and restaurants, with occasional adult novelty shops with lingerie and XXX movies, thrown in here and there, and money changing shops.  It's sort of like Times Square (before it was cleaned up).  And
there was some accident, a big piece of construction equipment seems to have fallen into a hole in the road?  Lots of people stopped to gawk and police have blocked off the road.  I stop to look too.  It must be interesting, right, if so many have stopped.  Then I detour to walk up the side road.  Oddly enough like an hour and a half later, upon walking back, the scene appears to be unchanged.  People still gaping, some taking pictures with their phones, police and police cars still there.