And the Winner is. . .

I moved to Ault ( population 1500 or so)  in the fall of 1970 to begin my first teaching job. Fresh out of college, I was eager to meet my first students. I was very young, looking back--23 years old. I has hired to teach English and speech and I coached the speech team, directed the school plays, loving every moment, but it all ended in three years. I did meet my husband, a local farm kid and the rest is history. We raised our family here. Our children are the 4th generation to go through Highland school system, The Ault Fall Festival has been a tradition for decades. When Jen was in 4-H, too help raise money for their Washington Focus trip, we sold hundreds of burritos at the Fall Festival for several years, so I got a little burned out and when she was done with 4-H, I quite avoided the Fall Festival. But now that the girls have their families and have moved away, they like to come home to the small town celebration. When they were little, the girls would take flowers from the garden to enter in the flower show, so last year I decided to take a few things over to be judged. Just for the heck of it. The egg plant won grand champion in the Senior division.

The Parade: Ault: Weld County's Oasis

I took dozens of photos, so I thought a collage would tell the story of day: The VFW always opens the parade with our veterans; there are always a lot of horses, cheerleaders, old cars, tractors, floats with kids throwing candy, old machinery, oh and my family on the other side of the street. In the center is the old school house where I began my teaching career--my classroom was in the basement, lower left. One school superintendent wanted to raze the building, but the community fought fought back, saving the building. It has been declared an historical building and with the help of grants it was restored to its original glory and today houses the middle-schoolers. After the parade, everyone heads to the old gym--where dad and his daughters played basketball, volley ball, and had gym classes. This year the entries were slim. Some years are like that. There is always a spectacular quilt display; these quits are not entered in the competition. If they were, Lady Bug wouldn't stand a chance.

And the Results are:



My entries: The Cosmos: one blue, one red. The sun flowers: one blue one, one red. Stargazer Lily: blue. The egg plant, grand champion. Cucumbers, red. Green pepper,  blue. My beautiful stargazer was bedazzled by a beautiful hibiscus. There were only two quilts entered in competition. The lady bug came in second. The brown quilt won grand champion and rightfully so. It's corners met perfectly.

For each first place ribbon, the winners were awarded a bag of sugar. Ault is a farming community and for generations sugar beets were the cash crop that keep farms alive. Today while sugar beets are still grown here, corn seems to be the main crop. For decades my in laws raised sugar beets for Great Western Sugar, so sugar is an appropriate award generously donated by Great Western Sugar.

We had egg plant for supper. The head gardener didn't care for it.

Sunday, the Ault fire department, an all volunteer fire and rescue unit, serves pancakes for breakfast and gives kids a ride on the big fire truck:

Jacob loves the adventure; little brother Nathan is not so sure. When I asked his mom if he liked his ride (he is a child of few words--well, he is only 2 only has a few words), she said he was more excited to get to feed the chickens.

Shorty


But the real winner of this story is Shorty. After all the excitement of the Fall Festival, we went to our other daughter's house to celebrate little Lucy's 3rd birthday. When we got home at dusk, we were milling around the front of the house. We noticed a man walking down the road calling "Shorty." My husband went out to the road to talk to him. He had one of his antique machines on display; he no doubt was from out of town too. Fireworks wore exploded to announce the beginning of the dance in the park. His little shelty Shorty got so scared that he wiggled out of his harness and ran away. My heart ached for the guy. He had lost his dog. Scared dogs run and run and sometimes are never found.

Sunday morning we headed for breakfast and as we drove past the school just down the street from our drive way, I saw a little shelty pacing the school yard fence. The little guy was in the school yard; he had probably spent the night there in the safety of chain link fence. We immediately drove over to the the old machinery display. Participants were packing up. Was Shorty's "dad" still there? I asked a man if he knew who had lost his dog and told we had seen the dog.

Short and his owner were reunited. We stuck around just long enough to make sure that the reunion was a happy one, and indeed it was.  I just could not imagine having to leave town leaving my little dog behind.

My grandmother was a nationally accredited flower show judge. She used to help me create little flower arrangements to enter in the Lakewood (Colorado)  Garden Club flower show. I wish I knew more, grew more, did more with flowers. It's just fun. I think, however,  I would drive myself crazy if I nurtured, pampered, and fused over trying to grow the prefect flower to win a silly old ribbon. Knowing my luck it would get hailed on and ruined. It's just fun to put yourself out there, to participate, to have fun. Next year you should pick your very best bloom and enter it  in your local fair--just for the heck of it.

I think I will plant my gladiolas earlier next year. There weren't any glads on display.