Melanie’s photo shoot was one of my favorites.

I mean, wouldn’t every girl like to have pictures

of herself all dressed up in her twenties?

I love to look at pictures of my grandmother

when she was in her twenties.

I wish I could go back in time

and meet my grandmothers and mother and step-mother

when they were in their 20s.

I would take my camera with me

and take pictures of them wearing dresses in fields.

– — –

The problem with outdoor shoots

is that sometimes things get in the way.

Like, for instance, this dog.

As soon as we got Melanie onto that log,

that darn dog jumped out of the water

and got on the log with her.

We couldn’t wait for her dress to dry,

so I shot around the water splashed all over her dress.

– — –

Another thing — the dreaded hay bale.

When we decided to put Melanie on the hay bale,

we tried everything I had in the back of my car

in an attempt to get her high enough to get on that hay.

Unsuccessful?

A package of paper towels.

Also unsuccessful?

A box of diapers.

We finally got her on top of it by me lifting her up

whilst she jumped ever so delicately in her evening gown.

I think the funniest part of the whole thing

was the fact that I could not, for the life of me,

say “hay bale” correctly.

I was trying to say it, but it kept coming out

as hale bales.  And hell belles.

I wish you could have been in that field,

listening to me yell

“Stand up on that hail bay, Melanie!  It’ll look great!”

The farmer who owned the land was sitting there,

watching us with our packages of paper towels and boxes of diapers

listening to me calling his bales of hay all kinds of different things.

I can’t be certain, but I bet he was thinking

“What the hay bale is wrong with those two girls?”

Plenty, sir.  But hay bales are the least of it.