County Fair finished, muralists continue

There were some changes in the alley murals over the weekend. There is a new mural on the back of eMbers Station. The artist signs his name @JohnnyTrasho. His Instagram account is private but I found a video on Facebook of him signing this work. He is from Rensselaer.

 I like how the pipe in the wall is incorporated into the picture.

I could not read the final letters of the other signature because the last letters were written on a drain pipe. It is @artistrya??.

Update: The signature is @artistryanp, another local artist. He did the elephant and the flowers, @JohnnyTrasho did the lettering. See the Instagram post here.

The mural on Janet's Kitchen had additions as of Sunday morning. Everything to the right of the ice cream cone is new.

 The Rensselaer Art Walk now has a website, www.renartwlk.org. It contains information on the various artists, though not yet @JohnnyTrasho, and a map of where the various murals are. (As I write this, it is missing the Moberg "Rensselaer" on the side of the Rensselaer Republican.) Check it out.

The Fair ended on Saturday. I went out in the evening mostly to see how the biplane rides had gone. The pilots said Friday was rather slow, but they had a steady stream of customers on Saturday. When I arrived both planes were on the ground, but while I was there two women took a ride in the blue plane. The pilots said that the winds on Saturday made flying a bit bumpy and the airport manager said that they had used the grass east-west runway.

By Saturday evening the tractors had left the retired iron building and the two exhibit halls were empty and locked.

 The animals were gone and the buildings had been cleaned up. For most of the week the building below had poultry.

 However, there were a lot of people at the fair. The line for Farm Bureau milkshakes was impressive. It will be a long wait until they can buy another.

 I was given a look at the new conference room in the Fair Office Building. The building was framed by Farm Builder and the room partitions and some of the dry wall were installed by the building trades class at RCHS. I was told that they are no longer building houses. Much of the work was done by volunteers and it still needs some finishing touches.

 This room will be used for Fair Board meetings. Before this room was built, the meetings took place in the north end of the Community Building, but there were often conflicts when the Community Building was rented. Now there will be no more conflicts. In addition, the building adds storage space.

Saturday was the last chance for carnival rides. It was also the last grandstand show, the Monster Truck event. I think most of the crowd at the fair was there to attend the grandstand show.

 I am too old to understand the attraction of this ride.

 The same is true for this ride, which flips people upside down.

The fair ended with a bang, or rather a long series of bangs as a fireworks show followed the Monster Truck event.

It has been a while since I posted wild flower pictures. Below is cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum). I found it growing in my back yard and I am not sure how it got there. My guess it is from a mixture of wildflower seeds that I had collected and tossed in what had been garden space.

 In the same genus is Rosen Weed (Silphium integrifolium). I grew this from seed that I found along Matheson Avenue several years ago. It did not flower in its first years.

 The purple flowers are wild bergamot. The butterfly is an eastern tiger swallowtail. The yellow flower is a false sunflower. The plant spreads aggressively.