A trip down memory lane wouldn't be complete without stopping by DeSmet and visiting the family home and school house of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  I loved the Wilder family--the books, the 1970s television show (although I always wished that someone would have shown Michael Landon how to really play his fiddle!), and of course, the annual Laura Ingalls Wilder pageant held outside DeSmet on the prairie each July.  And Laura wasn't just a South Dakota phenomenon--one year my husband and I traveled to Sweden and stayed with a family, and that evening when I was escorted to their daughter's bedroom I found myself surrounded by Lilla Huset Pa Prarien on the bookshelves!  One thing I didn't know about Laura, though, was that she also published a small book of Fairy Poems, from which the poem below is taken.  I can't say it's a great poem, but I have a fondness for all things Laura.  I think it is charming that in the midst of the family's struggle to survive on the unforgiving prairie, Laura managed to bring a little fairy magic into her life. 

My sisters ala Mary and Laura

  The Fairy Dew Drop

Down by the spring one morning
Where the shadows still lay deep,
I found in the heart of a flower
A tiny fairy asleep. ...

... All the colors of the rainbow
Were in her robe so bright
As she danced away with the sunbeam
And vanished from my sight.

Laura Ingalls Wilder - February 1915    

My son and daughter at the Ingalls Family gravesite, DeSmet, South Dakota

 

I hope you find a little magic fairy dust to sprinkle on your day today!