Hitting A Different Wall

I'm used to doing this in the pool, walking till I'm just past that sudden point of exhaustion. I don't do it all the time, and have (finally!) learned to bring granola bars in the bag with my towel, etc., so I can replenish my energy, rather than trying to fight through it to make that half-hour trek of a hundred feet to my car, pausing often along the way. 

Today was different. I knew I was getting a little tired, but was taking it easy in the backyard, working from a lawn chair, pruning back unwanted trees growing near/along/through the fence and "painting" their short stumps with brush killer. Mostly these are in their second year of growth, though some have been cut back and sprouted half a dozen new trunks. One is actually in need of a saw, i.e., a job for Paul. The ones right next to the fence can't be gotten with the mower, though Paul gives it a good try. The resulting trunks grow in all directions, most of which include a passage through the chain link at some point. Sometimes twice or three times. 

I have to avoid cutting back the shoots which run up the neighbor's side of the fence, unless of course they wind through my fence, in which case they are partly in my yard and legally mine to kill off and remove. Sometimes I fudged it just a teensy bit, if they were small and close enough to reach through the openings in the wire with my little pruners. Shhhhhh. I am, after all, preventing damage to my property. I had that fence put in. I paid for it. If I can also push that short-handled foam brush which holds the brush killer and reach the cut surface of the sprout, and catch the cut piece before it falls out of reach, I figure it's fair game. There is plenty of evidence that the neighbors are doing much the same on their side of the fence. Just without the brush killer. The clumps get pretty thick. I'm doing them a favor, right?

It's actually pretty engrossing. The temperature starts in the high 60s when I go out, and ends in the high 70s, perfect for yard work. No skeeters, both for a light breeze and the fact I take my work shirt outside into the screen porch, douse it thoroughly with OFF! front and back, and then put it on just before I head out. (I can't spray my own back.) I'm mostly working in the shade from a grossly overgrown silver maple tree clump in the next yard. All in all, perfect conditions for working, no distractions. Each bit of progress along the fenceline results in the need to go a little further, take out the next whatever, set new goals for just how far I want to go today. 

Is there a vine needing to to be disconnect from the ground? Then pulled out of trees? Unwound from the fence? Is that an oak/maple/box elder/ash/chokecherry/apple/sumac/buckthorn I'm cutting out? Something unidentified? Have I gone far enough that I can no longer toss my cuttings over my shoulder and need to start the next pile? Does this cut need the little clipper or the big loppers? Wait, both? Seriously?

By the time I'm nearing the end of my ambition, it renews now that I'm behind the chokecherry hedge, if something 25 feet tall can be called a hedge. Covering the ground on the front (to us) side are various stacks of firewood, stacked between trunks for sorting, graduated by size and age, starting with twigs and ending with... oh wait, we seem to be out of the split wood now. No biggie, the bonfires/weenie roasts/s'mores events we hold for entertaining will never use up the ever-renewing supply of firewood. If Paul finally follows through and takes out the two large apple trees which do an excellent job of producing lumps and worms and nothing actually edible, their trunks would actually have to be split, and that stack would be a stack again. He was going to do it last fall. Now maybe late this summer. If nothing else, the lawn will be much easier to mow when the mower doesn't have to bump over deadfall apples.Then the currants may finally get enough sun to produce fruit, something actually usable.

While all this goes through my head, I keep seeing the next part of the way to cover, still have energy, still don't need to take a bathroom break (amazing, right?), and Steve hasn't poked his head out the door to find out if I'm surviving, wherever I am. I begin to think a bunch of time has gone by when he actually does check on me. Just another three feet or so, and I can quit. The way beyond that is unmanageable with my tools. I'm almost out of brush killer in my little bottle as well.

When I start to pick up my tools, grab the chair and drag it back out with me, it hits. That WALL! I am thoroughly exhausted, but have to take the tools to the screen porch, leave the chair where it can be seen for next use. I'm at the other side of the lawn but I'm going to make it. What choice do I have? I almost have to pee anyway. (Can we spell "dehydrated"?) Off come the gloves, the shoes, and I shoot a quick "I'm beat!" look Steve's way as I head down the hall. He recognizes that communication. I find I'm too tired to get off the "throne" for about 10 minutes, so it's  good thing there is no crowd waiting.

After dragging my sorry a... uh, self to the refrigerator to grab a cold naked precooked brat and a glass of cold water, I plunk in my chair. It's one that is built for Paul's frame, so after sitting I have to butt-walk back into it all the way. But I'm too tired. The dog jumps up on my lap anyway, and I manage a little petting with the hand not holding her temptation, but still have no energy to sit straight in the chair.  Steve walks by and has to pause to go around my feet which are sticking way out into his walking space. We both manage a weak chuckle but he makes it past. Both ways.

I'm finally curious enough to look at the clock and we work to figure out how long I was actually out. I returned to the house just before 3PM. We remembered I gave Steve his morning meds just before 9AM, just before heading out.  OMG! Six hours straight! I gotta find some carbs to make up for that. Once I have some energy of course. And figure out what I want/need. Eventually my brain shifts into gear and I recall the carton of mint chip ice cream in the fridge. Soon as the body follow suit, I go for a dish.

Now I'm starting to think a little acetaminophen is needed for those muscles starting to remind me just who actually did all that work! 

Soon. 

Once I feel like getting up again.

From Vinagaroon To MRSA, MRSA, And Still More MRSA!

I finally heard from Rich, after close to 2 months now. He's had a rough summer so far. Before we left, he'd gotten stung by a vinegaroon, a kind of nasty scorpion found in the Arizona desert. Some call it a spider scorpion. What it lacks in size it makes up for in venom. The wound looked ugly, but Rich insisted he was OK. He's got full medical coverage and the hospital is close so we weren't worried. Not too much.

What Rich hasn't got is communication. No phone, no functioning computer at the moment though it worked when we left. His phones always get stolen, just like his bicycles. His computer was a donation, the "if you can fix it it's yours" kind. He could, at least for a while. But he wasn't answering my emails.

I left two voicemails on the one phone I knew belonged to a friend of his, asking if/when he heard from Rich to please have him contact me. That happened tonight. On the friend's phone.

Shortly after we headed north, the wound got infected, enough for Rich to go to the ER. He managed to contact the local Posse and get transportation there. After a couple days in air conditioning, getting food and IV antibiotics, he was released to go home. His leg was better... until it wasn't again. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. It was formally diagnosed as MRSA on his second stay. The first time in they'd only gotten as far as a staph infection. You know, like what the "S" in MRSA stands for. The second time they didn't quite kill it. Third? Maybe.

At the moment he's surviving, though he has two non-functioning bikes. (The good one got stolen while he was in the hospital. The cops have the security camera footage of it happening, for what good that does.) He's handy enough to fix them, at least as much as he can without an income. Both have slow-leak tires. He can go a ways, pump, go, pump. Tiring work in Phoenix summer temperatures. And hard  anyway with a semi-healed leg. He needs to take the journey to replace his missing EBT card so he can go get groceries. There is a branch 2 1//2 miles away, where he hopes they can replace it. Last time he checked on his friend's computer the balance hadn't changed, so it's lost, not stolen and used. Worst case he has to head in to Phoenix, close to downtown, and talk to that head office. Then locate a food shelf too, as we both suspect the replacement card won't be handed out instantly. We could be pleasantly surprised. Or not.

His first ER visit was the same day I asked a friend to stop by and if he was there, remind him from me that the weeds needed to come out of the yard. We'd gotten the annual summer complaint letter from the Home Owners Association, with it's threat of fine if their deadline wasn't met. That was complicated by them sending it to the house there, it getting forwarded up north, and its arrival here being 10 days after the letter's date. She talked to him, and a few days later nothing had happened. I know because another letter arrived. We didn't know he'd left just after she had, to go to the hospital. Because why would we? So I hired getting the job done. It wound up costing less than the fine. 

Anger simmered.

We didn't know about the subsequent ER visits/hospital stays either. We just knew that now there was yet another letter with a different complaint. This time I spent over a week trying to get ahold of the HOA's staffer to find out exactly what was the offending violation, since it was pretty generic and hadn't been the case when we left. When she finally called back, gave me the information in a pretty vague way, I negotiated with her for more time since communication was difficult and I would have to mail a letter which was expected to take another 5 days to get there. That would run out this weekend. But he finally called, which was great, since among other things I hadn't actually written that letter yet. But we had that discussion tonight, Rich and I. So he knows. And promised to fix it as soon as he got home from his friend's. I happen to be a little less pissed off than I've been for a few weeks now. Trust the promise? Uhhhh....

Let's hope, for a variety of reasons, that his MRSA is at bay for a good long time. If that sounds pessimistic, it's because the one other person I know who's had it has been battling it for almost two decades now. Every time something new comes up health wise for her, MRSA winds up being a part of it. Somehow even with her history they never get around to treating her MRSA until the stuff that doesn't work has been tried a couple of times. I also doubt Rich's ability to fight it off on his own. He's had minor health issues ever since getting a couple brown recluse spider bites on one of his visits to help out local homeless friends. 

Arizona has not been kind.

Putting Down A Put-Down

I try not to be judgmental about many personal choices other people make, especially when those choices serve their personal and emotional needs and hurt absolutely nobody else. But I can't tolerate those SOBs who charge right in and do whatever they can to put vulnerable people down. Case in point this afternoon.

I have a good friend who's vulnerable in a multitude of ways. She's had a hard life, and is doing what she can to live as honorably and sanely as possible despite that. She also happens to consider me as something of a second mother.

I love that.

She lives fairly near where we spend our summers, Steve and I that is. Years ago I met her extended family up here and got to know them... a little too well.

This afternoon I'd been invited to a birthday party for one of her two children. As usual, since the other child has a birthday falling after we leave to go back south, I bring a pair of whatever, so each gets a present. It's modest, but it's the principle. 

Today after I arrived my friend asked me if I wanted to see her alter set-up. She's a practicing Wiccan, and I was interested. I don't happen to believe the way she does, but recognize she gets benefits from the meditations, mental exercises, and reflections she puts into her beliefs, all of which give her feelings of peace and security. For my part, I appreciated the designs on various items and her explanations of their meanings to her, as well as the large collections of different rocks she has spread out around the center piece on her alter. I happen to have a pretty fair running knowledge of what the stones are, like obsidian, jasper, quartz, fluorite, amethyst, malachite, and so on, and was able to appreciate the quality of the stones she'd chosen as well as reaffirm their names occasionally.

When we emerged to rejoin the party, her father-in-law asked me if I liked her "voodoo setup". This was not the first or even second he'd gone out of his way to belittle her to me. Out of the blue on other times he'd provided elaborate detail of the medications she had to take to cope, pointing out her psychological vulnerabilities as personal faults as if he was hoping to discourage a friendship. (Surely I couldn't value a person like that! Obviously he didn't.) I recognized the attempts to keep her isolated, made noncommittal noises, and found something else to do in another location each time he tried.

This time I didn't hold my peace, but neither did I want to disrupt the party. I just informed him that I wouldn't call it voodoo, since voodoo was solidly grounded in Roman Catholicism, and I wouldn't consider his son's wife to be a Catholic.  

With a brief comment that he didn't know about the Catholic connection, sounding like I'd given voodoo sudden credibility, he shut up and quit trying to drive a wedge. The rest of the party was amicable, the food was great, and I settled down to taking pictures of the family to send her once I got home.

Orioles!

 This time Paul saw them first and pointed them out to me.

We have a picnic table in the back yard out by the fire pit that for whatever reason became the resting spot for a brush pile. We'll have to go make a closer inspection to try to find out why the family found it so fascinating. Were they nesting in it? Was it full of tasty bugs? While they flitted all around the back and side yard, or at least those places are the ones visible from the living/dining/kitchen area, the table seems to be where they keep returning to. 

Paul was looking at the back yard out the back door, presumably finding excuses not to mow the grass till next weekend since it's not all a foot high yet, when he noticed one, then several, finally settling on five: two parents and three fledglings. The fledglings were my first view of them, and could have been any of a variety of birds, colored much like yellowish sparrows or warblers, just larger. Once I saw a parent, doubt was erased. Somewhere our yard had supported a new oriole family.

While we both stood at the back door and watched them, they came as close as the back steps, the step railings, the flowering milkweeds just past the steps, and the deck railing. They disappeared into and emerged from the large apple tree, the former raspberry patch, the cranberry bushes, and of course, the "cherrybird" trees. Soon, however, robins appeared and chased them out of the cherries, their own fledglings more agile now and plucking their own. 

The chipmunk made its own appearance under the hostas, ducking back in almost immediately as if the songbirds made too much of a threat. It might have been one of the young orioles which seemed to pluck a bug from one of the hosta buds which scared it back into hiding.

Paul retreated for his morning shower, and I dug the camera out when I noticed one parent had returned to the table of brush, perched and singing. I carefully opened the house side door and found a fairly clean spot on the storm door to shoot through. I gave up shooting before the oriole gave up singing. I didn't get any of the young birds, but while they came very close to the house, any movement on our parts then would have scared them away, so no point in trying then.

With  my morning yard work done, once I have my own shower, now that I'm rested, I'll in turn be out and about in the car. I'm going to bring the camera along, just in case. Because of course I will.

While Sitting Very Still

There are advantages to working so hard I'm temporarily too tired to move. 

A few days ago I was weeding the blueberry patch, getting it ready for more planting, but reached my limit and just sat for about 10 minutes. Part of that was looking at the job done and job yet to be done, planning methods, and prioritizing. Some of it was just taking in the morning. 

Movement caught my attention. It was on the ground, not in the cherry trees. The birds are too smart and wary. If only they knew how dangerous I wasn't at that moment. Into full view popped a little chipmunk. While I marveled at how healthy it looked - why not, in our yard? - and what a lovely rich brown its back was, it approached, stopped, moved, stopped, looked up overhead, stopped, washed its paws, and dashed under the cherry trees, lost to view in the tall weeds.  I've seen one off and on in our yard since we moved in. We've had them in our attic, seen a pair cavorting in the back woodpile, watched them running and leaping through the endless canopy across the back end of the yard, from hazelnuts to oak to blue spruce to oak to.... Well, you get the idea. We don't get squirrels, one of Paul's regrets when we first moved in, but I find these much  more charming. They certainly are well fed here.

On another morning, while the back concrete steps were still out of the sun, I just sat, musing. It started as identifying burdock plants around the yard starting to form seeds, pushing that to a higher priority on the to-do list, then noting the grape arbor, bare two weeks ago, is now densely leafed out, finally dropping my gaze to the pot of Little Grapette daylilies budding near my feet. The largest two buds are starting to purple, so blooms are anticipated soon. The other new ones, Nosferatu, haven't begun to shoot up flower stalks so I wonder if they will at all this year now after being cut apart and planted in their new homes.

Then the song caught my attention.

I realized I'd been hearing it for a while. Seeking its origin, I spied a small brown bird on a branch tip back in the central yard. I watched it flit around the yard, figuring it might be trying to attract a mate, even late as it is in the breeding season. It would call several times, relocate, repeat, relocate, repeat. It once came within about 12 feet but that was it's briefest perch. One time it landed on a pole holding one of the bird house boxes we put out over by what used to be the raspberry patch. They were last year's replacements for rotting birdhouses put up nearly 30 years ago. Over the life of the old boxes they housed tree swallows, bluebirds, and wrens. There might have been others. With three boxes up, only one each year was occupied. The birds which nested made short work of plugging the openings in the other nearby boxes to prevent competing families from setting up house. Each fall, or at least by the next spring, we needed to open them and pull out the twigs. 

Last month I had noticed one of the new houses, located under a defunct platform bird feeder by the grape arbor, had a bird visit it briefly, poking a twig inside. The hole was pretty well blocked. But where was the family nesting instead? This day the singing bird was on top of this house as one of its calling spots.  Just another convenient stop, I supposed. About that time it got an answer, fainter, shorter, not responding to all the calls, but it made me peg the first bird as a him, and the replies as belonging to a her. The whole "concert" lasted perhaps two minutes, when suddenly the second bird perched on top of the plugged house. It then dropped down to the plugged opening, moved up under the overhanging roof, and disappeared. 

There was a small gap there, perhaps 1/2" high, the width of the house, designed to let hot air out. It never occurred to me that it would also let bird parents slip in and out of a house to raise their babies where nobody and nothing could expect the family to be, much less be likely to follow. In a brief moment the female popped out again and flew off. I really did restrain myself from going over and seeing if I could open it up and see the nest. I did buy those houses last year for a reason. I can now sit on the steps and watch what's going on over there though. More or less.

I'm thinking wrens. I'll have to go google their song, see if it matches.  (Note: I'm back from checking. With the series of chirps ending in a loud trill, I'm saying it is.)

We used to have them a lot. I moved a small house designed for them into the front yard's sugar maple many years ago, and it got a few years of their attention. Then it just sat, until a couple years ago it just fell in pieces to the ground. But long before the fall there was another chapter to its history. That was so long ago I hadn't yet switched to digital photography, but I got a 35mm photo of a green tree frog who'd taken over the door of the house to look out over the world from. A couple days later the frog disappeared as well. I expect last year's collection of tree frogs collecting each evening on our lit picture window, awaiting dinners of the bugs likewise attracted, include its descendants.

Foggy Morning Fun

Does it sound weird to say I'm waiting to dry out so I can go have my shower? Might as well blog about it, eh?

We awoke to a fairly heavy fog, though we didn't know until there was enough light to see outside. Actually my first clue was a TV news shot of Minneapolis in fog. I'd been distracted by the TV and hadn't actually looked out the window yet. As soon as I noticed, of course I went for the camera. Barefoot. So I didn't go far, but the concrete apron in front of the former garage was clean enough for my tender feet to get my favorite shot of the end of the driveway where the river birch branches hang low enough to brush our small hatchbacks as we pull in or out. Eventually we'll trim them like every year, but for now they seem to enclose our private little kingdom of greenery and flowers.

After breakfast, it was time for outdoor work. I judged with such a fog the mosquito wings would be heavy enough to prevent them flying, so I didn't bother with OFF! I was only wrong on one of them, but it was easily deflected and didn't return. My uniform for yard work is jeans and a long sleeved knit shirt from Rocky Mountain National Park. Somehow the shirt never gets stained, even when I don't wash it for a month, though that's a month of one or two hour stints in case you are appalled at the lack of laundering. If you recall last year's embarrassment with the jeans I was shrinking inside, I did go find a wonderful belt with holes its entire length. They stay up now!

The job needing to get done was planting at least the first pot of daylilies I purchased last week. I've been hunting dark purple ones for a year, and found two varieties that promise to do the job. One is Little Grapette, and the other two pots are Nosferatu. The Grapettes are already budding, six stalks in the one gallon pot so far. I'm waiting to plant those until some bloom. Things tend to happen during planting, like brittle flower stalks snapping off. They get lots of watering and sit in a safe spot near where they'll get planted.

So today was Nosferatu. One pot only, as it turned out. First there was a whole lot of weed removal, many of which were small trees, the rest grass and thistles. Once those were gone, there was a porous groundcloth to dig out. You know, it's the kind that's supposed to keep those weeds from growing there. I guess after 28 years it might be expected to fail a bit. I happen to know that it failed to keep the grass out in year one. This is on the south side of the house, in a spot about 5 feet wide where the blueberry patch failed to thrive longer than, say, 26 years. These daylilies will get full south sun, bury their roots in rich well mulched soil, and get the runoff from the roof when it rains. If they are like all the other daylilies in the yard, they will do a great job in ten years or so of choking out the weeds and grass.

The first pot got separated into three small clumps. The other will be either two or three but I won't know until I unpot it. I'm just waiting to see them bloom.

I'm almost dry enough now to be able to pull my clothes off and take that shower. When your shoulders aren't cooperative, it's a real challenge to get shirts either on or off, but especially against damp skin. But I think I've been writing long enough to give it a shot. There's still plenty of time. Steve and I aren't planning to hit the theater for the new Jurassic Park movie till 1:00.

Our CherryBird Trees

When I ordered them from the catalog,  they kinda lied. They were described as cherry bushes. At about 12 feet high, I think they've passed that point, and they're still growing. 

They're in a spot in the yard that's in its forth incarnation, as far as use goes. It's south of the house, about halfway between the blueberries and daffodils snugged up against the house, and the tall hedge of red flowered honeysuckle on the border. First I tried a pear tree. Within a month it succumbed to fire blight. Hopeless. There were asiatic lily bulbs planted there in lots of lovely colors, but after about five years of inattention they failed to thrive. So we planted apricot trees. Those did just fine, but the apricots weren't worth the effort. They actually did OK this far north, on the 3-4 climate zone border, a nice surprise as not everything advertised to survive here actually does. But by the time the fruit ripened it was spotty and ugly. Scab.  We got rid of those and let things rest a year or two. 

In the meantime, we'd planted cherry trees in the front yard. We got cherries, but only so-so. In went another northern variety which is thriving. We supplemented those with nanking variety cherries in a couple places around the yard. Those low bushes thrived but gave tiny cherries which the birds collected before we could. That was  fine, as we'd hoped to distract them from our cherries. Just got more birds. Eventually we got rid of those, pretty as they were, especially when blooming. Seeds scattered (i.e., got pooped) all over and we were pulling out sprouts for a couple years. The nankings got replaced by honeyberries, another story for another time.

One winter, looking through the nursery/garden catalogues for something new for the yard, I found a cherry bush advertised. I'm sure it had a special name, but who can remember all these years later? The part which caught my eye was the promise of very prolific fruit. Real cherries, not the sand cherries I'd gotten fooled by several years earlier. So I ordered a pair. They went in the holes left from digging out the apricot trees a couple years earlier.

The bushes came in little peat pots about 2" x 2", and had perhaps 3' stems with a few leaves. They definitely needed something to protect them from the lawn mower! I can't recall but I'm assuming it would have been tomato cages, since tomatoes weren't popular. Lots of ambitions, some product, little actual appetite for them  - go figure, and no inclination to can. All the neighbors were growing their own, so with no way to get rid of them either, might as well quit growing those and use their cages.

I thought they'd died. They stayed so short the grass was taller. But within a couple years, Paul insisted they were still there. And alive! The cherry bushes grew. And grew. After about 5 years there were enough cherries to see a couple actually ripen before the birds took them. Seriously, a couple. Soon there were enough for Paul to reach easily enough to pick, rather than having to dig out the ladder to pick from the front yard trees. Of course he left those early cherries for the birds since they were actually easier to harvest from the front trees, ladder and all.

Time marches forward. Now the "bushes" are a height which almost matches the tallest cherry tree out front. But the part about the abundance of cherries is perfectly correct. Even without fruit they are so thick that they are opaque. Loaded down with tiny green cherries just 2 weeks ago, the weather warmed enough and it rained enough that seemingly overnight they started expanding and reddening.  We could look at some pink ones in the early morning and they'd be red by lunchtime. Then gone soon after, though enough were reddening right behind them that if you hadn't watched the birds you couldn't tell the difference.

First it was the robins. Either lots of robins or very hungry robins feeding their young. I actually did see one with a scruffy fledgeling on the top of the chain link fence, trying to encourage the youngster to hop over to get its reward. The parent wound up eating that one itself and flew back to the tree for the next one. I'd moved from the window after that, but presumed success at some point.

There were cardinals, cedar waxwings which in the past had helped strip the highbush cranberries as winter ended, but always seemed to move on before any summer fruit appeared. A dark grey bird just a tad larger than a junco has visited, along with unidentified brown birds (sparrows? finches? something else?). Something with yellow, a bit of white, and lots of dark color flew past so fast I couldn't tell if the dark was brown or black. My flash impression is larger than a finch or sparrow. I finally after much struggle came up with the name of the rarest bird to visit, one I hadn't seen in years and never in town: a rose breasted grossbeak. Who knows what else comes when our attention is elsewhere? There is a never ending supply of places where the leaves rustled but successfully hid the culprits. Maybe a tail stuck out. 

I never bothered to try for pictures. They would have to have been taken through triple pane windows and a screen, no surface of which has been cleaned off in recent memory. By the time I got near in person, any foraging bird would have long flown. Sitting very still outside and patiently waiting would only have produced a different feast: mosquitoes feeding on me. Which of course would have totally made sitting still impossible anyway, so why give the skeeters the pleasure?

They've been at the cherries non stop now, and still there are plenty of red cherries all over these bushes. The front yard trees are ripening their fruit, though nothing resembling the amount on the bushes. So naturally nothing resembling the amount of birds. Paul finally decided it was time to head out with a huge bowl to pick some for his annual fall jelly making project. When he returned, the bowl was overload to the limit of its ability to keep them from dropping as he walked. He sent two gallon bags of them down to the basement freezer. Neither I nor the birds can tell any difference in the ripe bounty on the bushes.

Presents: Happy Everything!

I met with my daughter and son in law earlier this week. They suggested brunch at a place on south Lyndale Avenue called French Meadow. The food was lovely, many things I'd never had before, and with a pleasant day it was nice to eat and talk at sidewalk tables. OK, the talking got interrupted occasionally by ambulances going by, plus an occasional large truck, but we managed. Brunch and the company combined to make the first present.

It was an exchange, as I'm doing X-mas (and birthdays, Mother's Day, etc. etc.) early/late this year with a single present: wind chimes for people who live up here with a place to hang them, my project which kept me very busy the month before we headed north. It will do the same in the fall, presuming the dremel has been repaired so I can drill more glass pieces. Only then I'll have to figure out how to mail them. They don't fit boxes properly, so theirs when wrapped had a rather odd look to it. In fact, even after scotch taping its deformed box together, it still needed the wrapping paper to hold it together. (I made sure to buy packing tape for future  presents. What I'll do this winter for mailing boxes to people we don't see here is anybody's guess.)

The first present for me was presented with the words, "This is your Mother's Day present..." Oh cool, I wasn't expecting one of those, and didn't mind it was over a month late because I was doing the same for somebody else, all in the interest of saving postage. "... from 2002." OK, interesting. "She went on to explain it was started back then and had taken her nearly 20 years to finish it. I pulled it out and found a picture frame holding a beautiful piece of rosemaling she had made. The center rectangle held flowers and various designs and colors filled the rest. All the colors are ones I really like, many matching my bedspread, and the workmanship is perfect.  She explained that the glass in the frame was under the needlework as putting glass over it would squash the texture. It is absolutely beautiful.

She went on to comment that it isn't everyone who grows up with examples of it all over their houses. Wait, what? I never did any, nor bought any. Didn't even know the term. It's Norwegian, and that's not my heritage. It's from her paternal grandmother. Then I recalled Lylah's house, and things she kept in it. And of course the needlework she presented to me many years ago which now greets people who come through the front door. So that's it. I appreciate even more Steph learning how to do that, getting to do it so beautifully, and passing it along to me. Even if it took 20 years. Somehow that makes it more special.

But there was another present in the bag, a book. I'd glanced past the title as I was admiring the other present, but suddenly it came to me just what it really said and meant. The title is "We Never Knew Just What It Was." My brain kick-started with the matching melody. Of course! The Marvelous Toy! I suddenly had an earworm, the song running through my head over and over from all the repeat playing over the years of the record is was on.Ies, I said record. LP. Vinyl. Album. Of course: Chad Mitchell Trio!

Anybody young enough to not know who they were, go hit You Tube and listen. They were the best folk singers coming out of the 60s. Three voices melding perfectly, expressively, dramatically, humorously. To me they were even better than Peter Paul and Mary, though saying that in front of my husband is tantamount to heresy, as he has a special bond with his daughter over PP&M. Back in high school I collected their albums as they came out and budget permitted. I played them as much as possible, even went to a concert of theirs in St. Paul, despite passing on an opportunity around the same time to go see the Beatles, heresy to the girlfriend who'd asked me to go to their concert with her. I didn't want to return home deaf from hearing all the screaming of the fans instead of the music. True to my expectation, my girlfriend did just exactly that. She was hoarse too, being one of those screaming fans.

Those years were Vietnam war years, and much of the music is protest music, not just of wars but all the injustices of the world. In many ways I raised myself on their music, took my values from it, sang along with it (when the recordings were good enough I could tell what all the words were). I raised my kids with it. And here in my hands was a book that told the story of their careers, how they came together as a group and fell apart, how they lived after and finally came back together to sing again. 

I admit I take most of that from the introduction to the book since I've only read three chapters so far. There is much else to do around here, people to see, weeds to pull or kill, more flowers to plant, laundry to haul up and down basement stairs. There's also a dog who has to be convinced that she needs to go outside. Yes, the grass is long and wet and cold on her belly, and the mosquitoes have hatched after all the rainy days, but really: She needs to go pee! Even if it means I have to put on my shoes and grab her leash and drag her. Even, especially, if anybody has lit off a firecracker within a mile in the last two hours! So what if we have a fenced back yard? She will just hold it.

But I did make one glorious discovery just as I was putting it back down after the first reading binge. I'd skipped past the first couple pages in my hurry to start reading the book, so I missed one page. It just happens to contain the signatures of all three of the Trio!

O.M.G!!! One of my best presents ever!

A Few Tornado Updates.

My friend's house is finally getting the work needed to make it livable again. The roof is done. The large tree branches over the power line which crosses their sidewalk out to the street have finally gotten removed. Mostly, anyway. Both were fairly "v" shaped, and both got cut below where the branches forked. The weight is gone. The two much smaller upside down "v"s remain hooked over the wire. Possibly another good stiff (straight) wind will knock them loose, but we'll have to see. At least they can safely use their sidewalk now.

Their south wall is still tarped and boarded over. While the insurance company offered them a large sum for an extended motel stay while the work got done, they had opted to continue living in the rest of the house instead. It was livable with the privacy from the living room being boarded up, after which they'd cleaned out the glass all over, allowing safe access through it, and best of all, the ramp she needed had been quickly replaced. Staying was much less disruptive to their lives than moving things out and back in, plus leaving the house unguarded. My friend is finally relaxing into the process, now that something is actually happening.

I reread the original post from May 10, and realized I'd neglected to cover the main reason the national media had covered the little twister. After all, it had damaged only 3 buildings in her town, then skipped to nailing a historical home two town over. Those weren't covered in the original TV reporting. They weren't what was important.What had been covered was what was out in public view, a rather peculiar effect of the winds. But in order to get across why it meant what it did to so many people, I need to give some background first.

The area  is generally referred to as Chisago Lakes. Yes, that's Chisago with an "s", not a "c", no matter how many times the spellchecker insists otherwise. It sits about 30 to 40 miles northeast of St. Paul. A fairly tightly knit chain of lakes features prominently. US Highway 8 on its way to Wisconsin worms around and between those lakes and through the small communities which have grown up around them. 

Mostly the area is rural, homes to people year round, though tourists are always welcomed. Supplementing  homes, schools and churches are all kinds of small stores and other amenities. The area is small enough to be between Walmarts, say about 10 miles either side of its outskirts, but big enough to have a Dairy Queen, Arby’s, and McDonalds. It holds a vineyard and winery on its west end,  Hazelden on its eastern end. A large modern library was built along the highway a bit over 12 years ago. The elementary school was recently located away from Highway 8, not for safety from the increasing traffic, but to change the land use to a dense cluster of identical, grey, pricey new homes. 

One farm along 8 just east of the towns used to hold dozens of bison along with a store/restaurant, but the bison were discontinued a few years back when younger generations of the family were no longer interested in managing them. Some of the grazing land is now storage units. As a reminder, however, a life size statue of a bull still stands along the highway, where in winter it collects snow which gets dirty,  then melts and refreezes overnight. On such mornings afterwards, one can often see a yellow icicle hanging from the lowest protuberance under it belly, dripping slowly until it melts. 

Further east a bit is a popular state park, nestled along the St. Croix River, a nationally protected waterway and favored spot to put in a canoe or kayak, pull out at the next state park downstream, and get shuttled back to one's car.

Besides all the fish, turtles, and muskrats in the lakes, the observant person driving through the area can often spot sandhill cranes, wild turkeys, herons or egrets, ducks and geese, and the occasional reminder of other animals lying along the highway. The notorious Minnesota Attack Deer regularly get the harshest reminders that attacking cars or trucks was not their wisest final act.

Part of the highway is called the Moberg Trail, and local historians will inform anybody of how the famous Swedish author traveled through and based a book on the emmigrants in the area. The towns are proud of their Swedish connections, and most have “sister cities” back in Sweden. Summer festivals include that history in their themes.

They also did one more thing which features in why this tiny twister made the news. Part of the area tourist attractions is a series of hugely oversized adirondack chairs, placed here and there in parks and along lakeshores. Why? No clue. Maybe they couldn’t do what other Minnesota towns do with huge statues of fish, bragging about their record catch possibilities, so somebody in power got AN IDEA. To get a mental picture of the chairs,  picture Lily Tomlin’s character Edith Ann in her huge chair. An agile person — or family — can climb up into them for a souvenir photo of the weird fun thing they did on that vacation.  Each chair is a different color. Again, I have no clue why, though it’s possible each took a whole can of paint so they just mixed it up with the colors. Our chair in this story is red.

When the report of the tornado came through on the national news, what caught everybody’s attention was the fact that it blew the huge red chair, as well as either a dock or multiple docks, depending on the version of the report, out into and/or across the lake.

When we came up this summer, we noticed a dock still out in the lake in the second week of June. It hadn’t gone too far, so we were able to recognize it for the local municipal dock, a huge “T” shape with railings, perfect for kids with poles to go out on and try their hands at catching the abundance of 3” sunfish which had otherwise been enjoying the shade the dock cast only to get a sharp pain in their lip when they thought they’d also found the bonus of a quick meal. Several days later as we passed on the highway we noticed it had finally been towed back into place. I can only think it took a council meeting to justify the expense on their tiny town budget to get it hauled back. Taxes will be up a bit next year I’m sure.

But the red chair was nowhere to be seen. Yet. I expect it needed some TLC after its wild ride, not to mention another expense getting it hauled back in. Earlier this week my friend noted to me that it had finally been put back in place, so I took a look on my trip through this morning. Yep, it’s there, right along the shore of North Center Lake, sporting flags sticking out on both sides for the holiday. First glance makes it look as if they are wings and the chair is ready to fly off.

They must be expecting a possible repeat of its wild ride some time in the future. It’s been freshly painted, still mostly red. But someone with a sense of humor also painted a bright, huge, yellow life preserver on the chair!