Spring Things

Oh, happy Days - Spring is early this year at Lakeside Gardens - The snow has been gone for a couple of weeks although the dark woods still maintains a drift or two. The lake is still frozen but the edges are melting and a couple of good rains should hasten its departure. It's time to make Maple syrup - the earliest season we can remember for that - time to carry away the piles of leaves I had raked last Fall - time to clean out the root cellar and attend to our compost pit - time to plant seedlings and clean up the vegetation in the flower beds - in general, time to mingle with Mother Nature and enjoy the season of resurrection and resurgence...........We started composting the year we moved here, 1972, to be exact. For some strange reason, probably divine guidance, I subscribed to the "Organic Gardening" magazine that year - we were city raised through and through so it was pretty Greek to us - but we read and learned and composting seemed like such a good thing to do because one felt so much less guilty about wasting food stuffs when you knew that they would return to the earth and reinvegetate, (new word, like reincarnate.) We compost by putting all kitchen scraps and garden waste into three covered black five gallon buckets . When they are full, we take them to the compost pit behind our garden shed and empty them. A lot of the decomposing is done in the black buckets by the time we get them out there and then we cover the glop with dirt and let air and rain turn the glop to black gold. It's just another creative outlet and the compost is used to nourish the plantings later that year.........The accompanying pictures show the compost pit with the unused garden veggies and fruits gone bad in our root closet this year, then the pit with a covering of some of the raked leaves from last Fall....... our channel to the lake with the ice melting...... and the ice shanty already off the ice and ready to be used as storage for swimming toys......there is a time for everything under Heaven and I surely do like all these times.

Rhinelander's Little Olympics

Our town had a taste of the Olympics this weekend. We hosted the World Championship of Ice Fishing and the elite ice fishermen from eleven countries competed for the the title of World Champion for 2010 - no prize money involved - just the honor for their country. Each country's team had five or six anglers, a coach and a manager. The countries were Iceland, Latvia, Finland, Sweden, Russia , Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Canada, U.S.A., Lithuania and Estonia. We've had about a two week warm spell so the snow has left our landscape very early this year but the frozen lakes are still solid and they had to drill through twenty six inches of ice. Our citizenry and businesses excitedly welcomed our brethren from the foriegn lands and Bing and I and the three Rhinelander grandchildren participated in the Parade of Nations held Friday night. Thousands turned out to cheer the teams, even two of the racing sausages from the Milwaukee Brewers showed up. Very specially outfitted ice fishing shanties paraded along hoping to gather votes for the shanty contest. The teams marched along, each accompanied by children from various scout troops and schools and Courtney and Alexa's school had the honor of accompanying the U.S.A. float and team......This was a really well run tourney - no electronic help such as fish locators or underwater cameras, no power augurs, no motorized transportation.

Only panfish count in the weigh in and all fish caught were donated to local food pantries......Our fishermen were surprised at the equipment used by the foreign teams and they were surprised at the size of our panfish. The fish they catch at home run three or four inches and here ours run to about 15 inches for some crappies. Their poles are only as big as a flimsy pencil and they don't

have reels - they pull the line in by hand. Their augurs are razor sharp and honed often. Our team had to practice hand auguring because usually power augurs are used around here. A team from the U.S.A. competed in Poland last year and came in last. They're hoping to do much better here on home ice......Our local papers interviewed the fishermen who could speak English and it was so beautiful to read their remarks about actually being here in America versus their perceptions of America from afar. One man from Russia said, "I see the feelings of everyone here. Very good people, and we learn a lot on the ice and on this trip. We will take many good memories home." We read and we know that we are brothers and sisters of everyone populating this vast planet of ours and it was so good to share the joy and meet some of those faraway siblings. We laughed and sang and clapped with them and we love them.

A Story to Tell

Last Sunday I was reading the newspaper in the living room and Bing had the History Channel on TV. It must have been a marathon of UFO stories because I was repeatedly captivated by various and sundry tales of alien encounters and unexplainable occurences. I've always been a believer in the fact that there are other intelligent beings out there but I've also always been charged with believing anything anyone ever tells me. Ie, too much naivete for my age. Howsoever, it started me thinking that I'd better get my story about a possible alien encounter down so that, later on, when our science catches up to the others and much is revealed about alien encounters of the past people won't say I'm just a Johnny Come Lately, making up a tall tale..............So, here we go. The picture above is of our bedroom window. This house was built in 1988 and this tale was after we were empty nesters, which would take it into 1993. It was around the first of May of whatever year it was and it was a Saturday. Bing was staying overnight up North on an opening of fishing season trip. Now remember, this is not much of a story and it would never make it past the scrutiny of the naysayers and cynics, but it is what it is, my story. I was lying in bed and looked out the window. About half way up the tree in the foreground there is a large branch extending toward our house. I remember seeing what looked like the shadow of a flying saucer parked on that branch. I distinctly remembered thinking, hah, they weren't so smart, they had the capability to make their vehicle invisible but they didn't relize that it would still cast a shadow. Then, the next thing I knew, I was awake but I couldn't move my fingers, they were absolutely stiff. I was able to walk and went right to the bathroom sink and ran water on them and coaxed them back to normal. I looked out to see if the shadow was still there but it wasn't. A coincidental occurence was a very strange wound on the back side of my left thigh. It was a perfectly circular wound, not like a bug bite or a scrape, just a perfect circle and it healed , not with a nice crusty scab like a common wound, but it just healed with no scab. That's about it, never saw the shadow again, never had stiff hands again and never had a wound like that again.........When I tried to think what might have happened. maybe they had just arrived when I accidentally saw their ship, maybe I awoke from whatever feezing they did of me a little prematurely and maybe they had to dig into me to do some experimentation. Or maybe they just suck blood from the fattest part of a human specimen. I don't think our sons will have some alien coming up to them, saying, hey, we're half siblings, because my egg supply was pretty much gone by then.............Well, that's it. I feel a little blessed to remember even this and I feel a little stupid conveying it, but what the heck, we is who we is, as Popeye or maybe Forrest Gump said.

Sing a Song

A young mortician in town is a real go getter. (I think that's in their job description, to get to know their potential customers.) He's involved with every festival and fundraiser, is the Grand Knight of our Knights of Columbus, plays the piano and sings at church and is an active member of a barbershop quartet. He decided to start a male chorus from the Knight's members and sent out an e-mail to everyone that might be interested. He made it quite easy because they will only sing at church about once a month, the practices will be 45 minutes before the singing Mass and they would use the church hymnals with familiar songs. I am proud to say that my husband with a gifted voice who has burst into song throughout our forty years of marriage, has joined and today they sang at church for the second time and they sounded magnificent. I really hope now that their next time up will be when his 97 year old mom will be visiting next month. She'll be so proud of her sonny boy and will join me with tears of happiness!

Patience Please

Wow, it's been over a month and I haven't posted a thing. Any faithful readers are probably thinking that I've run out of words. But no, I'm just patiently trying to figure out all our new high falutin' technological wonders. Talk about adapting to change!!! Holy moley, a while back our camera ceased working except for pictures without a flash so I wasn't able to have pictures readily able to add to the blog. And I do really like pictures with a blog. It eliminates the need for a thousand words since a picture is worth that. Plus, we bought a new desktop computer and a laptop computer and our brain circuitry has not been so challenged in decades as we try to get all the little nuances of working these things learned. We'd be nowhere at all with them if son, Tony, had not spent most of a day connecting the various router, printer and basic software, security ware, etc. Bing has already established the ability to send photos from our new and advanced camera but I'm not there yet, so this posting will be naked, that is, without pictures.
We bought the laptop so that we'd be able to communicate and keep up with the world when we travel in our camper so we brought it along on our two short trips that we've taken. The hotels where we stayed had wifi so I thought we would be able to e-mail but now we know that our charter.net does not serve very far away so I think we have to get on hotmail. Another alien world to conquer! Wish us well, please, and I hope to get back to casual blogs with pictures before too long.

Warmth in the Winter

I spoke of change and in my almost seven decades of life, I've had a glimpse at the ebb and flow of generations. Now that I understand how the young become the old and the old become memories, I wish I would have paid more attention to the stories of all my elders. I wish I would have taken the time to know my parents better, to have heard how my sets of grandparents happened to meet, what the trip across the ocean at age 19 was like. I wish I would have cared and known how each of my 32 cousins grew and prospered or didn't. I was third youngest of the 32 and I wouldn't know most of them if I met them on the street.

But luckily, now we have a family. When Bing and I became parents - a profound change came over us - powerful protective love entered our lives - nevermore would just us matter. Always our children would be forefront in our minds and in our hearts. And then came their little sprouts - oh the joy of seeing and being with that next generation! We had the first five grandchildren here to celebrate the new year and it warmed the cold cold winter. Love and laughter reigned and family felt so good. God, grant all families the wisdom to know that their unique family is precious.

Aging and Change

Our society has a real aversion to aging. More and more products are geared to fight the effects of aging and to mask its telltale signs. Plastic surgeons and pharmacuetical companies are enriched by clients hungry for the latest procedure or elixir.

I've always kind of taken the road less traveled or not quite gone with the flow in life and so it is in my attitude toward aging. I like it a lot. I found this quote in the "O" magazine from a woman named Peggy Cooper Cafritz. She says," people will say, oh pull the plug, this aging is terrible. But one of the pleasures of aging is the ability to witness change. And change happens everywhere. It happens in the country, in community, in the family and it happens individually. So I'm not afraid of the future. I'm very excited."

The quote set me to thinking about how right she is. Wouldn't it be cool if, after we die, we find out that God is a real film freak and he has a DVD of each of our lives. Not only our actions, but somehow our thoughts and emotions are recorded and we can review them whenever we want. We would witness the amazing changes that have taken place while we grow and hopefully evolve.

Instead of rambling on and on like my manic little brain right now is doing, I think I'll continue this subject over the next several blog entries. I'll speak of the many changes already witnessed by this particular being now in physicality.