Posts Tagged ‘family’
New Visitors
This morning we found evidence of new life arriving overnight down under the overhang.
At least two recently opened eggshells were on the ground beneath the horses. I won’t be the least bit surprised if the many barn pigeons have expanded their numbers. They will share a close birthday with the new robin hatchlings nesting in the branches of the spruce tree just outside our sunroom windows.
Yesterday we spotted the momma bird hopping up branches of the tree with a worm in her mouth and the little heads soon appeared with mouths opened wide.
We also enjoyed a visit from a new connection made at the Tour of Minnesota bike week. After several years of seeing each other on the tour, Scott Skaja overheard me mention having horses and quickly showed interest in bringing his family to see the place one day.
Yesterday was our opportunity before his oldest leaves for college in Florida and we were graced with a beautiful day to roam the property and mingle with the horses while also giving Asher plenty of attention.
The Skaja family was able to witness our experiment with refamiliarizing the horses with the inside of the barn. A vet appointment on the calendar in early August will require the horses to be in the stalls, so we will be offering them multiple opportunities to grow comfortable doing so.
We tried this last year but when Cyndie shattered her ankle in November it interrupted the process and the horses ended up making it through the winter without ever needing to be brought in.
Moving them one at a time when they aren’t sure about coming inside was a challenge I did not want to deal with all alone.
Scott and his wife and daughters stood outside the half-doors to observe how the four horses made their way inside and sniffed around every nook and cranny before eventually finding pans of feed to snack on inside each stall. Cyndie and I felt as though the horses showed evidence of remembering the visits last year and seemed pleasingly comfortable being inside.
It was a great chance to let the Skajas watch the horses explore new things and behave like the big, beautiful creatures they are, including pooping in the barn. Daughter, Bella graciously volunteered to do the scooping up afterward. I took advantage of that momentum to show off my manure composting process.
Not very impressive compared to Cyndie serving up freshly baked scones, a variety of incredibly delicious cold salads for lunch, topped off with a peach pie she baked earlier.
Obviously, Cyndie and I have different areas of expertise.
It will be tough to beat the fun we had yesterday, once again confirming our impressions that hosting visitors is truly what brings our paradise to its fullest splendor.
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Evening Thunder
In that cabin 3 bedroom, just inches from the open window, the peals of rumbling thunder were an almost spiritual meditation lulling us into slumber last night.
After a brilliant day of pickleball and swimming followed by a nap and a fabulous dinner out, we finished the night with five of us around the table in the porch for a card game.
I had no inkling that a mellow thunderstorm was coming until a notice appeared on my phone. Cyndie had already made her way over to the little cabin and was almost asleep when I shuffled over before the rain arrived.
It didn’t show signs of getting windy so we left all the windows open wide and let the symphony of rain and thunder serenade us to sleep.
My Tour de France entertainment is over for another year, freeing up my morning hours for a return to normal routines, except for days when the Women’s World Cup soccer tournament games of primary interest happen in Australia and New Zealand during the wee hours of our local time.
Being a sports fan can be demanding sometimes. [play tiny fiddle of sympathy here.]
Company’s coming today! Our friends, Barb & Mike Wilkus are due to arrive this morning, launching a few days of added lake place bliss for us. Blessings abound and we humbly revel in the friends, family, and experiences we are able to enjoy this week.
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Different Sleep
A change of perspective is always a valuable experience for me and this weekend up at the lake we have been residing in the old cabin #3 beside the main log house above the water. It is one of the original cabins of the former fishing lodge that Cyndie’s family saved when the Wildwood Association transitioned to families owning individual lots.
The Friswolds moved cabin 3 to a new foundation farther back from the lake to make room for the new log home they had built back in the early 1980s. When our kids were young, we spent most of our time up here in the old cabin, granting people in the big house respite from the clamor of infants waking early and the occasional outbursts of either glee or angst associated with that age.
Currently, there are no young ones of the next generation in the family and cabin 3 gets used less often, primarily as overflow accommodations when attendance numbers swell for a weekend.
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Cyndie and I are really enjoying the throwback to a time when our primary experience up at the lake was from the vantage point of the old, and much smaller cabin.
I have been sleeping deeper than in recent memory and with Asher left back in Beldenville with a sitter for this visit, we have no reasons to rise early. This morning the 8 o’clock hour had arrived before we got up. I had woken early and read the whole paper in bed on my computer and then faded into a morning nap that felt rather decadent.
The small rooms and close proximity to the ground (in the big house we usually sleep in the loft) make it feel like we are almost sleeping outdoors.
The view out the back window is one I relish for the trees and forest floor I’m most attracted to for a natural environment.
It’s as if I’m forest bathing all night long as I sleep.
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Fly Whip
Throughout the spring and summer, the horses go through phases of showing emphatic frustration with being harrassed by flies and stoically tolerating their persistent presence. I stood for a while yesterday and watched Swings manipulate her tail. A horse swishing their tail is a quintessential aspect of the animal.
It is iconic. It is what they do.
As I focused on Swings’ tail movements, a new level of appreciation arose in me. The amazing number of subtle muscle movements at the dock of the tail can make the long hairs (the skirt) twirl around in a circle, snap like a whip, or strike a fly on their underbelly.
The gyrations of the skirt become an artistic random wave pattern with a really long reach.
I have been swatted in the face many times as I wander too close when filling hay bags or scooping manure while the horses are eating from their feed pans and swishing away flies.
It is almost always unintentional on their part. The exception is Mix demonstrating remnants of the food aggression she showed when the horses first arrived.
Mix still has moments when she very intentionally shows us her powerful awesomeness.
I admit to smugly enjoying that her ploys don’t intimidate me, partly because she just as quickly will approach and gently share breaths with me.
She never does that (share breaths) with the flies buzzing around her head.
Cyndie and Asher pulled up the driveway yesterday just as I was sitting down in the front yard to enjoy a popsicle on a break from using the power trimmer along fence lines. They both seemed happy to be home again.
I’m pretty happy about it, too.
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Score Goals
Here’s a thought… If your national soccer team is in a big tournament, their success would be greatly aided if they would score goals at some point during the 90 minutes of regulation time. Color me frustrated with the U.S. Men’s Team performance last night.
Meanwhile, the surroundings here have been especially tranquil the last two days. The air quality has been downright tolerable. The temperature and humidity have been eminently comfortable. Yesterday’s rain was gentle and brief.
I am well aware of the contrast in places like southern California where a landslide destroyed homes and now that part of the country is bracing for a ‘historic’ heat wave. In Vermont, flooding rains have resulted in dramatic damage.
Counting my blessings while things are all quiet here. Cyndie and Asher are due to return home today so it probably won’t stay as quiet as my last few days.
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Plenty Attention
Today will mark the completion of Asher’s first week at the lake. It’s fair to say he has adjusted pretty well to all the combinations of people and other animals that swirl around the Wildwood property in general and Friswold’s “cabin” in particular.
He is getting big love from all of Cyndie’s family and learning how to not bark at every movement of other people he can see from his lofty vantage point out on the second-story deck.
Cyndie and I have experimented with different attention exercises for Asher that we learned about in the obedience classes.
Tossing morsels of his dog food into a tub filled with toys requires that he push around items that may have fallen from his interest to find the snacks he can smell.
That tends to renew his liking for some items he had begun to ignore.
Asher has a remarkable inclination to push his squeaking tennis-style balls underneath furniture. When he tries that game out on the deck, the ball tends to roll off and fall to the ground one level below. Yesterday, I went down below and initiated a game of catch where I would throw the ball back up over the railing.
It proved to be an exception to the norm of so many other games where he tends to be the only one really enjoying it. I was having a blast trying to catch the balls he was nudging over the edge and then tossing them back up in a manner that gave him a fair chance of catching it with his mouth.
Beck devised a modified chew toy combination that has become my favorite. He forced one of the larger Kong balls in the middle of a hard chew ring.
It makes it harder for Asher to pick up but he seems interested in the challenge because he can almost get his teeth on the half of felt-covered ball that sticks out of each side.
Asher was flipping and kicking it around with great fervor yesterday. It seemed almost too hard for him to separate the two toys at first but now it is getting easier with practice.
With all the fun and attention Asher has been enjoying up at the lake this week, I’m starting to wonder if his eventual return home will become a disappointment for him.
Not that I’m projecting how we feel when we get home onto him or anything…
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Farming Versions
We started our morning at Walker Farms with George and Anneliese. I joined George for his morning chores. We fed chicks, checked on cattle, tossed feed to pigs, and moved chicken pens.
Cyndie and I departed after a luscious crepes breakfast and headed toward home. On the way, we stopped to visit the farm of my niece, Liz, and her husband, Nick, and their kids. We met their new dog, and their pigs, and toured their garden. The strawberry patch was loaded with a thrilling amount of ripe berries.
We came home with a rich bounty. Cyndie was wondering if her strawberry patch might also have berries ready to be picked.
Nope. But almost!
Our place, with only 4 horses for livestock, seems less farm-like except for one fact. Our hay field has been cut in preparation for getting baled.
The guy who leases farmland south of us grazes cattle there in the summer and cuts some grass fields to be round-baled. It helps us to have our field cut so they generously include our irregular-shaped acres in their cutting and baling. We generously charge them very little for the hay they get off it.
It almost feels like farming.
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Community Dinner
It’s Memorial Day holiday in the U.S. today, honoring our nation’s war dead. I have not directly experienced this kind of loss so my observance is generalized to the memories of all those who never returned home.
Our holiday weekend at the lake shifted from working together to socializing outside the lodge. Despite having ridden my bike past the sign announcing our high fire danger earlier in the afternoon…
at dinner, we lit the wood in the fire pit in the hope some smoke would keep the mosquitos at bay. Those pesky blood chasers are more troublesome this year than I remember them ever being before.
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The gentle breeze off the lake was supposed to help reduce pressure from the flying bloodsuckers, too but it died down shortly after we gathered. It didn’t take long for the skeeters to get the upper hand. The lack of breeze made for less smoke from our fire, too.
At least that meant less fear of losing control of the flames in our fire pit.
The evening socializing was cut short as we all were chased indoors. At our place, a few more card games broke out on the porch.
It is feeling an awful lot like this is a holiday weekend.
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Aging Club
Wildwood Lodge Club started in 1966. The first generation is dwindling and of the six current families, only three are original. 
The club is in its 57th year but the buildings have been around since 1919. It was a fishing lodge when the eleven original Twin Cities families bought it and formed the club. The children of the first generation have taken over decision-making responsibilities, significantly increasing the number of minds that need to come to a consensus on management.
One of the biggest issues looming is the integrity of the main lodge building which has kitchen facilities and restaurant-style seating. The foundation is failing and the floor is rotting. The repair costs are unpredictable and hard to justify.
The ramifications tend to ripple all the way out to shaking the visions of what the future of the club might be like for the 3rd generation and beyond. With each generation, the added number of invested people complicates almost all decisions, particularly ones needing consensus for managing association business.
There are no easy answers and we can feel that. Gathering at the beach yesterday to remove the winter’s worth of leaf accumulation and arrange chairs, paddleboards, kayaks, a canoe, a small fishing boat, and several sailboats, talk informally wanders to the issues that aren’t easily resolved.
Thank goodness the precious people who are the extended family of Wildwood are the true core of what defines this club. There is no shortage of fun and laughter despite all the tough decisions looming. Dinner at each house is a delicious mix of wonderful stories and good food. Wandering next door for a visit is a guaranteed party. The north woods surrounding the lake is a vacation paradise.
Last night’s corn on the cob tasted like August. I don’t know where it was grown or how long ago it was picked, but someone did an amazing job of providing an end product that defied my sense of time and logistics.
My luck at our multiple card games has been nothing but bad, however, the fun quotient is as present as ever.
We don’t know what the future may bring, but just because the club is aging doesn’t mean it can’t last. There are plenty of possibilities and I am confident this group will eventually figure out a way to adapt and endure.
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Day Early
Happy Mother’s Day!
We celebrated with a brunch yesterday morning for which Elysa contributed some special focaccia bread she baked after starting her day at the farmer’s market.
Cyndie prepared waffles and as we sat down to feast, she decided she wanted to take a group photo to capture the occasion. Her unpracticed attempt to figure out how to frame the photo to include all of us and her face became a comical fiasco that had us all laughing so hard, especially Cyndie, that our expressions turned out ridiculous. Elysa stepped up to save the day and helped her capture the moment.
We shared a precious day of hanging out and honoring the priceless bonds nurtured by a couple generations of really great moms.
Moms sure do ROCK! Virtual hug to you all today!
Here’s a lone trillium blossom from our woods in celebration…
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