Posts Tagged ‘lake place’
Yep Indeed
Trying to capture the essence of my adventures of last week on my abbreviated version of the Tour of Minnesota has been difficult due to instantly being transported from one world into another. I am still immersed in the second phase of my vacation, the Friswold family gathering at their lake place, which keeps me distracted from pondering long enough to write about either experience.
I was born on this day back in 1959, and that fact, combined with the focus of this weekend –the one-year anniversary of Cyndie’s dad’s passing– is keeping things spinning faster than my writing brain processes.
And that’s okay. It’s just that I really want to tell my stories and exercise my writing muscles. A lot of life-affirming experiences have occurred for me of late. The occasion of my birthday is the least of them.
Julian has given me another wonderful present in the form of his coding expertise that astute readers may have already noticed this morning. The random wayback feature that I love so much is now a permanent option available on the margin, or trailing the initial posts on mobile devices.
Maybe if the dreary cloud cover that has arrived over Hayward this morning will lend itself toward my finding a quiet corner to collect some words to describe my adventures from the last week. Maybe not.
I’m going to go with the flow. Right now we are in the sunroom with windows all open and family stories and belly laughs are frequent. Breakfast is nigh. I’m sitting here trying to multitask between participating and typing.
Until now. If you want more, click the wayback machine for a random archived post.
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Insects Aplenty
I’ve seen reports that our insect population is plummeting around the world. It makes me sad to contribute to the decline by way of my summertime driving.
There was a particularly large visual of carnage on the front of my car before we even started our drive north yesterday.
On the bright side, it shows that there are still enough flying insects in our area to make a mess of our vehicles.
I can report no shortage of mosquitos showing up at dusk at the lake place. We went for a walk with Paul and Beth after dinner and paused at the tennis court to gaze up at one of the pair of eagles who nest in the large pine tree there.
After standing still to take that long-distance picture with my phone, I looked down at my legs to find them dotted with many feeding insects. Ended up doing the awkward dance the rest of the way on our walk, goose-stepping and swiping arms and legs like a madman.
Despite the bugs, we enjoyed eating on the deck under the open sky, I snuck in a short bike ride before guests arrived, and Cyndie and I swam in the lake. The days of high heat are softened greatly by proximity to large bodies of water.
On tap for today will be more miles on the saddle. Hopefully, with no bugs in my teeth as a result.
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Spot It
Can you find the secondary features hiding in plain sight in these images captured throughout my day yesterday?
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How many did you identify?
That was purple-tinted trillium alright, but did you notice the poison ivy directly beside it on the left?
There was some complex chirping coming from the pine tree. Is that a nuthatch? You tell me. I didn’t have a long lens.
The coiled-up young fern was the focus and I didn’t notice the mosquito until viewing the image on my computer.
What was that lurking beneath the water, obscured by the wavy reflections? The old snapping turtle hanging out on the boat lift.
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Co-Favorite Place
For all of my adult life, Cyndie’s family vacation home on Round Lake near Hayward, Wisconsin has been my favorite place. As I wrote yesterday, my affections are now split between our paradise of Wintervale Ranch in Beldenville and Wildwood Lodge Club up north.
I now have co-favorite places.
It is wonderful to be up at the lake again.
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As always, the special feature of the lodge club is communing with the other families and we received an early dose of camaraderie when the next door Whitlock clan showed up just after Cyndie and I arrived. Much love ensued.
There is a lot to do around the property to make it look less neglected as the ravages of winter appear to have wreaked havoc on anything left out in the elements.
Case in point: The front steps to the Friswold “cabin” for which I was so proud to have repaired a single paver block last summer are now failing en masse as the foundation underneath appears to be giving out.
Entire rows are tipping forward. I suppose it’s unfair to blame one winter for this, but it sure seemed fine last year.
I can’t blame the extreme state of the smoke clouded doors of the living room fireplace on anything but neglect to tend to the task of cleaning them in a timely manner. When Marie asked me to build a fire, I figured it wouldn’t add much to the ambience if we couldn’t see the flames. It took a lot of ash-soaked newspaper to rub off the insanely thick baked-on accumulation of smoke on those glass doors.
At least I had the joy of trying to ignite unseasoned firewood that had been supplied for our fire-building pleasure. No wonder there was so much gunk on the glass of the doors.
Maybe, if I love this place as much as I do home, I need to more equally split my attention to maintenance chores. Is the building of a lake-place woodshed in my future?
I would sure appreciate the luxury of selecting dry wood for our fires. So would the chimney flue.
The more immediate concern will be cleaning the beach today. The lake ice pushed a new berm of sandy leaves about a foot high along the full length of our beach shoreline.
What a wonderful location for putting in a day’s work.
My co-favorite place, in fact.
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Divided Passions
I am torn between two worlds this morning. As thrilled as I am to be able to spend the next four days up at the lake for the Memorial Day weekend, I’m struggling over a great desire to remain home to tend the property, grow our bonds with the horses, and work on transitioning our chicks from the brooder to the coop.
When I got home from work yesterday, we decided to take advantage of the wet weather to transplant another pine tree. This one had sprouted just beyond the deck in a spot where there was little room for future growth. While we were pulling up the roots, Cyndie also extracted a fair-sized maple sapling, so we transplanted that, as well.
They are both visible in the image above, despite also being mostly obscured by a similar colored background. Our spontaneous decision to jump into the unplanned project swallowed up over an hour of time that felt like mere minutes had passed. Completing the transplants fueled a strong urge to get right back outside managing the explosion of growth everywhere on our property.
It will need to wait for another day. We are headed north this morning. Lake place, here we come! It’s been far too long between visits.
I hope the chicks won’t miss us too much.
We looked in on the Rockettes last night before bed and found them looking hale and hearty. Their wing feathers are coming along nicely. They are doing a fair amount of my favorite chick leg-stretch/wing-stretch maneuvers that look so yoga-like. Cyndie added a cover grate to their tub to keep the little test-flyers within the confines of the bin.
We want to move them to the big brooder in the barn as soon as we can move the Buffalo Gals to the coop. I expect that will be a project for when we get home on Monday.
Our current animal-sitter, Anna, a student in her last year at UW River Falls, will be tending to animals while we are gone.
I’m pretty sure I’ll be gung-ho about being away as soon as we hit the road, but I am definitely torn about wanting to be in both places at the same time. Too bad we can’t bring some chicks with us to the lake.
They’re just so cyoooooouute!
Go to the lake, John.
Okay, okay. B’bye!
Oh, and bring back more trillium when you return…
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Happy Place
We’ve had a pretty good few days of lake-place pleasure, despite yesterday’s doses of thunderstorms that disrupted most activities except for the napping. Unfortunately, on this most gorgeous of mornings with a promising-looking day of lake weather ahead, we are going to venture home to tend to the landscaping chores there before the work-week begins again.
Grass and garden are growing wild. The lawn is tall and tomato plants are heavy with fruit. Our getaway weekends need to be brief. (In case you didn’t notice, I took an extra day off work last week and we hustled up here on Thursday, so ignore my comment about it having been “brief.”)
I strolled down to the beach moments ago to absorb a good dose of the lake view in the early light and found a squirrel busy in the oak tree branches overhead, trimming and nibbling acorns that were then unceremoniously raining down on the sand.
We may be leaving, but I have soaked up the view to take with me for a balm against the onslaught of the daily grind that lies ahead.
It’s our happy place.
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Not Suffering
Just a little rain up here at the lake yesterday afternoon, but we are living the life of luxury, regardless.
Breakfast on the deck.
But earning it by taking care of that too-long neglected task of tending to the gutters on the backside of the house. Out of sight, out of mind, you know.
After I dug for long enough, I actually found a gutter underneath all that mess.
More family arrived yesterday afternoon and we dined like royalty and stayed up too late playing cards.
It’s another classic summer weekend ‘at the lake.’
Aahhhhh.
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Brick Fix
Okay, it was a paver, not a brick. We are up at the lake for the weekend! It’s the first time I’ve been up here all summer and the first thing I noticed was a gaping hole in the front steps.
After opening windows, adding water to the pond, and then cleaning out the gutter on the backside of the house (don’t ask), I decided that the busted paver deserved immediate attention. The only problem was, I had no idea how the steps were built. I didn’t know if cement was involved and if it would even be possible to remove just one “brick.”
So, I just started slow. Perseverance paid off and the paver eventually started to come loose. Once I had it out, it was time to hunt for a replacement.
Oh, yeah, that might have been a smart thing to figure out before tearing into the top, center step in front of the door.
With Cyndie’s help, we came up with a replacement paver and set about devising a process to install it.
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We are both quite proud of the result.
After that, it was time for a swim. Oh what a divine treat that was.
Topped off with a pizza from our favorite local restaurant, it was a wonderfully satisfying day for us.
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Tables Turned
First of all, let me say that Delilah is experiencing some discomfort but we expect she will heal and be back to her old self soon. At the same time, the details of her latest incident of ‘dog bites dog’ involve a bit of poetic justice when considering her history of being the attacker in a previous fracas up at the lake.
This time, our heroine was the victim. The versions I have gleaned from Cyndie boil down to an unleashed dog sprinting up and landing a chomp of fangs into Delilah’s hindquarter as Cyndie and Delilah attempted to make haste for the relative safety of the main cabin.
The intriguing aspect of the attack is that the aggressor is essentially an out-of-town cousin of the dog who Delilah bit one year ago. Was this a dose of revenge? Does the dog world work that way?
It’s unlikely, but it fits too many movie scripts for the actions of human gangs that it flows naturally to correlate it with possible canine pack behavior.
Who can know what the conversations of remote barking might have been between all parties involved during the day, or two, running up to the “hit.”
[Barking] “I know who you are.”
“You’re not so tough!”
“This is for Gracie.”
Since Delilah was in her harness and being pulled forward by Cyndie, the conflict was one-sided, which may be a good thing. Delilah yelped at the bite, the neighbor arrived to take command of his dog, and Cyndie and Delilah hustled back to the house.
There was some blood, but through Delilah’s thick coat it was hard to know the extent of injury. With time, her mobility declined and Cyndie decided to race home a day early to have her seen by our local vet.
Yesterday afternoon, the doc shaved that hip and inspected the area to find three deep puncture wounds. No nerve or organ damage suspected. Treatment is two versions of pain killer –pain being what was limiting Delilah’s mobility– an anti-inflammatory, and an antibiotic.
It’s hard to guess whether the long term outcome will change Delilah’s perspective one way or another. Will she be less prone to behaving with aggression after this humbling interaction or become more distrusting of other dogs?
I’m wondering if she will now associate going to the lake with having been bitten.
For the time being, she looks a little meaner with her punk hair styling. It’s offset a little by her loopy pain-free drug-induced stupor, but that should wear off before the hair all grows back.
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Similar Theme
My visit yesterday to the Previous Somethings archive fed an urge to explore my media library from the earliest days of this blog. I found some images from eleven years ago which interestingly correlate with our life in the present.
Back in May of 2009, we were still living in Eden Prairie, MN, on a fraction-of-an-acre corner lot. At that time, we had no inkling we might be selling that house and moving within a few years. Back then, we were…
…building the frames for a raised garden!
This week, while I have been occupied with the day-job, Cyndie has decided to go a little further than the initial terrace we worked on together in the last few weeks. She framed in a few more spots for select plantings she’s decided to add which will need more space.
Another old photo I found was taken up at the lake place in Hayward. The month of May brings out a carpet of trillium in the woods up there that we totally adore.
Last night, Cyndie brought me a picture she took of one that just showed up in our woods at Wintervale.
We have been trying to bring a few trillium back with us from annual visits to the lake in May and have been transplanting them into various locations in our woods. I don’t know if we’ll live long enough to see them flourish and spread like they do at Wildwood, but each time I spot one here brings me great joy.
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Relative Something 