Guess What Season It Is?!!

It's marching band season!! Yay!

Tyler's first home game was last Friday. They did a good job, but I'm excited to watch them improve as the season progresses! Tyler marched with the go-pro but I've only seen the short clips he's posted on Instagram. In the little that I have seen, I thought it was neat to see things from his perspective. As a bonus, last Friday's game was undeniably the best high school football game I've ever been to. Hooray for football marching-band Friday nights!





front row , 4th from left

back row, 3rd from left

Gardening

I have an aunt and uncle that live about 10 minutes away. They have a house "in the country" that is currently surrounded by corn and soybeans. They have flower beds full of common milkweed, coneflowers, butterfly bushes, and other things I don't easily recognize. They have purple martin condos in their side yard and hummingbirds zipping from feeder to feeder. And they have gardens. Not A garden. GardenS. They grow a little bit of everything - tomatoes, beans, cabbage, onions, potatoes, beets, cauliflower, corn, zucchini, cucumbers, green peppers, rhubarb, melons, strawberries...I'm sure I'm missing something. My aunt does a lot of canning. Tyler has decided their house is the one we're heading for in the event of an apocalypse.

When they went on vacation earlier this month, they asked me to take care of their kitties and pick some of their veggies so things wouldn't go to waste. I am not a gardener. I love home grown tomatoes and fresh sweet corn, but that's about as much gardening as I've tried...and I gave up after 2 seasons of pathetic tomatoes. I went over one evening so my uncle could show me what to pick. I took notes but still couldn't tell the tops of the beets from the weeds. We decided I would focus on a few main items - tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, and zucchini. Later my aunt mentioned something about picking the cauliflower, but I couldn't even find it! So, for 2 weeks I collected the mail, cared for the kitties, and attempted to keep up with the gardening. I don't know how my uncle does it all by himself. That is a lot of work and I was only picking a small fraction of produce!

I brought the kids once. They loved exploring the yard and playing with the neighbor's dogs, who apparently have no boundaries. When we left Danielle said, "That was a lot of fun. Except for the picking part." We enjoyed having fresh tomatoes every day for 2 weeks. I brought home a green pepper one day, too, but Tyler didn't share. My neighbor and coworkers appreciated all the green beans, cucumbers, zucchini, and tomatoes. I enjoyed the random wildlife and bugs. I'm glad I don't have to do it all the time, but it was an interesting experience.

Here are some random cell phone pictures I took while there.

These are milkweed tussock moths. There is also a monarch egg about 2 ribs above the top caterpillar. I thought it was interesting how the caterpillars grouped together.

The "picking part". Tyler didn't mind it.

Caterpillar mustache

Just a small sampling...

One of the neighbor's dogs.

The "main" garden

Monarch chrysalis hanging under a leaf.

We easily picked 3 baskets this size.

She was laying eggs on the milkweed but flew to the butterfly bush when I walked up the sidewalk.

Our Vacation

I guess I've stretched this out long enough. Here are the rest of the vacation pictures that I want to share. All in all, we had a good vacation. It wasn't exactly what we had envisioned, but we had some fun adventures together, made lots of memories, and got to relax. I guess we accomplished our end goal.

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

Vacation Stories

Danielle is wearing rainboots in several of the pictures because of this day's events.

 

We went into Algonquin and stopped at a river to explore and fish. Danielle and I waded into the river while Tyler and Ron tried fishing in various spots. There were lots of froglets and the water was clear and cool. I wasn't in the water for long and then stopped to take pictures. Danielle explored quite awhile, chasing the frogs and minnows. When she got out of the water and was drying her feet off to put her shoes back on, she discovered this:

 

It's a leech and it was not on the ground; It was stuck on her toe! It hadn't actually latched on, but it was suctioned on enough that it was difficult to remove. We were able to laugh about it afterward, but she was pretty disgusted by it at the time. It was pretty gross, yet it was also rather interesting. Here is a video of it moving.

Gross but intriguing, right?! After this, she wore boots any time she thought there was a remote chance she might want to get in the water. She still shudders when we mention the leech incident.

----------------------------------------------------------------

On the day we arrived, Ron and the kids were outside and I was in the house by myself. I was sitting on the couch and the house was quiet when I thought I heard chewing. I forced myself to ignore it. A couple days later, on the evening that Ron and the kids went fishing at dusk, Clara and I were in the house. Clara's ears perked up, and I thought I saw something move. I kept watching, and sure enough, there was a mouse. It was a very cute little thing - big round ears, big eyes - but did it really have to be in the house?? Clara watched it but wasn't interested in chasing it. I watched it for awhile and then got up and moved all our food into the refrigerator. When the kids came back up, they decided they would catch it. After all, none of us wanted it crawling into bed with us. It was very entertaining watching the kids try to catch it. To make a long story short, eventually Ron took care of it. The next day I heard another one. On our last day I watched one scurry around our bedroom door. That's why it was our last day. :)

On the way home when we were discussing our favorite parts of vacation, it surprised me that both kids mentioned the mouse chasing incident. :)

Our Vacation

One of our vacation goals was to spend time fishing. It seems like we're always too busy to spend much time doing that when we're home. We all looked forward to sitting on the dock, casting our line into the calm waters, and pulling out fish after fish. As so often happens, reality was just a little different. The dock was a little small, so it was difficult for all 4 of us to fish at the same time. We also didn't catch an overabundance of fish, and what we did catch, was small and exactly like what we catch in the little ponds around us. While those things were a little disappointing, we did spend a lot of time fishing, and we still had a lot fun.

 

 

Every morning before the kids got up, Ron and I went down to the dock together and fished. It was quiet. The sun was just coming up. We didn't reel much in, but we enjoyed just sitting together on the dock in the quiet and watching the water slowly ripple by. One morning we watched a mink swim across the water. On another, a trio of loons circled overhead, calling to each other with their funny sounding calls. It was peaceful.

One evening around dusk Ron and the kids went down to fish. Danielle came back after awhile, but Ron and Tyler stayed out well after the sun went down. They didn't catch much, but they spent time together talking, fishing, and watching the shooting stars.

Another day when we went to Algonquin and it rained, we tried fishing at one of the lakes in the park. Tyler and I gave up easily, but Ron in his sweatshirt and Danielle in her jacket and rainboots, stood in the rain and cast their lines. They caught a couple small fish, but mostly it was the togetherness in the rain that made it special.

And on one of our last nights, the four of us went down to the dock to fish as the sun set. We stayed well after sunset, despite hardly catching anything. After awhile we felt like we had to whisper because the forest was so quiet in the dark. We watched the sky change from blue to various shades of blue, purple, and black as little white lights slowly dotted the sky. And then we sat back (since the fish weren't biting anyway) and counted the shooting stars. No electronics. No distractions. Just us and the shooting stars in the dark. It was pretty close to perfect.

When we talked about our favorite parts of vacation on the way home, these were the moments each one of us mentioned. (The kids also mentioned trying to catch a mouse in the cabin one night.) It turns out the fun wasn't so much in the actual fishing as it was in just being together in the moment.