Three Stories for the Price of One

Story 1: Late in the day on my birthday, we experienced strong winds at the lake. I watched from the screened-in porch as trees whipped back and forth from vertical to 45º. Finally, two old Popples snapped simultaneously and fell toward but missed the garage. These were trees that we worried might fall and hit the house sometime, so this was actually a somewhat welcome outcome. In addition, the top of an old Popple on the lake side of the cabin snapped and fell into the woods. Also, two trees fell across the driveway. One of them hit our old friend Gus right on the head and then knocked off his left hand. He was rotting away anyway, and we had thought we might need to replace him sometime this year. When we do that, we'll have an appropriate ceremony. In the meantime, he's hanging onto that sign. When we bid him farewell, I'll post a story about all of his adventures, which are many. We spent a couple days with the chainsaw and a fire cleaning up the property.

Story 2: Our five wonderful, thoughtful children gave us a generous gift certificate to the Winter Greenhouse and Nursery as a remembrance of Kathie's mom. Today, we had the greenhouse plant the two trees we picked out as a memorial. But let me digress first to show you the one tree I picked for myself. I had wanted for quite some time to add a tamarack (larch) tree to the property. So I picked one out and had them bring it to plant at the same time. Here it is, planted near the better of the two bears I have tried to carve with my chainsaw. Tamaracks lose their needles every fall and regrow them every spring. They look like a conifer but are actually deciduous.

The two memorial trees are both flowering varieties. This one is a Whitney Crabapple that will have white blossoms and will produce usable fruit for making jellies or other goodies.

The second is a Purple Prince Crab with pink blossoms but no usable fruit. We think both of these will really dress up our property, and we are very grateful to all of you kids for making this wonderful contribution to the memory of Kathie's mom. Especially in the spring, memories of her will bloom along with the trees.

Story 3: I recently purchased a tiny 2.5 HP Suzuki outboard motor for use with our canoes. Last year, I had purchased a mount for same, then thinking that we might use our old electric trolling motor. However, this efficient, small gas motor is much better for us. Today, we took it out for its first hour of break-in. During the break-in period, we can't operate it at full speed, and now that we've used it, I think this is just as well. When idling, it moves the canoe at about the same speed as if we were paddling. When operating at half speed, it moves the canoe right along. I'm almost afraid to open it up to its full speed. We went up into the river a good ways and toured the perimeter of our bay. What a sweet way to travel. I know, I could still be paddling, and I'll do this some too, but this will give us some nice opportunities to fish the upper reaches of the river, where we know people catch some very nice walleye and other fish.