Fall has Fell!

I guess I spoke too soon on Sunday. After a rather dull week the new one started off with a bang. A little yard work in the morning and then...all @##$$%^$%$ brought loose. While Jo was in the bathroom hosing off some excess potting soil the Fennimore tornado siren starting wailing. A quick check of the TV news weather bulletin showed a lot of bright colored stuff going on just north of us. It seemed that the worst of the storm(s) were following the Wisconsin River valley which is several miles north of Fennimore. We were feeling relatively safe as we monitored things on the on and off antics of the Satellite TV until we looked out of the window only to see a wall of water so heavy that we couldn't see the street, let alone the house across the street. The rain let up, the sun came out and it seemed as though things had calmed down. But, when I looked out the front door I discovered that half of one of our maple trees was lying in the street. Jo suggested that I go out and move it off the street. HA! I reminded her that I was 72 years old and that was half of a tree lying there and if it was in the street, the city would come and move it. Sure enough, in no time at all, the trusty Fennimore Volunteer Fire Department showed up and Jo saw first hand that this husky crew could hardly move it. A chain saw and a front loader later and it was gone leaving only a slightly smaller version of a mighty maple. Not much of an adventure when you consider what other folks around the area are experiencing. Lake Delton, GONE! A 257 acre lake containing around 400,000,000 gallons of water drained into the Wisconsin River taking entire houses with it. And, hundreds of other homes under water throughout the area. Half a tree isn't much of a hardship by comparison. Besides, that's just that many less leaves to rake when Fall really arrives.

Valley Delton 20 feet deep, a quarter mile wide - Formerly Lake Delton

Can Fall be far behind?

We had our half day of Spring and we're now in the midst of Summer. Hot weather, thunderstorms, tornado warnings and the still in first place, best record in baseball, Cubs losing two in a row. This week has been a lot less exciting than the weather. I guess the highlight was moving Jo's mom to a new assisted living facility. She is now residing in beautiful downtown Dodgeville, only minutes from Jo's workplace. It's a nice place with a seemingly sociable group of residents. But one of the best features is that it's only blocks away from both MacDonalds and Culvers making it mighty handy when a Big Mac or Frozen Custard attack erupts. The other events of the week were all sales related. For me it was new car shopping which was not nearly as exciting or challenging as when done in the Chicago area. (not as much price haggling due to the lack of cutthroat competition.) Sally and Uncas were new dog shopping. Hot Bulletin: New dog has been found and will debut in a couple of weeks. JoAnne shopped for more flowers. Another Hot Bulletin: Bare ground has been discovered in the Blume yard. Action is being taken to alleviate the situation. And, Derek and Jeanna took up the opposing position by SELLING. They hosted a garage sale this Friday and Saturday between the storms cells that ran through Wisconsin. Haven't gotten the final sales figures yet but I think I did see some video cassettes and audio equipment in a funnel-shaped cloud heading for Kansas. Today looks like a day of watching the rain fall, keeping out of the way of the "Cleaning Frenzy Frau" and basic computer playing around. (Can't even watch a Cubs' game until tonight)
So, I'll leave you with a photo from a nicer day and a quote from that sage philosopher, Dave Barry. "You can only be young once. But you can always be immature."

Weekend Update

To start with, the Cubs are forcing me to abandon the "W" flag thing. They just keep winning and I'm running out of unique ways of flying the flag every day. Let's just say that they're providing this old fan with a whole lot of excitement. Only one more mention of their heroics and then on to other things. Friday, they came back from being behind 9 to 1 and ended up winning 10 to 9. Enough said. (Except that they swept their entire homestand, 7 straight wins)

One real highlight of the weekend was the annual "Race for the Cure" breast cancer run/walk. This year JoAnne was the coordinator for the Lands' End team. She managed to recruit 120 participants. The weather cooperated and the turnout for the "Race" was around 11,000. To celebrate her 28th year as a survivor JoAnne ran/walked in the 5K event. At this time we haven't gotten her official time but, I'm sure that it's somewhere between 43.01 minutes and 43.03 minutes. Even if she had run in half that time I'd be just as proud of her although, if that would have happened, I wouldn't have gotten to the finish line in time to take this photo. The very pregnant Jeanna participated in the 1 mile fun walk as Derek and the granddogs cheered her and Jo on.

As soon as the race was over we were back in the car for a quick trip to Chicago. There were two reasons for that trip. First, my Mom celebrated her 96th birthday on Friday and second, my oldest son Rick was in town. Seeing my Mom is always a treat because she's so alert and full of fun. She still kids about the old people at the nursing home even though she's older than most of them. And she usually has some smartass comment about my age. Rick, who lives in California, dropped in to surprise Grandma on his way home from Minneapolis where he attended a seminar and met up with Uncas and Sally for dinner earlier in the week. Daughter Elaine and grandkids Elizabeth and Catherine stopped by to wish Mom a happy birthday as well. A quick "Hi!" to my sister Mary and her hubbie Jim and it was back in the car to cap off a whirlwind 19 hour day.

Sunday was another adventure in "Hosta Heaven". In short it was a day of yard work. (Jo claims that she enjoys the weeding, planting, trimming and digging) I plan on covering the whole yard experience in a future posting so for now, we'll just say that everything is growing like crazy.

Two last bulletins, tomorrow (Tuesday) we are moving Jo's Mom once more. (Hopefully the last time) A room became available at the assisted-care facility in Dodgeville which will make it much more convenient. (Five minutes from Jo's office and about 30 miles closer to our home) Jo's brother Verne and his wife, Diane came up over the weekend and helped Vi pack her things for the move. And, Sally reported (with photos) a major hail storm in her Minnesota yard. Two waves of large hail left the place looking like mid winter. Fortunately no damage. I might add that driving down to Chicago I did pass a place where guys were playing with hail-sized golf balls. (I've been wanting use that line for so long)

Got to get an afternoon nap now to prepare for a late Cubs' game tonight.
See ya!

Ws

You may have noticed that I haven't posted a "W" flag in quite a while. As a true Cubs' fan, I'm always reluctant to crow too loud when things are going well. That's because, as soon as you get your hopes up too high, they'll knock the bleacher seat right out from under you. BUT, this year is just looking too good to sit by and not hope for really BIG things. As we speak, our "Boys in Blue" have the best record in ALL of Major League baseball with 33 wins. I'm stopping right here and, in true blue fan fashion, I'm going to drive my Edsel to the nearest 8-track dealer to buy some Disco tapes to listen to while shooting some photos with my new Polaroid camera.
By the way, I've been told that some of you don't understand the significance of the "W" flag. Very simply, after a Cubs' win, they raise a white flag with a large W above Wrigley Field so that passersby and folks riding the "EL" are made aware of the victory.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Pure Gold

I (we) survived the "Minnesota Move". Uncas and Sally are safely installed in their new home "Up Nort" eh? For a change, we had a fairly uneventful experience. The great weather, a couple of able bodied friends and Uncas' parents helped make it a relatively painfree project. Although, before leaving home, I did have an impromptu knee-to-floor encounter in our garage. It was probably just a Freudian Slip (or more of a Freudian Trip), an attempt to avoid any real work during the move, I carefully placed a folding chair right where I could uncarefully run into it on my way to the car. Since there was no one to witness the tragedy and I couldn't sue myself, it was kind of useless lying there for very long. I swore a little bit, (Another case where a thousand very colorful words is better than one picture) got up, and limped to the house where I accused the @%#$+&@%# squirrels of tripping me. After receiving a minimum of sympathy, I was told that I didn't qualify to go on the DL (Disabled List). So it was off to "The Move". As I said it was pretty uneventful and I managed to stay out of the way while the real workers worked. We returned to Fennimore on Sunday. Got home just before the foul weather arrived.

Monday we attended the annual "Amish Flower Auction" (the AFA from here on). Talk about a big deal. This was a chance to meet everyone who lived within a fifty miles of our town. Them Amish can work a crowd as well as they work the soil. The event featured every variety of garden flowers imaginable being auctioned off by some of the best Wisconsin auctioneers in three separate locations around a large barnyard. No small time, fast talkin', farm guys here. These were the top auctioneers in the state and they have their championship trophies to prove it. Anyway, money was flying like the dandelion seeds in my neighbor's yard. Little tiny Amish boys in their dark blue shirts, black vests and straw hats were toting flats of flowers to cars parked along the road in all directions. This allowed the "Shoppers" more time to bid for the "Blooming Bounty". They waved their little white bidding number cards as guys, who were bigger, huskier versions of the tray toting kids, held up tray after tray of future flower beds for all to see. The Amish ladies weren't standing by idly, they were busily whipping up burgers and brats as well as hawking fresh baked goods for the bargain hungry crowd. Just imagine the of the aroma of thousands of flowers mixed with the scent of hundreds of brats along with that wonderful Wisconsin "Dairy Air" provided by a few dozen Amish horses attached to those charming little black and gray buggies. After absorbing as much country charm as we could handle, Jo purchased a couple of trays of some flowers whose name I can't even misspell close enough for spell check to recognize. Here's a helpful tip to remember when attending an event, such as AFA, is that when you get your "treasures" home, they have to be planted, and SOON. Jo got her plants into the ground in a couple of hours but, I'm sure that there are still some women out there scratching away in the dirt around their yards while their hubbies are standing around with their Pabst Blue Ribbons and Brandy Old Fashions, shaking their heads and saying, "I tried to stop 'er". Meanwhile as you drive down the dusty country roads around the area, you can still hear, "ein$, zwei$, drei$, vier$, funf $" coming from the darkened little farmhouses. Next year I will try to post the details of the 2009 AFA for those of you who might want to take advantage of the great deals on flowers. It's a real chance to save a lot of money on plants but, at the price of gas, you may just want to buy your own greenhouse.(I didn't mention this but, there was also a BIG Amish Quilt auction after the flowers were gone)

Once again, I hadn't planned on a long winded narrative today.
But, this is, as the title states, Ronning Off.

Hopefully these "Arty" pics of a little visitor to my big deck
will be a treat for you bearing with me.

OOOOPS!

I hadn't planned on posting anything today but, something of note arose (or unfortunately didn't arose). Part of my duties this coming weekend at the Sacnu Estate moving extravaganza is to bake cookies for the actual workers. In my estimation I'll take baking over carrying any day. That is, if you follow the recipe correctly. I got all the ingredients together, preheated the oven and started mixing. All went well, just like a well oiled cookie sheet. Until the first pan of cookies was ready to come out of the oven. As they say, "a picture is worth a lot of dirty words". Before a picture could be taken and after a lot of dirty words were spoken, I retrieved the empty chocolate chip package from the trash (the package contains the secret chocolate chip cookie recipe you know). And, lo and behold, some fool left out half of the flour necessary to produce edible cookies. Being the efficient baker that I am, I had already filled five or six more cookie sheets with unbaked, flour deficient cookie dough. It was, take the dough from the sheets, put it back into the mixing bowl, add the missing flour and beat the hell out of it. (a technical baking term). The good news is that the rejuvenated mixture baked up into some pretty yummy treats. Of, course I had test a least half a dozen or so to insure quality thus creating a shortage of cookies for the movers. What a great excuse to bake up some good old oatmeal cookies.
So, in the morning, we're off to Minnesota land to supervise the the big move. I'll be doing the supervising (and cookie guarding) while Jo will be in there helping with the dirty work.
Have a Happy Memorial weekend. See ya next week!

Just Stuff!

No earth shattering news today. Just some assorted stuff. First, while rummaging around the internet today, I ran across this "cute" photo. It's something that I missed on our trip West a couple of years ago. Wish I had run into this beauty.
Second, something that I did run across turned out to be a lot of fun (or therapy ). On my new camera there is a setting which enables you to make a panorama photo by shooting a number of shots. This might not be news for those of you that read instruction manuals but, for a learn on the run guy like me, it was a real eye (or lens) opener. Now the next trick will be to see if I can attach one or two of shots taken on our recent canyon trip.