June 27, 2008
I've got some pictures here of an event that takes place every June: the female turtles come up out of the lake to lay their eggs. They try to lay them in sand or soft dirt, but here you see that they are laying them in the ashes of our firepit (which will only end up being hard-boiled eggs!). Actually, I was planning to dig them out and move them to a safer place (they usually lay dozens at a time, about the size of a large marble)...but I discovered that they actually hadn't laid any. Maybe my picture-taking (although I used the tele-photo lens) scared them off? [I have always wondered if the our lake received its name – Hatch Lake – because of this spring ritual. I’m sure it happens on every lake, but perhaps some of those loggers were down by the beach, eating dinner (on our property I have found an old fork that dates back to those days), saw the turtles coming up to lay their eggs, and named it Hatch Lake!]
Here I am following one of the turtles as she returns to the lake....
....goes down to the edge of the dock.....
...and all I caught here was the resulting splash!
Here are some of the flowers that are blooming now. This, the very first of the daylilies to bloom.
And this some rock cress, along with the blue forget-me-nots.
One of my several beds of daisies which I planted last summer (I used heritage seeds; if I remember correctly, these are ox-eye daisies which were first collected by Lewis and Clark on their famous expedition).
And some blue columbines.
Some johnny jump-ups (or I think they are also called violas).
And here is the crown jewel. Not from my garden but from down by the lake, in the wild. It's the Minnesota state flower, the pink lady slipper. They are actually, I believe, a kind of orchid. This year, with our very late spring, they are a good ten days behind the usual schedule.
And here is one of the projects Pete and I have been working on. This is what will be my blueberry bed (the area I had painstakingly prepared over the past year was not acidic enough...I finally had the soil tested by the University of Minnesota and discovered that this bed, with its soil taken from our nearby marsh, was more amenable to blueberries...although I still have to add some elemental sulphur to bring the ph down. This rock is probably the largest rock I have encountered here. No way can you lift it. I pry it up with my steel pole, and Pete sticks a hunk of wood down. We are basically trying to get it out of that hole and up to the side.....
....and you can see that we have succeeded! You can get some idea of the size of this rock from the railroad tie just off to the right of it. This coming Sunday Pete and I will leave the cabin early for Chicago and our Monday flight to Africa. I decided not to bring the laptop along with me to Africa; I didn't want some bulky item that I would have to constantly worry about. So I won't be able to report back to you until we get back from Africa on July 15. But the remainder of my reports will then be filled with pictures from Africa!
June 20, 2008
I thought that this time I will show you a little of our cabin. This is where I sleep.
And this is the view into the "backyard" from the back balcony. In the lower left is the corner of my new strawberry bed, then the cherry tree, then the raspberries (behind the raspberries is my new blueberry bed), and at the far right a second cherry tree.
And this is where I do my reading! And where I am right now putting this e-mail together! Except, without a phone line here, I have to take my laptop to Jesse Lake Lutheran Church and send them off from there.
Here's the view from the front balcony, out to the lake....
....and the view from the right side of the balcony.
Here's a view of that same fire circle from the steps that go down to the lake. My vegetable garden (the potatoes) are at the far left).
Back inside now, this is a view of the living room from the loft (my study).
The guest bedroom
And the boys' room.
And the kitchen area (you'll notice the dishes are stacked up because I only do dishes once a day, after the evening meal!).
Here's the screened-in porch where I eat most of my meals.
And here's a picture of the rising moon (almost full) last night. This coming Saturday I pick up Pete at the Minneapolis airport. We're together at the cabin for a week....then we drive off to Chicago to join the Northern Illinois Synod for our trip to Tanzania!
June 13, 2008
It's been rainy and colder in northern Minnesota...plenty of time then for reading. These are the books I have read in the past couple of weeks. The top three are from a series of spiritual theology by Eugene Peterson.; he is a great interpreter of the biblical stories. Wallace Stegner is one of my favorite novelists; this "Angle of Repose" I had first read about 15 years ago...but what a great one! (a beautiful story of unforgiveness and possible forgiveness...the two themes beautifully woven together). "Life of Pi", also a novel, was a great story, but a little too relativistic for my taste (you know, all religions lead to the same place); but it does lift up the role of story in passing on the faith. "Out Stealing Horses," a recent Norwegian novel, tells the story of a father and son....another great read. I just finished the last book ("The Coldest Winter," a history of the Korean War) this afternoon; this is the book by David Halberstam, finished just before he died in an auto accident a year ago...also very well done (but that book -- like the WWII book I read -- sure impresses upon you the great number of mistakes that are so easily made in warfare).
On one of my "kayak cruises" I got somewhat close to the two loons who are always swimming in front of our cabin.
An even closer look.....
....but they dive quickly if you get too close and then re-emerge 50 or more feet away.
All the rain has been doing great things for my flowers and vegetables. This is a heart-shaped groundcover -- lamium, I think it's called. (That red flower tucked in there is an impatiens.)
And this is some phlox that is blooming madly right now.
The apple trees are blossoming (many thanks to Michael Beach's expert pruning of them last fall); I have two Honeycrisp and one Haralson. The chicken-wire enclosure keeps the deer from nibbling on my trees! I also have a couple of cherry trees (sour cherries) and a raspberry patch and a blueberry patch (that blueberry patch I started this spring...they take a real acidic soil -- which I thought I had prepared for ahead of time -- but the new plants aren't doing real well...so I sent off some of my soil to the University of Minnesota lab to get a soil test and see what I need to do.
My potatoes are doing well....
....as are also the spinach (first three rows) and lettuce (last three rows). In fact I have had several meals with spinach and lettuce this past week. The spinach is still small-leaved....talk about melt-in-your-mouth tenderness!
And this is where I worship every Sunday...8:30 a.m....at Jessie Lake Lutheran Church. The building is a typically small, rural church...I believe this building was built sometime in the 1940's...but the congregation will be celebrating its centennial next year.
This is the worship room...average attendance is about 40 to 50 on a given Sunday. The congregation is without a pastor right now, but their interim pastor -- Dennis Paulson -- was someone I knew back when I was in Rochester. He and I had a meal together at the cabin a couple of weeks ago.
And here are some of the folks at the fellowship hour in the church basement after worship. The guy in the second row in the plaid shirt is Harold Hayung....who, as a boy, actually was a member of my home church in Fort Dodge, St. Paul's....he's a little older than I am, but he remembers my cousins, Don and Janet Renquist. He's a retired dairy farmer sho spends his summers on Johnson Lake up here.
June 9, 2008
This will be my Paul Bunyan report! As you can see, this 50-foot balsalm is dying at the top...and if it gets blown over, it's leaning toward our screened-in porch. So it's a tough one to take down by yourself.
So again, my neighbor, Murray Mills, came to the rescue (along with John [Deere]). I climbed up the tree and tied the rope around it. We stretched the rope down toward the lake then had it make a 90-degree angle around a birch tree up to the tractor in the parking area. Murray notched it...then pulled with the tractor (I was set with the chain saw to make the cut from the back, but I didn't have to....the tractor pulled it down neatly, not even bringing down any other trees!
Here you see it completely down.
And here you see my job: cutting it into sections, then splitting it with an axe.
And then it gets stacked here. It will probably be dry enough for our Habitat group to use this coming October when we're here.
And here you see a picture hanging in our cabin (Chris gave it to me years ago). And it is true! Wood, you realize, is the fuel that heats you twice: of course when you burn it, but also when you cut it up and split it!
I went into Bigfork to get some groceries on Friday. We've had a bunch of rain and gusty winds. Just 1/4 mile from our cabin, I notice this tree blown over and uprooted, but it's hung up in another tree....that's going to be a tough one to figure out how to take down. When I saw this, I realized I should have brought my chain saw with me in the car (we have a mile-and-a-half forest road before we get to any county roads). But I decided I'd chance the trip without the chainsaw. And I made it all the way into Bigfork, no trees down.....
....But then, on my way back, there's this poplar tree down over our forest road. Luckily I'm not too far from the cabin....I walk down with the groceries and walk back with the chain saw and....
....five minuts later it's all cut up!
The water level is up on our lake, and it weakened the roots of these two birch trees, so this morning I put on my waders (that water is still cold!), and I cut this one down. Now, you might think I am spending all my time with the chain saw....but not so.
Here's my rhubard patch.....
...and here's what I made with it! It's actually Jerry Brown's "Peachy Rhubarb Pie" recipe (it's in our church cookbook)....although I didn't have peaches, so I made it with some canned cherries. It was great! Before the rhubarb gives out, I plan to personally test all the rhubarb recipes in our church cookbook! (There's three of them....and Jerry contributed every single one of them!)
June 3, 2008
I spent this past weekend in St. Paul, staying at Luther Seminary. This is Stub Hall, where my room was. In fact, over the past 30 years I've stayed here six or seven times, taking three-week courses during the summer.
This is Northwestern Hall. It used to be Northwestern Seminary, aseminary of the predecessor LCA. In fact, the two seminaries (Luther and Northwestern) merged into Luther Northwestern Seminary....but after about a decade or so, they just dropped the Northwestern (Northwestern is Jerry Brown's alma mater).
This is the Olson Center at Luther Seminary...it has the bookstore, chapel, dining hall. Unfortunately, it was not open this past weekend...so can't show you any pictures of the beautiful chapel.
This is the library at Luther Seminary.
And this is the original Luther Seminary building.
Just down the road from the seminary, on Como Avenue, is this place....where we spent a lot of time back in the late 80's and early 90's. Children's Home Society is the organization we went through to adopt both Jake and Pete. Made a bunch of trips between Rochester and St. Paul during those years!
On Sunday, I worshiped at the Oromo Lutheran Church (so called because that's the African language that is used in worship. It’s in south Minneapolis. I sat next to a man who provided occasional commentary on the worship. They received a group of new members that Sunday....also heard what sounded like a treasurer's report. Preacher preached about 45 minutes!...a two-hour worship service.
I certainly wasn't going to take any pictures during worship...so here's a pretty bad shot of people leaving after worship. I would guess there were about 250 people in worship. I introduced myself to someone afterwards, and he commented that this congregation is the one that is sending a pastor-developer to start the new Oromo-speaking African church in the Denver area. Oromo is the language that is spoken especially in Somalia and Ethiopia, I believe.
This is their chancel area.
Now a picture from one of my walks last week out in the forest. Every once in a while you come across these big old stumps...the tree must have had a three-foot diameter....the remains of that old growth cutting that took place here back in 1905--1906.
There is a marsh/wetland area right next to our cabin (yes, I know, it's a great breeding ground for mosquitoes...but it's also an important part of the ecology of the lake, keeping the lake clean and healthy). And these are some flowers that are blooming now in that area.
Same picture as above (once I get this far into the process of creating these picture e-mails, I don't know how to delete them....so just look at them twice!). I came back on Sunday evening to find out that all the mosquitoes had hatched (they're back!). My garden is looking great. One of these times I'll share some more pictures of that with you....but sometime this week I'll be eating spinach...and probably some lettuce, too!
