Stolen

Tom keeps a blog for his family, and today I stole this from him since it is about his work around the house. Mama said she wanted me to put in a picture of the house. Once these flowers are in bloom and the grass (or weeds) have turned green, I will. Meanwhile, over to Tom:

Sowing and Reaping

We had a brief couple of days when the farmers could get out into the fields, but we've had several days of more or less solid rain since, which shut that down. Next week's weather looks promising for tilling and sowing, though, so the farmers aren't in high anxiety mode yet. Wait.

I've been working, of late, to prepare the wildflower beds in back of the house and seed a lawn in the construction backfill.

I've been pushed by a deadline -- today, when Sauk County delivers wildflower seeds and tree seedlings at the county dump. I got the last bed in about two days ago, just before the rain started, so I'm set. And just in time, too. As always, what seemed like lots of time when I started digging in mid-March compressed, somehow.

I'll pick up the seeds and seedlings this afternoon, and put them in over the weekend.

The seeds, all perennials, will be mixed with seeds for annuals so I get instant gratification this year, and will be sowed in beds drifting off from the back of the house. The seedlings -- 25 paper birch, 25 spruce, and 25 white pine, if I can get them -- will go out in the woods, underplanting existing red oak stands, which will probably be lost to oak wilt in the next decade or two.

Sowing is my weekend, this weekend.

I'm doing a bit of reaping, too, today. I got the last distribution from the company I used to own earlier this week, and I'll put that in the bank on my way back from the dump. The check represents what was left over from capital set aside to pay shutdown taxes and expenses, and that's done. So that part of my life is now, officially and finally, completed.

The other morning I reaped the benefits of retirement, big time.

I went for a walk with a friend to Sunset Cliff, up at the north end of the Dells. The view is spectacular -- spanning out for miles through the river valley -- and we spent a half hour of so sitting and talking. Her great-grandfather, H.H. Bennett, was the photographer who popularized the Dells, and her grandfather and father continued the studio. She has childhood memories of family picnics on Sunset Cliff, while her father waited for exactly the right moment to capture the sunset.

The river is a source of life in this area, and all of us who grew up in the area have been touched by it, one way or another. She and I talked about our different experiences with different areas of the river, and I came away renewed in my conviction that the volunteer work I'm doing in retirement, working with a group to preserve the natural beauty and ecology of the river corridor in this area, is exactly the right thing for me to do at this point in my life.