Don't fence me in

Here's where we are with the fence now...the structure is done, but we won't stain it until next spring because the wood needs breathing time. These pics are taken from the upper level of the yard so the fence looks small, but it's not. It's 8 feet tall. The maple tree is in both pictures--I don't have panoramic capability on my camera, at least that I'm aware of, so it took two shots to show the setting.

More is going on today--the boys are putting river rock in front of the fence and brick trim around the rocks. We'll add a couple of trees in the open space to the right of the fence and a couple more elsewhere in the yard... but don't expect this all to happen quickly. We're waiting for better tree planting weather for that part of the project.

I admit without guilt that I like having other people do this kind of work rather than Larry/Paco/Dad/Grandpappy and I doing it ourselves. It's especially nice to go away for a few hours, like I did this morning, and come home to see the results of three guys' labor. While they were hauling rocks and bricks, I was at the Amboy Cottage Café in (guess where?) Amboy with my book group, enjoying breakfast and discussing a good book. One of the book group members reads this blog, and I'm sure she'd agree that breakfast and conversation were a great way to spend a warm summer morning, right Mary?

Later today...

I went to meet a friend for coffee for a few hours this afternoon and came back to the rocks and bricks all in place, and the area near the fence looking good. This is a switch on the Field of Dreams "build it and they will come" idea. I like the concept of "leave and they will build it."

Duluth weekend

Dad/Larry/Paco/Grandpappy at a scenic stop along the North Shore of Lake Superior.
Mike and Amber are married and all the Minnesota Potts attendees have returned home. We missed E, E, and h...Hannah, you'd have had a dance partner in Miles if you'd been at the reception. He was dancing like his hair was on fire. This little video doesn't show much of his dancing ability, but you get the idea.





Mike and Amber visited Ethan and Owen this morning in our motel room. They look pretty cute with twins! Miles had a great morning talking to people in the motel lobby and taking a side trip to see a BIG choo choo train engine and jet plane in Proctor with Tanner and Grandpa. Tanner took pictures, I believe, so check out the O-Town blog. When he got back, he helped out with the babies.

Geometry in action

Holy fence posts, Batman! We've got verticals and we've got horizontals and perpendiculars and right angles...and we are counting on the boys to stay vertical themselves so they can get the horizontals and perpendiculars and right angles in place today. Dad/Larry/Paco/Grandpappy and I are leaving soon for Duluth for Mike and Amber's wedding weekend festivities. We hope to come home to a completed fence.

A post about posts

The "boys" were here today. Footings are poured, fence posts are vertical. Looks like we should get some American flags and fly 'em in the back yard.

When is a fence not a fence?

Here's the not-a-fence-yet, delivered on Monday. Annie and I have a bet going, that the footings for their new deck will be in place before the footings for our new fence. If the work on their deck gets started first, she wins a pedicure (goes with the "footings" theme. Get it?). If work on our fence gets started first, I'll babysit for Miles and play "This Little Piggie" with him, to keep the footings theme intact. I believe the bet is actually over, and Annie won. I'll still play with Miles' tootsies, though.

Place settings and play mats

I missed the best photo op of the day: Miles setting the table. Miles added silverware and napkins to each placemat before supper this evening. Never mind that there wasn't any room for plates because of his artistic arrangements--- he did a super job. Thank you, Miles! Miles was for here for the day with his mommy, Charlie, Angie, Ethan, and Owen so Charlie and Annie could do a training run together. We missed Tanner, who had a date with the links (as in golf, Evan. Not sausage.).

The best video op of the day is below. Angie explained the features of the new play mat she bought for the babies at IKEA this week when they went on a shopping adventure with Grandma Darla. The boys were mesmerized by the description and followed along intently for several minutes. I finally got smart and got my camera to catch the tail end of the conversation.

Hilda and the B.V.M.

Another flashback from my childhood...skip this entry if you prefer not to be dragged down memory lane again...

Here's what our house on Huron Avenue looks like now, in 2009. It's not much different in the front than it was in the 50's, but there is at least one addition to the back of the house. You can see that there is a dumpster in the driveway (this photo taken in June) so maybe there's another add-on in the works. I loved this house and can remember the interior floor plan and the 1950's decor in detail.

Hilda Fenstermacher lived in the house next door to us when I was a kid. Her last name is very German, but she was Norwegian (until she got married, apparently!).
She was a widow, the great aunt of some friends of mine, an absolutely sweet and kind woman, and a great neighbor.

Hilda didn't mind that the neighborhood kids wanted to play on her driveway day and night. Hers was concrete and most of us had gravel driveways, so she had the right surface for playing hopscotch and bouncing balls. I remember a lot about the inside of her house, too, especially the kitchen. Hilda loved kids. She had a special fondness for my little sister and always invited her in to help bake. Hilda made a mean gooseberry pie, scrumptious ginger cookies, and was the lefse champ of the neighborhood (don't tell Gladys Lundby!). I have a vivid memory of watching Hilda teach Mary Jo when to take lefse off the griddle so it was done to perfection.

Hilda's back yard should be made into a shrine. That's where my brother Mark and his friend Bobbi Esklund saw the Virgin Mary appear in the sky over a row of pine trees. Mark, being a good Catholic boy, knew the Virgin Mary did these things now and then to shake up the secular world. Bobbi was Lutheran so she didn't have to believe what she was seeing, and I don't if she did or not. I just wish Hilda had been looking out the window at the time to verify the miracle, although as a Protestant she could have denied the existence of the vision, too. As it stands, I have to take Mark's word for it.

Fence readiness 2

It's been a while since the landscapers have been here. Today they double-dipped by removing stumps and debris and leveling the ground along the line where the new fence will be, while simultaneously leveling an area behind *Fowl Countenance's house. Here are before and after shots. "Before" is taken through the sun room screen, hence the hazy appearance. I was also half asleep, so that could account for it, too. Miles and Hannah would've enjoyed watching the worker driving the little New Holland loader. He was moving FAST.

It's hard to tell much from these shots, but the ground is now leveled off and stumps are gone. Hurray! Here's hoping the next phase will begin before the weeds make their way through the newly-flattened dirt. I'm never too optimistic about these projects moving along at a reasonable pace. Cindy, I hope your landscape work is near completion and that you traded out the plants you didn't like for some you DO like!

*Name has been changed to discourage legal action.

Neighbors from the past

Time for another stop on the Spring Valley Tour. I found two "new" old postcards online this weekend, so that means another trip to SV to take current pictures of the sites. For now, I'm sure you're chomping at the bit to learn about the former Brinn home.

The Brinns had a lot of money and lived in this formerly dark brown house that was an empty lot and one house away from where my family lived on Huron Avenue. I walked by the Brinns' every day on my way to Ward School or to play with Cindy, Merry, or the Esklunds--the Honey Bee Path (another story for another time) ended where their yard began).

I think Mr. Brinn was an attorney, but I'm not entirely sure. Mrs. Brinn had lavender hair. I AM sure of that! She was one of those regal older women who wore silky dark-print dresses, sparkly brooches, nylons with seams, and sturdy black leather pumps. For all I know she was only in her 40's when we were neighbors, but she seemed much older. Either the Brinn children were grown and gone, or there were no Brinn children, but in any case, if my mom (Grandma Bene) went visiting we kids stayed home. I vaguely remember going inside the house once when I was looking for Mom to ask her if I could go to a friend's house, and I recall a living room with elegant, dark furniture. I also remember my mom shooing me out so I wouldn't leave any fingerprints on the polished wood. In my imagination I picture a dimly lit entry way into the Brinn home with a carved ebony table holding an ornate bone china calling card dish. I'm sure it didn't exist, but the mere thought of Mrs. Brinn conjures up a level of sophistication that wasn't present elsewhere in our neighborhood.

One of my memories of Mrs. Brinn really didn't involve her at all. Our house at 608 North Huron had a side door that led into a small landing. Going straight ahead up a few steps took us into the kitchen, and a turn to the right led to the somewhat creepy basement where Dad (Grandpa Charlie) took his showers in the summer after full days of carpentry work with other teachers who had to find extra income to subsidize low teacher salaries.

Dad's usual habit was to leave his khaki work clothes in the basement next to the washing machine, take a quick shower, wrap a towel around his waist, and head upstairs to the second floor bedroom area to get dressed. He had to pass the side door on his trek up the basement steps and of course on hot summer, days the screen door provided a cooling breeze into the house. One July day as Dad was finishing his shower, my mom signaled to me to come to the kitchen and told me to watch and listen. Dad made his way up the basement stairway, and just as he approached the screen door my mom said in an animated voice, "Oh please come in, Mrs. Brinn!" Dad shot past the screen door, up the three steps into the kitchen, and around the corner like a rocket, sure that Mrs. Brinn had seen something that Mr. Brinn might not have paraded around as casually had he been in front of a screen door!

Of course Mrs. Brinn wasn't standing outside, nor was anyone else for that matter, but it was funny as heck to see Dad zoom past us.

Minnesota Square Park

Miles has been in St. Peter since Wednesday, first with his Grandparents Grimmius, and now at our house. He had lots of fun with G & G Grimmius, Putter, and Uncle Wee-oh.

This morning Miles and I took a little trip around town to see what the rerouting of traffic looks like now that the work on Minnesota Avenue is about to start. People are driving through stopsigns more than usual, even the ones that have been in place for years. I think it is going to take a while before St. Peter residents get acclimated. There is a four-way stop at the intersection of College and Washington now that will be a challenge for local drivers.

Our destination was Minnesota Square Park, where Miles had fun on the swings and also watching some bigger kids go around and around on the merry-go-round. Playground equipment isn't the only thing that kept Miles interested. The pavillion offered an invitation for climbing steps (in the stickiest areas, of course) and getting on picnic table benches and following the not-yellow-brick "road" around the structure.






We've spent a lot of time looking at the desktop pictures change minute by minute on my computer, and laughing at Baby Owen and Baby Ethan, and saying hi to Hannah. Oops... a little boy just woke up from his nap. I'd better go and get him!

Photos

I've been looking at this picture of Uncle Tanner and Baby Ethan, thinking it looked familiar.

So I went back through pictures from the summer of 2007, after Hannah was born, and found this... an early uncling photo of Tanner and Hannah!


This makes me wonder what other partner poses exist in the pile-o-photos taken over the last few years. While this isn't humorous like the Owen/Paul G. and Winston C. comparisons, it's fun anyway. For me.

Fence readiness I

The cousins were here!

Thanks, everyone, for a great 4th of July weekend! A special thanks to the four cousins for being so adorably patriotic. It wasn't easy choosing poses from the 50 or so in this series of shots (I'm not even going to try choosing from the other 450 or so pictures taken over the weekend!), so I'm curious to see what shows up on the O-Town and Oliver Avenue blogs.

Owen, Miles, Hannah, & Ethan

The cousins are coming!

Yesterday and today I spent time with two little boys who are looking forward to meeting Lead Cousin Hannah on Thursday. LC Hannah and her able Assistant Cousin, Miles, will have their hands full training Ethan and Owen in the fine art of Cousinhood!

In the spirit of the favored photography style of Auntie Elisabeth and Auntie Annie, the babies practiced taking photos of themselves. Their aunties are famous for doing this, as you will see below.

How do we work this thing? Is the flash off?

There, we're both lookin' pretty good now!

Owen, stop giving me the raspberries!

That's enough, Ethan! We'd better call it quits before
Grandma finds out we have her camera.

Hey, wait a minute! Our aunties
have been doing this for years. Take a look...

Two sissies

Two sissies at the beach