Miss Lily and The Purse.

While Lily was here for her short visit, we were busy as all get out. We tried cramming a full weeks worth of activities plus school shopping in just a few days.

Lily wanted to visit the second hand stores in our local town of Viroqua. Last year we both got lucky with some really nice finds.

When we got into the store Lily moved down to the childrens section and started to browse. 

I stopped at the adult section that had some interesting looking pants and found some nice shorts from Patagonia and North Face. They were super soft and pre-worn.

Lily came back with a handful of clothing. She hadn't found anything in her size that she liked, but had found some very nice outfits for Elena and Sterling. What a good older sister she is. Plus she knows clothes.

She held up my items of interest and looked at them. She shook her head at one pair of pants I had and stuck them back in the rack. "Not for you, Grandma," she said.  She grabbed another pair and held them up, nodding. "More like it!"
She handed them to me and told me to go try them on.

Oh yeah. Lily will be 12 years old late December.

We put the purchases in the back of the Subaru and walked to the next store. Immediately Lily walked over to where they had purses on racks.

"You need a purse Grandma," she stated, her eyes on the items. She fingered one or two purses and looked inside of them.
I wrinkled my nose.

"I haven't had a purse since..." I shrugged. I couldn't remember the last time I'd used a purse. 

"Well you need to get organized," said Lily. "You have a smart phone that needs to be carried in a purse, you have keys and you are always forgetting which pocket you put them in." 
Lily wrinkled her nose.

"And that wallet. Ewww." She shook her head.
"I'll think about it." I replied.

We shopped and browsed, Lily found a few shirts and suggested a pink shirt for me. I liked its weight and softness so I took it.

We ended back at the purse rack. Lily handed me a purse. It was pretty but...
I shrugged and sort of acted interested.
Then after a few false starts, Lily handed me a red canvas purse. She adjusted the strap and hung it on my shoulder, then proceeded to hang it crosswise like she'd seen me wear my sling camera bag.

"This is it, Grandma. This is your purse. See? Not complicated at all. Not large and it looks enough like a camera bag to suit you." She nodded in satisfaction.
I stood mute with a red purse slung over my shoulder.

Then she turned and started to dig through the ladies wallets. 
"You have to get rid of that thing you have now. It is so ..., " Lily shuddered and made a face.

We settled on a lady's wallet and went to the cashier to check out.

I'd just bought a purse and a lady bug wallet. I wasn't exactly sure how that all just happened.

When we got home, we showed Grandpa Rich the purchases. His eyebrows rose when he saw the purse.

Lily cleaned off the table and asked for my ugly old wallet, cell phone, and keys. She motioned me to go tend to the sweet corn while she put things together.

I was cooling the sweet corn when she walked up holding my old tattered wallet. She was holding it as if it were a dead mouse.
She motioned for me to open the cabinet door under the sink.

With huge fanfare, she dumped the wallet in the trash.
She then presented me with the new purse and showed me how she organized everything.

I now have a nice red purse that is well organized.
I have no idea how I got along all these years without it.

Starry Night

On our drive back from canoeing Miss Lily fell asleep in the car. I suggested she take a nap before we try riding our mules.

She slept until nearly 8pm. Wow, she was tired! We ate supper and made out her school list of supplies so we could go shopping to get them this afternoon. 

We sat at the table after eating and played word games and spelling games. Gramps went to bed and Lily wanted to look at the stars. We took the smartie-phone out and used the Google Skymap to find Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and a couple of constellations.

I had set a rug down on the concrete floor of the porch. Lily, Morris, and I had pillows and a blanket. We snuggled down on top of the rug and talked about stars and...stuff. Nothing important stuff, just stuff.

Lily wanted to see the Milky Way appear so we got quiet and waited for the moon to set.

Lily gasped in delight as we saw a shooting star. And cooed in delight as the Milky Way indeed began to appear after the moon had set.

An owl called. Another answered. The mules snorted in the pasture. A coyote barked in the distance.

Soon we were sound asleep. The dog, the kid, and the old lady.

I woke her up as this old body can't sleep on concrete too long before it gets a bit uncomfortable.

And that was our Starry Night Adventure.

Guess who is coming to town!

Miss Lily!!!

With a bit of hard work and some juggling of schedules, I will be able to pick Lily up tomorrow in the Dells. 

I'm sort of really kind of...well yes...

excited.

I love all my Grands and wish I could visit with each of them for a week. At the end of Lily's visit, I get to spend some time in Wausau with Elena and Sterling. I can't wait for that either.

Later this month, Dennis will be coming to spend some time at the farm.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to retire and just spend my summers with the kids. Hmm, kids, farm, and seeing state parks. I have that on my list!

Well, in reality, that isn't going to happen, so ....I will muddle through the best way I know how.

I had a bountiful harvest yesterday from the garden! I've never grown sweet corn before as I always figured the wild critters would get it before I could.

But as luck would have it, we have a huge harvest of corn!

And it is delicious! So I grabbed my pails and went to work yesterday in the forenoon to harvest goodies from the garden.

I had some beans, grape tomatoes, some Roma tomatoes, and some Beefeater type tomatoes. I filled a 5 gallon bucket twice with sweet corn.

Of course it was hot and humid. I froze 5 bags of corn on the cob for having this winter. I still had a 5 gallon bag of sweet corn.

So I sent an email to my neighbor telling her that I was having a crisis of too much sweet corn, and the bucket was looking for a home in some tummies.

Her crop hasn't come in yet but I like to share.

She answered that she had a family of expert corn eaters and would be grateful for a bucket of corn.

Here is my harvest which includes onions, zinnias, and peaches from the market in town. I couldn't resist trying to create a 'still life' out of the produce I picked and cleaned.

It looks like another warm humid day in SW Wisconsin. Lots of work to get done!

We had another two inches of rainfall last night. I don't think we are facing any sort of drought this year.

Rib Mountain State Park and some fun

One of my goals in going to Wausau, aside from visiting with the grand kids, was to explore Rib Mountain State Park.


I like hills, I like rocks.  I like geology.
Rib Mountain, formerly called Rib Hill, is a four mile-long ridge of ancient rock dating back about 1.7 billion years. It is among the oldest geological features on earth. It is composed of very hard metamorphic rock called quartzite.
As early as 1893, the mountain was used in the manufacture of sandpaper. The Wausau Sandpaper Company was incorporated in 1900 and built a factory. In 1902, Wausau Quartz Company crushed the quartzite for grinding and polishing purposes. The two companies merged in 1905 to form Wausau Abrasives, which was purchased by Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing in 1929.
From Rib Mountain History.

Friday it stopped raining and we decided to go.  Lily and I got dressed for the weather and got to Rib Mountain quite early.  We were the only vehicle at the very end of the parking areas.
One of the first things we did was to climb the 60 foot tower and take a look around us.

Lily took a shot with my FujiFilm camera and was able to see our motel. There is a pink circle around the Motel 8 sign.
The hotel was about 5 miles away, just so you can get a perspective on it.

The view was really quite neat even with the heavily overcast skies.

Parachute People flung off the tower at some point in time.

Lily's dad along with Elena and Sterling were to join us at the park.  Lily and I decided to go ahead and do a bit of exploring while we were waiting for them to come.

Lily got along just fine with my P&S FujiFilm camera.  We started along the Blue Trail which stayed close enough to the tower we climbed but not so far that we couldn't go back to the parking lot and meet up with her dad.

We swapped over to the Red Trail and circled back towards the Blue Trail.

What we had been looking for was the Grey trail which was my goal.  The grey trail would take us to the old quarry.  But we didn't find that trail until we were ready to leave.

We actually didn't hike very far, we found so many interesting things to look at like fungi, moss, rocks and of course acorns.

Taking a ten year old hiking is a much different experience than taking an older person.  It is more fun to see things through a young person's eyes.

When we got to a stone staircase we decided to try some fun photography.

First the stairway.

Lily wanted to see what it would look like in Infrared.  So I set it up.

Then I asked her to be in the shot and to stand absolutely still.  She wanted a spooky weird shot.

And there she was, a ghostly figure in a strange looking land.

We had so much fun with that, she wanted a IR photo of the two of us on a bench.

Our cam colors came out white and it was sort of spooky and creepy looking.

After exploring some mossy rocks and other things we headed back to the playground in hopes of meeting up with her dad.

We played on the Merry go Round and then I set up a camera on a tripod and had some more fun with 'trick' photography.

By 2:30 PM we decided to vacate the mountain and promised each other to come back and explore it again.

We went to her dad's place and visited. 

Road Trip

Off I went. Morris scrambled and barked in his crate as I shut the door and got into the car.
The rain was spitting down and the temperatures had suddenly become very fall-like.

Here was my 'big' trip to go see Lily and the rest of the gang.  I promised myself that this time when I crossed the Wisconsin River on Highway 21, I would take the time to pull into the wayside and get a shot of the river and the bridge.
The leaves have gone but the pines still are brilliant green against the dull backdrop of dormant trees.  Most oaks still have their leaves and the wild clouds all made for a fairly good photograph.

Although as I knelt by the river a very cold wind blew into my face. And I decided not to spend too long of a time there.

My real intent had been to go back to the Subaru and get a ND filter so I could have a long exposure of the sky, bridge, and the water.  I decided to heck with it and packed up.

I went to use the restroom and decided against that also.  The smell of the toilets were ripe even with the winds.
Note to self, the place is worth stopping at, but get a whiff of the bathrooms!

I headed east towards Coloma and stopped at the Ship Rock Wayside.  There are a few tables there and the garbage cans have been removed for the season.
I got out and was surprised that I was not cold.  In this area I was somewhat protected from the winds by the surrounding forest.

 

I went around to the backside of the 'rock' and found some exotic looking fern growth on the side of mossy rocks.

Leaves had blown into a dip in the rocks and were the nearly the only fall colors left.

I stopped for coffee before getting on the interstate and headed to Wausau to meet with my son and see Elena and Sterling before he had to go to work.

After I checked in to my motel I got a text from Lily.  Her mom would drop her off with me after she finished her CCE classes!

When Lily showed up we headed to the motel pool.  I sat on the edge of the pool .... note to self... get a swim suit!
We talked and she swam and played.
By 9pm we thought we should retire.

We watched it snow outside for a bit and tried to thing of cool things to do while I was here.  Rib Mountain State Park or Dells of Eau Clair?  

Empty House

So Lily has gone home.  Our visit was fun and now the house seems quiet.
Morris walks around the house and goes outside to look around for Lily.

We miss the cheerful energy of hers.  "What are we going to do today Grandma?" 

I sort of enjoyed that, it surely kept me busy thinking of things that would appeal to her.

Yesterday I took down the tent we were going to sleep in. Now at least I think I can set it up rather quickly.

Our next few days here on the farm are predicted to be extremely hot.  Not as warm as other places I suspect, but warm for us northerners who are not used to it.

I'm looking forward to the next grand child visit and hearing, "What are we going today Grandma?"

Rarely is there 'not' anything to do around here.