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| Happy Caleb |
Some months are just fuller than others—full of family,
activities, scares, travel and lots of mowing.
July was like that for the Henkels.
The month started with a bang as Jim, Kayme and their
delightful trio of kids came for a visit.
The girls would make Scrooge smile to see their sheer, energetic
enjoyment of life. The family celebrated
the Fourth on the third with the men setting off fireworks and admiring wives
and children on the lawn feeding the mosquitoes. Jim is
constantly teaching “Bio 101” when he finds a frog, caterpillar or interesting
plant so the girls’ vocabularies are amazing.
Rhiannon, 4 ½, commented very carefully and politely about “the grass
getting pretty long, Grandma” and when shown the tiny pumpkins set on the
vines, 2 ½ year old Rowan remembered
last October and stated “They get orange, we take the insides out and make a
smile.” The girls played in the wading
pool, picked cherries and made puzzles with Grandpa. Caleb is stretching out and taking interest
in things---lots of smiles and one little giggle for Grandma Hilde.
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| Watching the fireworks |
Mark and Hilde spent many hours weeding and mowing during
the month, as the grass grew at spring rates from rain and moderate temps. Beans and cucumbers joined lettuce on the
menu, with Hilde trying more uses for zucchini. She also made a couple batches of peach
jam. The chicks are now big enough to go
outside, so they are carefully released each morning into the netted area, and shut up at night. The caution has been enforced as there have
been wildlife sightings in abundance within a mile radius of the Henkel
hilltop: a bear, a cougar (on a game
camera) and a rabid raccoon. Hearing a
fox bark as the blue moon was rising on the 31st was magical.
For Hilde’s birthday,
Mark took them down to Green Lake for a boat tour and then over to Wautoma for
a very nice dinner. It is unusual to be
absent from taekwondo, but it was a special day.
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| Cuddling with Daddy after the pool |
The senior Henkels also went to Sussex to assist in a repair
job which had Mark and Jim digging and the water off, so Kayme and Hilde took
the three kids to the zoo on a rather hot day, staying until things closed
down. Caleb was not unhappy to have
Mommy all day, and the girls loved climbing on a dinosaur, seeing snakes and
peacocks and enjoying a little ice cream.
Hilde hadn’t been to the Brookfield Zoo since courting days, and enjoyed
the time with Kayme and the kids very much.
The next day Jim and Mark worked on gutters and drainpipes—always
enjoyable for Mark to work with one of the sons.
There were some alarms for the family, with scary
possibilities from Mark’s dentist checkup. It was a great relief to find out
nothing was wrong. Right after that, Jim
had a violent reaction to an unknown substance and needed urgent care, oxygen
and massive antihistamines. The really
scary thing was when Hilde’s mother was rushed to the hospital –it took about
five days to get her heart settled down and all of that during the time when
she was supposed to move into new apartment.
She was moved in absentia (Hilde’s
siblings did all the work!) and will be going to her new home after a few days
of rehab.
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| Ready for the day at the zoo |
Mark and Hilde have been tackling some of the odds jobs
between things: Mark eliminated several
hornets nests, replaced a full pound of nails on the pole buildings and then
they both tackled the “terrible triangle” –west ditch (steep and rocky) and fence
row (eight massive pine stumps and a neighboring field sharing sumac and
prickly ash). The assortment of
undesirable and even invasive species which can grow in a strip of pine barrens
is amazing, but the poison ivy, prickly
ash and thistles were chopped down.
For the end of the month, Mark and Hilde headed to Madison
where Mark networked and earned continuing education credits, while Hilde
struggled to draft a resolution to change the county board rules. They came home to find the refrigerator
freezer had popped open and half the food either “toss-away” or “use
immediately” which made for some interesting and immediate actions.
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| Gutter improvement |
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