August was a wonderful social month with great seasonal
foods, family and friends in abundance and some wild weather in between.
Mark and Hilde really enjoyed entertaining, feeding and seeing many
friends. Alana and Justin came for a
visit, a select group of black belts came for corn roast, and Mark’s trial
team, Sandra and Eric, shared another corn roast with them. Hilde was happy to have Irene come out for
lunch and scrabble one day and a ‘end of the season’ ladies lunch was great,
too.
The harvest time started in earnest for the Henkels: cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes and lots and
lots of corn. Hilde and Mark work well
as a team and got the year’s corn frozen very quickly one Saturday morning. Several batches of jam and jellies including
cherry and cinnamon crabapple were tucked into the fruit cellar and batches of
zucchini cake, zucchini tots and choc zucchini muffins were baked and frozen
for winter.
Hilde was happy that her mother did well in rehab and was
able to move into her new apartment and seems to be doing well there. Arlene was able to visit Jim for dinner and
cuddling of great-grandchildren before schedules ramp up for both drs. Henkel. Mark got to spend more time on the radio with
contacts in some new states and areas with unusual propagation windows in August. On the county level, a tense and
confrontational situation seems to have eased a bit…but civility is not exactly
abundant there. Hilde keeps trying.
August contained a wonderful fun day for Mark and Hilde as
they met Jim, Kayme and family at Lakeside Park in Fond du Lac for a picnic and
fun day for the girls. Watching the joy
on Rhiannon and Rowan’s faces while they rode the carousel and the rotoride was
priceless, and chugging along on the little train, just as Mark did as a child,
makes for wonderful memories. Caleb is
growing like a weed and watching everything, perhaps planning just what he will
get into when he begins crawling
August started and ended hot in between they was hail, a
long cool, wet period and some impressive winds. Now the leaves are falling from the mountain
ash, always the first to go, exposing the bright orange berries, the swallows
have headed south and the early apples and crabapples are put away…summer is
ending, but it was surely a good one, full of God’s blessings.
