October 2015

Roof top consultation

This is a bookcase!

So tasty!

Lots of squash and pumpkins

Horicon egret on muskrat house

Splash of color across Lake Emily

Autumn creek view

October showed her best side this year, and Mark and Hilde got to enjoy it thoroughly, with a nice combination of being home and getting out and about.  Mark managed to do one more month of the ‘half-time’ although he handled lots of calls from home.  Meantime, the long raspberry season continued with last berries picked on the 27^th of the month! 

The month began with a trip to World Dairy Expo in Madison (where Mark and Hilde ran into various friends and relatives) and then on to Palatine to visit John and Evie.  John and Mark spent time up on the roof patching and caulking and Hilde hemmed curtains while Evie filled the spectacular full-wall bookcase which John designed and the two put together.  They have transformed their house with lots of hard work and imagination and finally solved the lighting issues of the great room also.

The garden finale included more tomato juice and ketchup, a burst of zucchini tots and choc muffins, pumpkin butter, pear-ginger jam and a few late peppers.  The majority of the pie pumpkins went to church for the pie ingredients, but many others were shared with family and friends, plus the fruit cellar has little room in it, as the harvest bounty is amazing.  The Dark Brahma rooster was given to a family with a child in 4-H---it would have been a shame to butcher such a handsome critter!   Mark and Hilde found the one snow apple tree had a very heavy yield or perfect apples, and that some of the few pears could be salvaged also.

It was fun to help out Karen Johnson this month by supervising her taekwondo classes for UWSP twice when she had conflicts.  Teaching young intelligent adults is a joy!  This month’s taekwondo testing included a special presentation to Dr. Stevens in recognition of 35 years of his teaching there.  Since the numbers were a bit smaller, and the testing panel very efficient,  Mark and Hilde made a special afternoon of it, after picking a few raspberries, driving around, looking at the wonderful colors and scenes of fall, plus enjoying dinner at China Palace.

Mark and Hilde took one lovely fall day to visit Horicon Marsh, getting lots of exercise and photos of the birds and flowers and colors.  The beautiful white egrets preened and posed, the asters were vibrant and different ducks were identified.  It was really a great day, including fish at the SilverCryst on the way home, chasing the dusk.  

The weather continued to be wonderful all month, so lots of final fall chores were FUN!  Mark and Hilde dug out the carrots, Mark cut all the corn and then disked up the garden.  They got the far west foundation bed redone and put in block edging, and did the final mowing for the year.  One afternoon while Mark was gone, Hilde spray-painted the radon removal system to match the house, leaving the final, above-the-roof section for Mark, so it no longer looks like an odd toilet back there.  The enormous tangle of morning glory vines were carefully cut off and removed and they further pruned that giant forsythia….things grow rather large in Rudolph!

Hilde has continued to meet, write and talk about the extreme opposition to farming in Wood County.  There is hope that some reasonable compromise can be reached, but it has taken many, many hours and gets a little frustrating.  It’s is a good thing that Hilde is an optimist!  She got to go on a tour of the really spectacular Sand Valley Golf development, where, unfortunately,  three vehicles got stuck in the sand.  It was a public/private collaborative effort as Wood county folks from Land conservation and Extension helped private folks push out cars.

Fall enjoyment continued with a picnic at Lake Emily just before cold and rain came in.  There were golden needles from the white pine sifting down on the table, and soft maple landing on them like golden stars.  Mark and Hilde also spent time out in the Seneca woods, checking out the hunting stands and finding some lovely late fall color on the ground.  This is the first fall in many years when they were able to get out and about often.

On a sad note, the long-time owner of  the  family, cat Coffee died at the end of the month.  He was almost 16 years old and was such a character, following folks around, facing down skunks and foxes and waiting on Tuesday and Thursday nights for folks to come home from taekwondo.  The Henkels miss him.

Jim and his lively family stopped by for a couple of nights toward the end of the month.  It is always amazing how fast the kids are growing.  Caleb wants to get moving like his sisters and is almost there, while the girls seem interested in everything with great vocabularies to discuss it all, from earrings to body parts.

Since October ended with rain, Mark and Hilde put off the scheduled chicken butchering to go go the movie “Bridge of Spies”, enjoying it very much.  They remember the times, the tensions, the fears and grittiness, all portrayed well.  Then, at the very end of the month, 11 pm on Halloween, Mother Nature played her trick with a sudden burst of thunder, lightning and HAIL.

What a full month!