2020 An April Apart

Some of the wood from our trees

Caleb, Rowan and Rhiannon Easter hoodies

Like the rest of the nation, April meant an entire month in lockdown for the Henkels, following three weeks in March --- a very long time with minimal contacts.   For most people, the time is dragging, but for Mark and Hilde, there has been enough work to keep them moving just around the hilltop.  After cutting splitting and stacking all the wood from the three trees the town removed, they tackled the big job.

After 30 years of sumac growing, tangling and dying, then prickly ash filling the north edge of the hayfield, Mark and Hilde have spent two weeks working on cutting and dragging away the accumulated vegetation.  The burn pile is enormous, the brush compost pile in the edge of the swamp too high to pile more on, and there are still piles of the cut brush to haul away.  Once the DNR allows burning again (and things are getting green) at least one bonfire will burn here in Rudolph.  The second stage of the project will involve removing several downed trees and yet more prickly ash from the area of the old gold mine, which might be an even tougher effort.

John with daughters

The greening is a very recent phenomenon, following a nasty cold streak which included 3 inches of snow on Easter Sunday---and north of Rudolph got MUCH more!  Dark and cold days  allowed Hilde to complete another quilt, make a small squad of stuffed animals and re-read some old favorites.

Although Mark and Hilde are missing family very sharply, there have been adorable little letters from Hazel and video ‘chats’ with Jim’s children.  Caleb called once and decided to show Grandma  his hideout.  The dark screen revealed nothing at all, so his hideout is still a secret!  Just hearing the happy giggles is surely cheering, even when the comments are less than comprehensible.  Getting pictures of the youngsters gives the grandparents smiles as they ache to hold them.  Since both the Milwaukee and Chicago areas are still having many cases of covid, pictures and videos will have to suffice for a while  yet. 

Even with all courts closed down and the cases postponed, mark has been keeping moderately busy remotely, with calls and conferences several times a week.  He is carefully nursing along his tomato seedlings and got the proper fertilizer levels for the raspberry patch, plus cleaned up the asparagus in anticipation of fresh veggies soon.  At the moment, food supplies are all okay, but  who knows where things are going with the meat packers and farmers getting another hit?  God will provide and Mark and Hilde can always eat eggs and cheese---not a hardship!

At the very end of the month, when things warmed up and the grass began to grow, tulips began to open and more birdsong filled the air.  Even in Wisconsin, even in the year of distancing and disease, the spring does come!