July 2016

July always seems to be the peak of the summer and 2016 was especially summery, sultry and fun.  The Henkels don not do the “lazy hazy” version of summer since the garden and lawn work getting them hopping, and this summer with abundant rains and heat, things really grew and grew.  But the warm weather, hours of sunshine and fresh air plus all the garden goodies to eat seem to fuel them up to get lots done also.

Summer haircuts for Ro and Rhi

July means a lot of birthdays, but this year was Hilde’s 65^th, significant to the governmental agencies, but more significant because Jim, Kayme and all three grandkids came to celebrate.  While Hilde and Kayme played kept the kids happy with tree-climbing, bubbles and coloring, Jim and Mark tackled a serious problem in the big shed:  due to leaks in the roof seams, two cross members of the roof had rotted out.  Getting the old ones out and new ones in place took both of the, block and tackle and some noisy sawzall work.  The afternoon was a girl-time:  Kayme, Rhiannon and Rowan ALL got hair cuts, new headbands and barrettes and then a trip to the ice parlor in Rudolph, while Grandpa and Daddy watched Caleb.  Playing in the wading pool helped clean up the blue moon and chocolate faces!  Another birthday landed on the calendar as niece Alana gave birth to Thomas Justin Laufman.  It is such a joy to see the family growing and thriving.

Mark's monster mullein

Mark was not done with roof activities, however, as a three-inch rain later in the month revealed yet more places where the original nails had loosened and allowed significant leaking.  He spent another morning up on the metal roof, at the end of the month, installing screws while tied to safety rope and watched by Hilde.  Since the roof now appears to be up to snuff, cleaning out junk and redoing the east window should be the next steps of maintenance.

Hilde’s meeting schedule was full in July, with several acrimonious meetings and one whopper running 4 ½ hours.  To balance off those things, she enjoyed lunch with the crafts friends, a lunch with her county board friend and then both Mark and Hilde enjoyed a picnic with Loren and Claudette at Lake Emily.  The Henkels also joined the Heart O Wisconsin Sportsmen Club to get back into trap shooting.  The first morning was not impressive (except for the bruises on Hilde’s shoulder) but practice should bring them up to respectable results.

The frequent rains, heat and humidity may not have been great for folks’ outdoor plans, but have brought abundant garden goodies, meaning Mark and Hilde has spent significant hour picking, prepping and preserving:  peas, beans and peach jam plus lots of cucumbers and zucchini.  Hilde bakes up zucchini bread, muffins and tots in summer and has quite a stockpile already, with the next crops (tomatoes and corn) about ready to start.  All this wonderful food is a blessing, and as Granny would say (auf Deutch) Work makes life sweet!  And working in a beautiful place is even better:  this is the view to the west on a hazy July day.

Fabulous June 2016

Prairie flowers at First Law Group

This month has been a fabulously busy, happy time for Mark and Hilde.  The month was chock full of flowers, fun, and family time—what more can you ask for? 

Mark hard at work

Mark started in right away on the first, reroofing the wood shed and finding he needed to replace chunks of rotten edges, but it is now tidy and waterproof.  He does a good job, utilizing the tractor bucket as a lift, and he got everything cleaned up and debris to the dump before it rained.  When it rained, Henkels discovered that the new HOUSE roof leaked---through the main storage closet in East bedroom and on down to the basement.  After a couple investigations, the roofers found the installation of the main roof had unsealed the valley on the addition roof.  Once that was resealed, all is good overhead.  To continue the theme, Mark also tied himself to the truck via a long rope and got up on the much higher main shed to replace loose nails with screws, with Hilde watching nervously below. 

The above-average rainfall for the month meant that the garden, the weeds, the lawn and the flowers all exuberantly grew and grew.  Lots of yard and garden work was very rewarding in the beautiful surroundings. Mark and Hilde picked strawberries three mornings to spread out the deliciousness and have just covered the blueberries, blackcaps and summer raspberries to save them from birds.  The wildflowers were especially lush and both layers and young roosters are clucking along happily.

Reading to Three lovebugs

Although the roof project meant Mark and Hilde couldn’t get to Kayme and Alana’s recital in Milwaukee, the reports from Hilde’s mother, sister Terri and her hubby David say that it was really great.   Piano and oboe make a striking combination.   Mark’s brother Phil and niece Alana visited on their way home which was fun.  Alana is going to make Phil a grandfather this summer, and has moved back to Rice Lake after living in Ohio, Montreal, Hinckley and Duluth.    Mark and Hilde enjoyed a lunch with Pat and Paul Onan (cousins) to finally get caught up on each others’ lives.    With Mark working part-time, there is time to do the fun things and see folks.

Another family visit saw Mark and Hilde driving off to Oconto to visit his aunt Veiga and cousins Richard and Terry.  It was a real delight to see Veiga, who will be 98 in September.  She lives with Terry and his wife Diane and has a snug sunroom to sit overlooking the harbor, with Richard and Elice only a couple miles away.  It had been years since the cousins had been able to visit—everyone busy and spread out---but a lovely day.

Tamarack buds

The finale on family visits finished off the month.  Mark and Hilde went to Sussex for a long weekend.  Jim and Mark worked like beavers (or more as they worked late after dark!) doing the drywalling downstairs before and after Saturday church, and then more.  Sunday evening Hilde’s mother came for dinner and included a delightful interlude as Rhiannon and Rowan scampered around the lawn collecting fireflies in the dusk.  There were many fireflies and the girls’ laughter just as enchanting.  In the morning, Jim departed to drive a carload of teens to the WELS Youth rally in Colorado (and then hike and camp by himself), and Hilde and Mark watched and played with the kids while Kayme worked.  It was a very satisfactory visit, lots of cuddling and reading.  Rhiannon is reading to Grandma, Caleb is moving faster and faster, and Rowan is giggling and doing summersaults.  They are delightful children.

As always, there were contentious meetings, long meetings and interviews and more meetings for Hilde.  Things have been pretty busy on the county level.  Mark has been working with the insurance and restoration folks to finish things off from the office flood in April, but only working part-time, leaving lots of time for garden, radio, projects, and golden moments on the deck watching the sunsets.  The frequent rains did lead to one six-hour power outage and a phone outage on another day, but the lushness in Rudolph is beautiful, the frogs sing at night and the  birds in the day.  June has been very, very good.

 

Rhi, Ro and Caleb

May 2016

Roofing underway early in month

Mark setting fence

May was an amazing month in Wisconsin with heat coming early, followed by one last nasty snap of freezing weather and snow while the fruit trees were flowering (likely lessening pears and apples unfortunately), then enough dry days for folks in Rudolph to get their crops and gardens in and finally rain to bring everything along.  Rudolph was abuzz with activities and all the wonderful sounds and scents of spring.  The Henkel hilltop was awash with the scent of lilacs for nearly ten of those days.

Apple Blossom

The month started with the long-awaited replacement of the house roof for Henkels.  The crew from Goodwin were excellent in speed and clean up and the relief of having that done without rain issues was enormous.  Mark tackled resetting the cedar fences on the east and west of the property and Hilde  ripped out yards of iris and weeds to decrease the perennial bed behind the house to half the size, so both were outside trading mattock and shovels   They worked together to weed and re-set raspberry starts in the huge bed which supplies them with the years topping for oatmeal.

as needed.

Fighting thru the prickly ash

Mark and Hilde also spent two days clearing prickly ash and other brush out of the farm lane at Lomira, regaining access to the ancestral woods.  The first day it was 91 degrees and the lane is on the south side of a slope!  Using the brush cutter and a tractor loaned by the helpful Priest family, a narrow path is now  open, but the amount of prickly ash cannot be expressed….much more to cut, dig and remove.   The second visit included cutting some downed wood (until the chainsaw died) and preparing for cutting and stacking more for future syrup making.  These things take time and sweat equity.  There was also time for a visit to St. Paul’s cemetery and what turned out to be a depressing tour of the old family barn….years of hard labor to build and maintain it and it is slowly collapsing. 

Trilliums were abundant this spring

There are hand hewn beams in the original section, cut by Schultz forebears from the adjacent land  in the 1880s and still strong, but the foundation is heaving and buckling without animal heat in the winter.  Sad.

remove.

This was a spectacular spring for flowers---long, lovely, lingering trilliums, hepaticas, violets, lilacs, mayapples, jack-in-the-pulpits,  and more.  Without out of town travel, Mark and Hilde were able to get out almost daily to enjoy and photograph the succession of bloom.  When

Oriole antics for grape jelly

Mark’s assistant Sandy gave Hilde a cute oriole feeder, it immediately drew several pairs of orioles, which brighten any day and will sit and chirp at those too close to the feeder.

The usual spring tasks of garden planting and chick tending were much more leisurely with Mark’s reduced schedule, although he had several office days connected with the flood repair and the official testing of the  sensor to show it was indeed defective and tried again to flood things.  Hilde had the usual spurt of extra meetings for spring, many of which were lengthy, and a few contentious and upsetting.  A county board meeting opening with folks making inaccurate accusations and wild comments segued into some really nasty comments on line.  The national politics reflect an increasing level of incivility and irrational suspicion existing on every level. 

Mark shows grandkids the chicks

A sorry situation nation-wide and locally.

All the spring activities culminated in a short visit from Jim, Kayme and their three kids on their way home from holiday camping.  Caleb is trying hard to talk, wants to get his two cents in, and he is moving at top speed.  Rhiannon is maturing, and a sweet big sister ready for kindergarten in fall.  Rowan is so joyful and  curious.  It is always fun to have them come by and always amazing how they have grown and changed.

Rhiannon, Caleb and Rowan

April 2016

Ominous sunset on cold April 8

April in Wisconsin is always such a jumble:  weather bouncing back and forth between extremes, flowers starting, stopping when it snowed and then finally coming out in glorious welcome color.  April in itself is a month of photo ops!  There was snow in Rudolph on the 8^th  (the last we devoutly hope!) and just a week later, Mark and Hilde enjoyed a warm sunny day at Horicon Marsh viewing wildlife and plants and actually getting HOT.  There was a prescribed burn going on which led to some eerie photos, too.  On the way home they finished with dinner at Silvercryst in Wautoma…a very excellent day.

Spotting ducks at Horicon April 15

Several of the things on the list for “in spring” got taken care of too.  Mark had the farm truck checked out and the carburetor membrane replaced and the part of the exhaust system, so it is ready to be used (is no longer gassing occupants!), and Hilde started the process of getting medicare coverage in place.  Once the truck was available, Mark and Hilde worked on trimming brush in the fence rows and then around some of the buildings, hauling three truckloads to the pile where the wood chuck resides.

Redhead ducks at Horicon

Mark’s major chore was retrofitting the eaves with air channels in advance of the re-roofing with a ridge vent scheduled for early May.  This was a dirty, awkward job, removing the soffits and then cutting  slots in the solid and ancient wood before wriggling the channels up there.  Mark managed with no blood loss, only a little cussing and no incidents of dangerous drops of debris on Hilde, so it was a very successful project.

Adding eave venting

Some socializing was fit in around the work---lunch with Dr. Stevens, Hilde’s ladies breakfast and then crafts was out for a delightful evening, with frog chorus instead of snowfall.  Hilde continued to work on the heritage photos and was able to send off three envelopes to descendants after copying them.  The sad note was saying good-bye to the Douglas family.  Hard to see such great folks move on, but St. Paul’s has called another pastor and the congregation awaits word on that.

After the spring elections and the re-organization meeting of county board, Hilde was reappointed as chair of the conservation, education and economic development committee and to the executive committee.  There is much happening on the county level and in the departments overseen by CEED so it is a challenging time.

Naking cherries abloom

The last week of April was very interesting as Mark received a call on Sunday the 24^th saying ‘come to the law office, we have a flood!’  Due to a malfunctioning sensor, water had been running all weekend and the office had to go virtual, working out of seven locations with everyone off site for a week while the experts brought in enormous fans and dehumidifiers to dry out the upper level.  The lower level is going to take longer to repair ceiling and drywall, but things are returning to normal there.  There have been leak-related projects at all three Henkel households, so with this disaster at the firm, the hope is for a finish to the trend!

The sequence of bloom in April is so beautiful—from bloodroot to spring beauties and fawn lilies to plum brush.  Mark and Hilde had a little time to get out and enjoy those changes around Rudolph, hearing frogs and birds and welcoming the changes.  They spent an afternoon at Lake Emily in Portage County and many shorter walks.  And to end the month, Hilde began mowing lawn….that first time smells as special as early morning coffee!

Yellow fawn lily in Rudolph