Nature's Generous Reprieve

Late last fall, when I should have been diligently cleaning out the garden, we were busy with Stephen and Becca's move.  Not to mention by that time in the gardening year I have totally lost my ambition and it's easy to put the whole issue off until spring.  Some early snows and freezing temps put the nail in the coffin of my resolve to leave the garden tidy for the winter.  

But some very mild temperatures and lovely sunshine (plus the arrival of the first seed catalogs of the year) got my gardener's blood stirring once again.  It really bugged me to look out the sunroom windows and see the messiness in the garden.  So today I went out and cleaned out the dead vegetation from the rest of the garden boxes, cut down all the dried tomato vines still tied to the trellises and swept out the paths between the boxes.  Pete came and helped with a rake for the heavy stuff.  Two trips with the wagon to the burn pile and things are tidy out there again.  Mother Nature doesn't often give us second chances to right our wrongs but I'm very thankful we were able to finish the job!

As always, My Hero.

The field north of the barn is tidy and resting, too.

Now when I look out the sunroom window I see the garden peacefully sleeping instead of reproaching me for not finishing the job.  The sun is very low and even at noon the shadows are long.  

We had a lovely and quiet Christmas.  It was special to have this little guy with us this year.

When you are worn out from opening presents and playing with toys, there's no place like Opa's lap in a comfy chair.

Oma's lap is also a pretty good place, especially at church when there are lots of people around.

We Need a Little Christmas

My kids think I don't like to decorate for Christmas.  There is an evolution to this idea.  When they were small Pete's approach to decorating was to drag every box into the house and let the three kids unpack everything and spread it all over.  I'm not the world's tidiest person but that amount of chaos just did me in.  Pete and the kids, however, had a wonderfully happy riot and I usually absented myself to the kitchen to do something like make Christmas cookies until the dust settled and I could start cleaning up and rearranging (just a little).  I can't excuse such Scrooge-like behavior but in my defense I will say I was a working-full-time-outside-the-home mother.  My capacity was stretched.  

So this year when Pete told one of the girls that I actually wanted to put the tree up BEFORE Thanksgiving she was astonished.  In fact, I do enjoy decorating.  Just slowly and quietly.  I enjoy it when someone helps me, too.  Just don't rush or overwhelm me with the stuff.  One small area at a time.

I usually have a big nativity display but I'm still struggling to find the right place for it in this house.  Otherwise I think I'm done decorating for the year and we'll just enjoy the lights and colors as we reflect on the Light of the World coming into the world to save us.  And as we look forward eagerly to His second coming.

Whit thinks this small tree is just for him.  He's been sleeping by it all afternoon.  Occasionally he'll get up and play with the ribbon or rip a couple ornaments off it.

Hey - who turned off my lights?

Side note:  there is almost always something drying on the wood stove.  Tonight it's onion skins.  Great for dying wool or adding color and depth to broth.

Advent wreath.  An old tradition from our years in Germany.  
"Advent, Advent, ein Lichtlein brennt..."

One Tough Parkie

Anne and Kenji gave Pete a couple of early Christmas gifts this week and he broke them in this morning at the gym.

Cool new shirt!

New boxing gloves with the Rock Steady motto:  FIGHT BACK against Parkinson's!

Pete's journey with Parkinson's disease has been such an adventure.  When he was diagnosed almost 6 years ago we thought we were facing a rapid downward progression.  What has actually happened, by God's grace and sovereign guidance, has been nothing short of miraculous.  

The first "coincidence" that started changing our lives was meeting a woman at a party who has PD and who said we should come to this amazing support group that met in a church not far from our house.  That support group opened the door to us in so many ways, especially in informing us about how critical exercise is for PD patients.  Exercise has been shown to be more effective than any of the current drug therapies.  We got on the band wagon and started exercising religiously by doing 4 mile run/walks three or four times a week.  This gave us the mindset that we CAN change the progression of this disease if we are willing to be aggressive in working against it.

Another "coincidence" was a YouTube link someone sent me showing an interview with a PD patient who was doing Rock Steady Boxing therapy.  I sent the link to my daughter and son-in-law.  Kenji was uniquely positioned through decades of boxing and martial arts experience to understand this concept.  He immediately embraced the idea, was able to take the Rock Steady certification training and by the time we moved back to the farm he was ready to take on his first Parkie.  We arrived home on a Sunday afternoon and Monday morning Anne and Kenji had us out in the garage, teaching us the basics of boxing and starting us on circuit training.

A third "coincidence" was a neighbor stopping in to drop something off but who ended up telling us about a gym in Minooka that had closed down and was available.  God opened the door for Anne and Kenji to rent the space and (after much investment of time and effort), K-Fit Minooka was opened for business.  In the almost two years it's been open it has been changing lives through the Rock Steady program but also through boxing classes for men and women who have never boxed or never been to a gym.  The classes have become invaluable support groups for so many people who thought they could never get fit.  

A fourth "coincidence" was a video link someone sent me that eventually started us down the path (well, actually, "catapulted us" would be more accurate) to switching to a totally whole foods plant-based diet.  Anne and Kenji joined us and we've never looked back, feeling better than we've felt in decades.  

These "coincidences" have clearly been the hand of God, graciously moving people like chess pieces into our lives at critical moments to supply our needs and give direction.  If I were making a movie of this PD journey I'd have to have some fancy special effects or music to signal LIFE CHANGING MOMENT AHEAD!!!! at certain of these junctures.  It's really fun to look back, reflect on how seemingly random things happened that caused a significant change in direction.  God is so creative in His ways and means and it's SUCH an adventure to be on the journey with Him.

An angel named "Dave"

Spoiler alert! Dave is actually a contractor, not an angel - but the point of this blog is that God used him to meet a need I had even before I had any idea that I needed it.

Yesterday morning about 10am Becky and I went to Menard's in Morris and bought some tile for a kitchen backsplash. I paid for it, put the credit card into my billfold, and my billfold into my coat pocket with my gloves. We walked to the car, loaded the tile in and then headed for home.

A little after noon yesterday I saw a pickup pull into our driveway. Now, in the country we generally recognize people by the vehicle they drive (which for guys is usualy a pickup). But I didn't recognize this pickup - so off to the backdoor to greet whomever ... "What can I do for you?"

The fellow smiled, held up a billfold and said, "Today's your lucky day!" And he was right - it wasn't just someone's billfold. It was my billfold. "I'll bet you don't even know where you lost it." I told him I suspected it was when I was going out of Menard's. I asked him what his name was and he said "Dave". Just Dave, nothing else. He said he found the address on my driver's license but no phone number. So, he decided to drive out here on his lunch break and see if I was home. I told him thanks several times, but I think I was kind of stunned by God's intervention on my behalf before I even knew the billfold was missing.

Becky, Anne and I talked over at home last night and decided that a nice gift card to Amazon would be appropriate. This morning I printed one out and went to Menard's to find Dave and thank him again. I found the manager at the front and explained I was looking for the employee named Dave who had found my billfold yesterday and returned it to me. She looked puzzled - and then explained that there wasn't any Dave who worked there that fit my description. She confirmed that with another of the employees. And suddenly finding Dave had become a lot more difficult.

I drove back home, thinking about what I should do next. I decided that waiting would only make finding Dave more difficult. I would do the only thing I could think of: drive around the north end of Morris for a couple hours, looking for a pickup like Dave had been driving ... and ask God to help me find him.

I spent 20 minutes checking out parking lots north of I80 without seeing anything like Dave's pickup. So I decided to begin going through parking lots south of I80. As I was going past Morris Diner I saw a pickup toward the back that reminded me of the one Dave had been driving. I went around the block, came back and pulled into the Diner's parking lot. Sure enough, it was a contractor's vehicle - I could tell from the tools inside. So what's next - I guess I go in and have a look around the restaurant - staring at each of the patrons and seeing if any match my increasingly fuzzy memory of the previous day.

This is WAAAAYYYY out of my comfort zone!

I went in and the manager was at the cash register inside the front door. I explained to him that I was looking for the guy who had returned my billfold the day before and I had seen a pickup outside that was similar to the one he had been driving. Would it be okay for me to look through his patrons? Somehow the manager really got into it. He had me look through those on the north first. I looked at one fellow and said, "Dave?", but he shook his head. A cursory glance into the south half wasn't promising, but the manager said I should go right in and take a good look at the people eating there.

Among the patrons in the south half of the restaurant were six contractors gathered around two tables - clearly they had come in together. The one furthest from me looked kind of like the guy I had seen yesterday, so I walked toward him and asked if his name was Dave. "No," he said, "that's my dad". Then from behind me I heard a voice say, "Peter?!"

Yup, that was Dave. "How did you find me?" I explained that I had asked God to help me find him, so I could say thanks appropriately and I gave him the Amazon gift card containing the gift certificate. I don't think Dave had told the others about the billfold, because he explained what had happened and how he happened to find me.

It was good Dave found it and not someone else. He saw it lying on the ground in the Menard's parking lot. There was a fellow getting into a car near it and he said to him, "Excuse me, I think you've dropped your wallet. " The guy felt his pocket and said, "No, I've got mine." Then seeing the billfold on the ground he said, "... but I think it's my wife's." However, before that fellow could respond, Dave stooped down and picked up the wallet, which was very cold - a sure sign that it had been there for some time and was certainly not "the wife's" wallet.

Later Dave looked through he billfold for a phone number he could call, but found none. Online searches only offered phone number results for money. Checking the address he discovered it was only 10 minutes away, so he decided to take his lunch break to drive out to our farm and return the wallet to a stunned Peter Meyer.

Why in the world did God orchestrate this whole adventure? I have no doubt that I'm getting increasingly clumsy and a little dense in my old age, so it's not as if this kind of behavior on my part is novel. But why would God arrange to have it brought back and then honor Himself by helping me find Dave? I don't know. But as I was getting ready to leave Dave and his coworkers to finish their lunch, he said to me, "You have no way of knowing how much this means to me."

Angels are literally "messengers of God". So in that sense, Dave was an angel. But it also seems like God not only blessed me through this angel, but blessed the angel as well.

Music for the next generation

Way back in the 1990's when the kids were elementary school age I did what most mothers do at some point:  sign their kids up for piano lessons and then coerced them into going.  The piano teacher lived just down the road and around a corner so that wasn't a problem.  The biggest hurdle was that we didn't own a piano.  I dragged the kids over to our country church to practice but long term that wasn't a good solution.  My mom, who miraculously still believed in the value of piano lessons after years of making me take them to no avail (I have no talent and only played under duress), decided that she would buy us a piano.  All I can say is, "hope springs eternal in the heart of a grandmother."  She went to the local music shop in Yorkville, IL and bought a nice used spinet piano.  The shop owner, a wiry little old man, duly delivered it to our house and (again miraculously) moved that piano into the house all by himself.  

I wish I could say that all three of the kids did brilliantly at piano and were eternally grateful for the lessons.  They stuck with it for a couple years but I let them quit when their interest waned, probably because I remembered my own indifference to playing the piano when I was their age.  At least it taught them to read music (maybe???).  HOWEVER, the piano remained with us after their musical careers ended.  It was a physical memory of Omi and I just couldn't get rid of it.  It moved to California when we did.  It was loaned to our pastor's children for a couple years (until they in turn lost interest).  It moved back to Del Mar Ave and then back to the farm with us.  And now it has moved on to the next generation.  And I must say, it's current prospects for actually being used are much the best that they've ever been.  The Golden family is musically way out of our league and hopefully Joshua has inherited all those music genes from Grandma and Grandpa Golden.  At any rate, they won't have to take him to the church to practice.

The big question was, how to move the piano?  I priced a couple piano moving services but then turned to YouTube U and watched a bunch of videos on how to do it ourselves.  We ended up doing it that way and it went flawlessly (except for the accident with the truck enroute but that had nothing to do with the piano).  It is now safely moved in and the piano era on the farm has ended.  I think my mom would be very happy to know that her gift is still giving to the next generation.

Partially wrapped, strapped and up-ended, all hands on deck.

After more wrapping and strapping it's out the door to the lift.

Up-ended, it fit into the lift which saved the guys having to take it down 8 steps.

Around the corner, down the ramp and over to the trailer.

MORE wrapping and strapping and tying down.

Then down the road towards Minooka!  it does look suspiciously like a sarcophagus at this point.

One more doorway then into place and unwrap.

It's getting the Joshie seal of approval.

Now we just have to wait for the talent to show through!

The first snow day of the 2018-9 winter season

Beginning Friday afternoon of last week weathermen were warning northern Illinois of the first major snowstorm of the season. We could expect to get 10" or more starting Friday night. But storms are fickle things and this one waited around until Sunday to really dump on the area. Although parts of Chicago did get buried under 10" of snow, we didn't get more than about 2". It did rain much more than expected and when it turned colder that turned to ice. The ice brought down branches and power lines in the area around us, but fortunately we didn't lose any trees, though we did lose power.

This first shot of our home reminds me of similar winter pictures of the house's earlier incarnation - before we raised it 6 feet and had a new foundation dug and poured under it. The picture almost looks like a black-and-white photo because the snow is so bright. 

Annnnnnnnnnddddd ... the color is back! On the left of the picture you can see what remains of our "to split" wood pile. Micah and Lucas were over last Friday, to work with me. They took turns feeding me logs to split and collecting and stacking the split pieces of wood. I'll probably need to do a little more splitting this winter in order to finish the season with a warm wood stove.

This is a shot of one of our native prairie plant areas. What you don't see is the grave I dug in the brush here for the old tomcat that used to hunt the mice, etc., for us on the farm. His name was Stanley. Apparently he had done too good a job of it, because he took up hunting across the road from us, too. It looked like he had been hit in the head by a car. He must have been killed instantly, because he was laying by the side of the road, as if frozen in the midst of running and his tail held high. Life and death are all part of life on a farm. He was a good cat - I gave him a good burial.

I don't know about you, but my first question when I saw this photo our daughter Anne took today was: where is the other dog?! After a minute I saw him (just above the sheep on the right). The dogs and sheep love the cold weather. The sheep's coats are so thick, that the cold is a relief - and the dogs aren't much different. They have a shed they can go into, where we keep their drinking water from freezing and there is nice soft straw to lay on. Do you think they appreciate it? Not!

We have a new neighbor to the east. They haven't moved in yet as they are still working on renovating the house. He texted me this afternoon to ask if they were the only ones without power or if really that many of the neighbors here have generators. I answered in the affirmative about the generators. Apart from the power going out on average maybe once a month for a few minutes (more annoying than damaging), we seem to lose it for half a day or longer about once a year ... and today was the day. The power went out about 1:30am and hasn't come back on yet (it's after supper already). That can be pretty serious if you depend on electricity for water or heat, not to mention internet or TV (like maybe for a Christmas movie or a football game). Or for a farmer who uses electricity to keep his animals' water from freezing. Or someone who is handicapped that relies on powered assist devices. We had a whole house (+ farm buildings) unit installed that will kick out up to 22kW if called upon.

Today I was thinking back to past snow days in our home ... days when the kids were smaller, much smaller, long before the days when we had a generator. God provided for us then just as faithfully as He does now. Drinking water we got from family or neighbors who lived nearby and had power. To flush the toilet, we went to the creek behind the house and got a 5 gallon bucket of cold water - maybe after breaking ice, if there wasn't any free flowing water. No - we didn't use the bucket for "you know what". We used the creek water to flush the toilet. The kids would often go outside to play in the snow for an hour. And when they came in, we hunkered down around the wood stove, which we fed religiously. And then we read books or built with Legos or played games together. Life was good.

While I was writing that last paragraph, the phone rang and Becky answered. It was a neighbor, calling to let us know that the power came back on.

And what better way to spend a snowy day than working on a Christmas jigsaw puzzle!?!

A LOT happens in a 9 months - back to posting!

Almost 9 months without a post!  Here's a quick "alphabetical recap" of a few of the momentous and mundane things that have happened during the months of this great silence.  

Astronomy:  Pete got a new camera for his telescope and is setting up an astronomy shed.

Books:  Lots of reading this year for both of us.  I was keeping a record of everything I read this year but fizzled out after 75 sometime in August.

Camping trip to Wisconsin:  A return to Brunet Island State Park.  Heavenly days of rest.

Canning: The shelves are groaning.  You name it, I canned it!

Before...

During...

After!

Deerhaven Drive:  Stephen and Becca's new house in Minooka!

Escape to Door County:  Road trip over Labor Day weekend with Anne.  Memories made. Sunset cruise was a highlight.

Flowers:  Anne and Becca went crazy planting flowers this year.  I think every seed sprouted.  And bloomed.  And bloomed.

Goldens living with us:  During their transition from California to Illinois, through the job hunt and house hunt.  Lots of memories made.

Gardening:  Experimented with gardening on plastic.  It was a success.  No weeds.  Loved it!

Those tiny plants in the boxes (previous photo) grew to THIS!

Haircut:  I took Joshua for his first haircut right before they moved from California.

Illinois skies, sunrises and sunsets:  One of the best things about wide open spaces is seeing the sky.

Joshua:  Life with a toddler in the house was lively and fun, fun, fun.

On the go....on the farm

Cheery breakfast face waiting for us every morning

Kale:  Bumper crop this year in the garden.  It's still going strong!

Leaves:  Autumn is our favorite season.  Color, color, everywhere.

 Moving kids across the country and then into their new home.

Good-bye little apartment in California!

Hello, new house in Minooka!

Owls:  Another brood of great horned owls was raised on the farm this spring and summer.  They are more heard than seen but are definitely a presence.

Plant-based diet:  We switched to plant-based in late February and haven't regretted it for a minute!

Quality time with the grandsons.  I don't know if they'll have memories of the good times but we sure will!

Rug hooking:  Just a couple projects this year - one major repair of an antique rug.  Some wool dying.  A pillow or two.

Silverado:  Our "new" pickup.  A REAL truck!

Tomatoes:  Bushels and bushels of them this year.  

Upholstery projects:  Just a few but enough to keep my hand in at it.  One BIG upholstery project for church, done with a friend.

Recovered camper cushions.

Recovering Hannah's ottoman and teaching her the ropes

14 cushions recovered for the church!

Visitors:  Not much room with 7 of us in the house but we squeezed a few more in.

Wood-splitting:  It was time to get serious about keeping warm this winter.

Workouts:  Three times a week we're at the gym, whether we feel like it or not.  Motion is life!  Anne and Kenji keep us moving.

Xtra grace for communal life here on the farm!

Yellowstone National Park - the planned trip that DIDN'T happen!  There's always next year...
Zinnias:  The girls picked dozens of bouquets of zinnias that they grew.