Music, Music, Music

Tomorrow morning, at 9:30,  I start working with the United Methodist Church choir again at our first rehearsal.  

In fact, I don't expect anyone to actually show up over the Labor Day weekend.  If they do, we won't sing, but discuss the anthems we'd like to do in the choir year, which runs from labor Day until the week before Memorial Day.  We need to count our singers.  Can we do four part harmony this year, or are we going to dwindle to SAB music (soprano, alto, bass)?  Or even two parts?

We are an older choir.  These days people are too busy with their lives to show up for our practices, even though we moved them from Wednesday to Sunday mornings before church.  The few young adults in the church teach Sunday school or catechism classes.  Like many denominations, the Methodists are struggling to retain members.

Each year our choir seems to lose a member or two.  This year it is Elaine, one of our altos, though hers is a happy leave taking.  She is soon to be married and will be leaving Seymour.  That leaves two altos, and one of them lives out of town and often can't make it.

I no longer tell the pastor what we are singing on Sunday.  "Just put 'anthem'", I tell her, since I almost always have to change the selection depending on who shows up. We are lucky in that most of our members read music, so we can adapt. We don't order new music.  We have four four-drawer filing cabinets with music that dates back five decades.  That will suffice.

One of these years will be the last year.  Until then we struggle on, doing the best we can.

The Ordinance

Back at the beginning of June, the City of Seymour in its wisdom demanded that I remove all the plants on the terrace strip (the area between the sidewalk and the street).  I had spent years tending a flower garden there which had been the delight of children, walkers and neighbors, but some grinch had complained about it. What interested me during the digging up procedure was that so many passersby stopped to say it was a terrible thing to do.

(See the posts for June 3, 2011 - "Mowing it Down" and June 7, 2011 - "Lemon Meringue Pie")

Since that time, the strip has remained dirt with a few irises and day lilies poking their sprouts out of the ground.  Nothing attractive, that is certain.

A week ago Monday the city council approved the first reading of an amendment to the terrace planting ordinance allowing plants of up to 40 inches (my tallest plants were the irises at less than 40 inches) in a defined bed covering not more than 50 square feet (the size of that flower bed).

I stopped at city hall and asked what was going on.  It seems the council got some complaints from citizens who pointed out that people liked my flowers, especially the bouquets I used to donate to anyone who asked.

None of this will bring back the flower garden in that strip.  It takes at least three years to get a perennial bed going and up to ten years to get it to full bloom.  I don't have the money for the many bulbs and plants. Most of what was there was donated.  

Neither do I have the time.  I am now 67 and no longer have the energy I did twenty five years ago when I began my gardens.  Gary and I want to travel and camp in these golden years, not be tied down to this place.  We are going to slowly remove some of the plots I planted.   That time has passed. If I plant anything on the terrace strip, it will only be hostas, easy to care for, no mowing required.

The council's actions cannot bring back what was, but younger gardeners now can do what I did.  If they do, I will be sure to stop by and thank them for bringing beauty to a barren landscape.

Happy Together

I didn't light many fires when I was on tour.  Neither does Gary have a campfire when he is alone at the campsite when I am here in Seymour.  Fires are meant to be shared as the sun goes down and darkness descends.

On one such evening, we began to talk about our life together.  As a couple, we go back almost three decades of dating, each of us living solitary lives when we weren't together.When he moved in with me here in Seymour, we both worried about what our new arrangement would mean to our friendship. 

From the beginning, we knew we would need our own space. I have an office downstairs, he has his upstairs.  He has the basement for his workshop, I have my backyard garden.  I go on tours by myself, he goes camping by himself (with me dropping in from time to time).  Once a week during the winter, I have a meeting in Appleton during the day, and on Thursday nights, he is off to his own. 

We eat two out of three meals on our own, just meeting for a lunch or supper each day. When we camp, Gary likes to canoe on his own, and I like going on hikes.  We believe in giving each other space.

But within those parameters, we share so much.  We like to talk politics and books. We love nature, classical and folk music, and camping. We  both like to laugh.  We never run out of conversation.

It's been almost two years since Gary and I began living together.  How are we doing? I wondered as we sat by the fire at Lost Lake. 

Very well, it seems.  Gary told me how happy he is with our arrangement.  Neither of us see the need to change anything.

I am happy, too.

Moving On

This morning, Gary and I left Lost Lake, probably for the last time this year. But that doesn't mean the end of camping season.

I drove off first to get to Lake Ottawa, in the Ottawa National Forest, near Iron River, Michigan.   Marty, Linda and Brandon, friends from Illinois, were vacating our favorite site, no. 14 and leaving it to us.  By the time I got there at 8:30 a.m., they had already left.

To hold the site, I put our payment envelope with pay for seven days in the fee receptacle, put out folding chairs, started a fire in the pit, and waited for Gary and the camper.  I sat at the fire, read the last of the books for the adult reading program, and walked around a little bit.  Then the rain started, not a deluge, but sprinkles that came and went.

I sat in the car and read some more, eating an orange. By the time he arrived, I was really hungry, but he brought a sandwich from McDonald's.  In fact, I didn't have to go through all that trouble.  There were few campers at Lake Ottawa, and no one but us in the loop.

Lake Ottawa is the largest of the lakes we visit, 550 acres.   It does allow motorized boats, but the lake is so big, they are never much of a nuisance. Our canoe can slip into quiet inlets away from any noise.  

We are particularly smitten with the campground hostess, Anita Joy, 80 years young, who has been watching over Lake Ottawa for years.  Her site with its trailer is bedecked with flowers, signs, and figurines.  Last year, some nosy bureaucrat came and tried to create a stink about her decorations but her faithful fans backed her up and brought even more flowers.  It helps that she serves tea and cookies to all comers.  

Once Gary was established, I took off for Seymour and home to deal with tomatoes, bills and a sad kitty, who is missing his humans this summer.   I will spoil him until Sunday afternoon when I will return to the forest for another week.

Gary expects to keep right on camping until mid-October.  Lucky guy.   But then he held down the fort when I toured out west. Fair is fair.

Critters

Adjacent to the Lost Lake campground is the Lauterman trail system, about 12 miles of hiking trails.  In my day, I've hiked every mile.  This year, with a sore right knee, I've stayed away from the more difficult treks, like the Ridge Trail.  That one is nice because the eagles nest over there, and there's often the chance of bears.  A little fear is good for the soul.

Instead, I have twice hiked around Lost Lake, a 1.5 mile walk.  Yesterday, I decided to do the one mile Assessor's Tree Interpretive Trail. 

The trail is named for an assessor who was asked to look over a stand of timber for a lumber company. He judged which acreage the company should purchase, but when he came to the section that included an old growth hemlock grove, he couldn't stand the idea of it being clear cut.  Instead, he marked off a section that should not be touched, with a tall pine in the center.  In time, the woods became part of the Nicolet National Forest. The pine still stands, though the top was taken off in a storm.

A few years ago, a windstorm came through,shearing off some of the old hemlocks.  The forest service cut some chunks out of the logs to clear the trail.  We counted the rings on one section and came to the conclusion that the tree first took root during the French-Indian War, some years before the American  Revolution.

Soon after I entered the trail, a great horned owl flew across.  We knew he was out there, he and the barred owls were having an argument two nights before.  However, owls make no noise when they fly, so I was lucky to catch sight of him.

A few minutes later I found two black backed woodpeckers working on removing insects from a dying tree.  Again, we knew they were in the area, because we had heard their gentle tapping, plus we had sighted them in years past.  These are rare birds, hardly seen in other parts of the state.  I was particularly happy to see them because they became sighting no. 100, on my yearly list.  

Later, I walked the campground loop after dropping the garbage off at the bins.  At site no. 10, a party was going on with beer, a noisy radio, and loud voices.  The other filled campsites were on the other end, so I didn't give it much thought.  They were no bother for us.  Then at the next campsite I saw a young doe nibbling on grass with no thought to the noise.  Scrambling around under her feet was a chipmunk.  She moved, he bounce around after her.  It was charming.  For a moment, I thought about letting the people at site 10 know about their new neighbors, then thought, nope.  Leave her in peace.  I was so sorry I didn't have a camera with me.

Then, back at site no. 24, we were about to turn in for the night, when we, too, had a visitor, a young buck this time.  He came right up to us and nothing we did, including taking this slightly out of focus photo, could scare him away.

No bears, but nature continues to amuse us.

The Red Squirrel

Yesterday morning, I hiked the Lost Lake Trail.  Gary said it was 1.2 miles around the little lake but that doesn't count circling around the boat landing and the bog.  It's pretty tame hiking, though bears have been spotted in the bog area from time to time. 

I once was tramping along with my brain in the clouds and I thought, I'll have to skirt that little patch of brush.  I woke up just in time and stopped, avoiding the porcupine who was waddling along, in no particular hurry.

This time the only critter I came upon was a red squirrel who followed me for a spell.  He seemed very interested in me.

Red squirrels are the smallest of our squirrels, just a tad bit bigger than chipmunks.   We see them wherever there are conifers.  They can cache a bushel of cone pines to save for the winter months. One way of spotting their nests, made of bark and leaves, is by watching for the discarded cone parts and nuts with the nutmeats missing.

They are much smaller than their cousins, the gray squirrels, but will chase them away from their territory, mostly by taking over the food sources.

They chatter away whenever anyone goes by, making threatening noises, but this young squirrel just observed me.  I wondered if some human had been feeding him. 

I invited him to our campsite for peanuts, but after fifteen minutes he gave up on me. 

Toilet Paper

Back when I was a little girl, my grandmother Pearl worked at the Outagamie County Fairgrounds in Seymour as a superintendent for displays of adult entries for judging (flowers, fancywork, etc.).  We grandchildren came over to sit with her at the industrial building.  During a break, she took me over to the restrooms and showed me how to line the toilet seat with toilet paper.  I watched, did as she asked and never did it again. While I admired Grandma's talent in many areas and loved her strong character, I thought the commode treatment was silly and I still do. What barrier against germs is toilet paper?

But over the years, I see grandmother inspired lining of commodes in all manner of public restrooms and this week, at the Lost Lake campgrounds, I lost patience. I say enough is enough!

The women whose delicate derrieres require this treatment should have sensibilities enough to then remove the paper and dispose of it, but instead, it winds up all over the commode and floor.  Furthermore, they use so much toilet paper in this idiotic endeavor that by the end of a weekend, there is none for those of us who need it to wipe our bottoms.   

It happens so often in these summer campgrounds that we now bring our own t.p. just in case.

I suppose even worse are the women who use their hands to prop themselves up so they don't touch the toilet seat.  They wind up spraying the seat and I suppose their hands, all in the name of being sanitary.   The next occupant, if not paying attention, settles down on a mist of urine.

It boggles the mind.

Ladies, if you are that worried about catching some disease, bring along a spray bottle and a cloth and clean the seat before you use it.  Those of us less fastidious people would appreciate it.