Sunday, July 29, 2012

While We Were Gone

It takes a day or two to recover from a trip.

The first problem is sleeping.  Oddly enough, I couldn't get used to the quiet.  I live in a quiet town in on a quiet street in a well insulated house.  There were no sounds at night.

While we were on the trip around Lake Superior, we were mostly on the main highways, including the Trans Canadian Highway 17.   With two exceptions (Laura Lake and Crescent Lake) our campgrounds were near those roads and we had to get used to the noise of trucks and trains. Odd that we had to come home to find silence.

When we left, northeast Wisconsin was in a drought.  Lawns were brown and I was worried that my potted plants weren't long for the world.

As we were leaving Seymour, I noticed several people outside a neighbor's house.  I knew he had cancer and was very sick and wondered if he were worse.   When we came back, I found out he had died that day.  His wife told me that just before he died, she told him to tell God we needed rain.  It started to rain right away and Seymour had as much rain in two weeks as it had in the three prior months.  The whole garden is now a jungle I must fight through.  Weeding begins tomorrow.

While we were gone, a California physicist who was the last scientist who held out against the idea that global warming was occurring and said if there was climate change, it wasn't caused by humans, finished a study commissioned by the Koch Brother.  They, no doubt, figured they were paying him to agree with their anti-science stance.  Instead, after looking at all the data, he now agrees with all reputable scientists.  

Of course, I knew this all along, and my okra is proving it.  I've planted okra for the past few years because I like it in soups but it has been almost impossible to find in Wisconsin because it needs a longer growing season, like that in Kentucky.  Mostly, the okra experiment has been a failure, but each year, the plants have gotten a bit bigger.  Last year, I managed to harvest two small pods.

When we came back, the first thing I checked was the vegetable bed.  The okra is in flower which means the pods will form soon.  By the end of August, I should be able to harvest them.  

Tonight, we drove to the Manzke farm where Gary keeps his camper.  When we left, their lawn was stubble.  Now it is a lush green.   Their crops, which were near to failing, are now growing and should be fine if the rains continue through August.  They came just in a nick of time.

So starting tomorrow, it's back to the usual routine:  gardening, writing, blogging, exercising, walking, seeing friends and family.  Everything is as it was.

Until the next trip.


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