Category Archives: Uncategorized

gardening, holidays, Nature, Uncategorized

Country Mouse, City Mouse

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Today’s post comes from Reneeinnd.

We had four inches of rain the week leading up to July 4. That probably doesn’t sound like much to most Baboons, but out here it is really something.  The rain came perfectly, an inch at a time every other day or so.  The weather on July 4 was also perfect. It was a comfortable 75 degrees with a slight wind, just enough to keep the biting insects off.  My best friend was visiting from the Cities, and we decided to take a hike in Theodore Roosevelt National Park,  just a 40 minute drive.

We have lived here for 30 years, and I have never seen as many wild flowers and berries as I did on our hike. The rain led to perfect conditions for plants to show off their petals.  There were the usual wild roses, clematis, tiny bell flowers, flea bane, and sunflowers.  We missed the flowering prickly pear cactus by a couple of days. They had all set fruit.  It was amazing to see less common  flowers,  especially ones that have a counterpart in our garden in town.

There were tons of wild Monarda.

Here is our city counterpart.

We also found wild lupine.

Our city lupine is currently spent , with nothing but leaves.

Cone flowers are showy natives.

The City ones are somewhat over the top.

We found lots of buffalo berries and this old fellow all alone, without a herd. He seems to be ancient.

We don’t have buffalo berries in town, but we have red currants.

Some of the wild flowers stay where they are, like the country mouse. Others make the leap to be like the city mouse.

What kind of mouse are you?

 

Baboon Achievers, Food, gardening, Uncategorized, work

Stay-cation

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For the most part I’m not a fan of new words. I like the words we have and I always have to remind myself that we only have the words we have because at some point somebody made them up.

But every now and then a word comes along that I can embrace wholeheartedly. One of those words is “staycation” – a perfect way to say you are vacationing at home.

Today begins my first day of a nice, long staycation. Because  I’ve been with my company for quite some time, I have a generous number of vacation days and also because of my workload, I don’t get to use too many of them for a chunk of the year.  Now that my big program is out the door, I have to get cracking on these vacation days.  This means a week plus off now, the rest of the Mondays in the summer off and then the entire of State Fair off.

This week though is strictly for hanging out and working on some of the stuff that hasn’t been getting done the last few months – cleaning, straightening, cleaning, yardwork, cleaning. Did I mention cleaning?

On Day One I’m going to make strawberry jam and make some basil-infused oil. I know that doesn’t sound like cleaning, but I do have a mammoth list and it has cleaning projects for every day as well as some of the more fun stuff.

What new word can you embrace?

Baboon Achievers, Family, History, Kids, Stories, Travel, Uncategorized

Family Day

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Twenty-three years ago today, a little bundle with a shaved head was put into my arms.

I was half-way around the world, in a hotel in Hufei, China and there were five other bundles being handed off to five other sets of arms at the same time. We spent 8 days in Hufei while all the last bits of paperwork were filled out, signed, stamped and copied (the copier only took one page at a time and after 45 minutes had to sit for a bit to cool down).  Then we headed off to Guangzhou where we had 2 more days of paperwork, but this time U.S. paperwork.

Then the group broke up; Baby and I flew to Hong Kong for an extra day, taking a long taxi drive to the Stanley Market to get a few trinkets, including a Chinese chop with her name carved into it. Then we said goodbye to China and took the long flights to get back to Minnesota.

Most of you know that we celebrate this day every year (usually by going to The Melting Pot). We used to call it “Gotcha Day” since that was when we “got” each other, but when Child was about 10 she announced that she preferred “Family Day”.   She said that “gotcha” made her feel like a package being picked up at the post office.  So now we have Family Day.  Some years we do cards, although never gifts.  I already have the best gift.

Do you have a family tradition that needs re-naming?

Art, Family, Media, News, Uncategorized

Life Imitates Art?

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Many babooners will remember in Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant Massacree from the late 1960s. One detail that always tickled me was that The Police located them after finding one of their names on an envelope at the bottom of the pile of garbage they’ve thrown over a cliff.

Well, laugh all we want:  I found this recently in the Police Blotter from the Winona Post (our twice-weekly rag also called “The Shopper”):

  • At 6:21 p.m. deputies received a report of garbage dumped illegally on McArthur Ravine Road. Deputies located a shipping address in the trash, and made multiple attempts to reach M___ A___ of Plainview, MN, without success. M. A. was mailed a citation for illegal dumping.”

Husband and I have been reading the Police Blotter lately, mainly for comic relief from the grim and alarming news that we encounter elsewhere. Here are some gems (italics are my own reactions):

  • At 10:07 a.m. an adult male moved furniture from a vehicle and dumped it on his lawn…  (More shades of Alice’s Restaurant)
  • At 3 p.m. an adult male reported that the key to the trunk of his vehicle had been stolen from his keyring inside the vehicle, parked on the 650 block of W. Sarnia St.  (Remind me to not leave my keyring IN the car…)
  • At 8:46 a.m. officers received a report from an adult female that her car had been scratched on the hood and door while parked near County Road 12.  (Must have been a slow day.)
  • At 7:30 p.m. deputies received a report of the theft of a goat from an adult female in Altura. The woman reported that one juvenile presented the goat to another juvenile, and when the two ended a relationship, the first juvenile requested the return of the goat, but the second party would not comply. Deputies recommended that the parties involved resolve the matter civilly. (If this solution works, maybe we can do away with courts, jails, etc.)

And my personal favorite:

  • At 5:03 p.m. an adult male on the 200 block of E. Garvin Heights Road reported that 40 goats with pink spots were in a field near his home.  The reporting party believed the goats had been fired on with a paintball pistol. (I am speechless; for the entire story: )

Anything fun or interesting in your paper’s Police Blotter report?

When have you noticed that life imitates art?

Family, Kids, The Baboon Congress, Uncategorized, work

Johnny

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Today’s post comes to us from Ben.

Pastor Mike married us. And he baptized both kids.

A few years after that he moved back out to the West coast; a place where his soul really belonged.

We’d message on FB occasionally. He was learning to play guitar and I’d ask what he was listening too or what he was learning to play.

Johnny Cash was a common subject for both of us. Johnny’s ‘American’ series of recordings were some of our favorites. Mike would give me a verse from Tennessee Stud or Delia’s Gone and I’d give him the next. It was a neat way to connect with one of my favorite people.

Mike died of a brain tumor this winter.

I’m lighting a production of ‘Ring of Fire’ at the Rochester Civic Theater. It’s a Johnny Cash retrospective. Not much story, just a lot of his music played by 5 different singer/musicians. The other night at rehearsal they practiced Delia’s Gone.

I thought of Mike and how, maybe to no-one but myself, this show was for him.

I left rehearsal and headed for home. Checked some fields along the way. Stopped to check on our neighbor’s house since they are gone on vacation, stopped to close the gates at the end of our driveway and saw a motorcycle coming down the road. And I sort of groan inwardly… dang bikers. Thought I better get the gate shut quick.

As the bike gets closer I see it’s more of a scooter and a couple about my age on it. I say Hello and pull one gate shut. They pull up a little closer and call my name. And when they take the helmets off, it’s John and Mary.

Pastor John who was associate pastor with Pastor Mike.

I’m pretty sure Mike sent them out to see us tonight.

And I thought of this group of Baboons and Serendipity again.

Got a favorite religious person?

 

 

Food, gardening, Nature, Poems, Uncategorized

Ode to Gardening

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You all knew that you weren’t going to get through the summer without me waxing rhapsodic about my garden at least once. Wait no longer; today is the day.

The flowers are wild in the front… just about any color you can imagine but it’s my straw bales that are bringing me joy right now. Everything is flourishing beyond expectations.  The basil has exploded (pesto, here we come) and all the tomatoes are growing out of their tomato cages, with green tomatoes starting on all five plants.  Even the jalapeño is breaking all records for us.

And thanks to Linda, I have raspberry canes that are starting to pop. Today was the first day I picked enough to carry into the house (the last couple of days, raspberries went straight from cane to mouth).  Looks like there will be plenty of berries in the weeks to come.

As a city girl who never gardened growing up, all this generosity on the part of Mother Nature makes me absurdly happy. Every day I pinch the little flowers off the basil, pull the stray tomato stalks up through the tomato cage, water all the floral baskets, sigh deeply.  And then I think about Nathanial Hawthorne and his thoughts on gardening.

“I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green.”

~Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mosses from an Old Manse

What should I do with all my basil? Extra points if you can do it with a haiku.

Family, holidays, Kids, Stories, Uncategorized, Weather

Independence Times Two

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As the parent of a 23-year old, I am constantly reminding myself that it is my job to raise her to be independent and that it’s her job to grow up and forge her own path, separate from mine. Knowing this and living with the reality are two completely separate things.

We have two traditions on Fourth of July – the small neighborhood Tangletown Parade and the larger Richfield Parade. The first is walking distance from our house – kids on decorated bikes and trikes, dog with red and blue bandanas do a short parade down to the park where there is music, food and games.  Richfield has a more traditional parade with politicians, marching (& riding) bands, some military and local businesses.  And, of course, candy for kids.

I was a little disappointed when YA got up early and then started talking about going to the Mall with her boyfriend, but then I reminded myself that I could go without her and it would be OK. So I was surprised when she said she wanted to go to the neighborhood parade (and happy).  Of course, then it poured rain and neither of us went.

As I was getting ready to go to Richfield, she told me that the boyfriend still wasn’t ready and she wanted to go to the parade with me. Woo hoo!  Two stadium chairs, ice water, phones and umbrellas (which protected us from the sun and eventually the rain) and we were on our way.  It was a fine parade, with some planes flying in formation (a first) over the parade route three times and a giant grocery cart (also a first).  About 75% of the parade had gone by when the rain started and YA said she still wanted to stay until the end.  So we sat in our orange stadium chairs under our umbrellas and continued to wave our little flags at the remaining paraders.

It was nice to spend the day with her, especially after I had steeled myself to do the parades alone. I guess I have a year to steel myself for the next Fourth of July.

Have you ever had to declare YOUR independence?

Fifty Words, gardening, Nature, Uncategorized, work

Serendipity

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Last Friday I got off work at noon and spent the next 4 hours weeding my brains out. We have a 20 X 10 foot garden bed on the north side of the drive way that contains perennials and vegetables like beets, turnips, chard, carrots, and celeriac. The weeds were horrible.  Not long after I finished weeding, the most lovely, gentle rain began, with no wind or hail.  It was perfect.

When have things worked out just right for you?

Art, books, Movies, Uncategorized

Loincloths `R Us

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After a really busy week, I spent half of Saturday afternoon and most of Sunday binge-watching Tarzan. So here’s my question.  If Tarzan was raised by apes, who do not wear clothing, why does he wear a loin cloth?  When he was a child, who sewed that loin cloth?  When he returns to Africa after his stint in England, what tailor does he go to, to get his loin cloth?  OK, I guess that’s three questions.

What’s your favorite piece of comfort clothing?

 

Family, History, Music, Nature, Uncategorized

The Frog Prince

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I have a cousin who I find astonishing. I think he is my second cousin. His mom and my mom were first cousins. Our grandfathers were brothers. We are the same age and graduated from Luverne High School together.  We used to chase each other around the grade school play ground. He always had a fascination with reptiles and amphibians. Baboon Krista knew him from his work with the Minnesota DNR  as well as the Rock Bend Music Festival (Free, Free,  Free). He used to examine frogs to see if they were missing legs.  PJ knows him from their Danish Heritage Society. His  dad was Danish.

His recent Facebook posts reveal that he doesn’t work for the DNR  now, but for some reason  he is travelling around Madelia conducting field surveys trying to find and count Great Plains Toads.  I wonder how you count toads? How do you know you haven’t counted them twice? They jump around!

My cousin is also a luthier, and creates the most beautiful mandolins, Hardanger fiddles, nyckelharpas, and Viola D’ Amores.  What a range of interests. How on earth does this happen?

Who are some of the most astonishing and fascinating people you know?