Conversations

Overheard at the lunch table today:

V: "If we had a pet turtle, would it love pizza?"

A: "No, real turtles eat lettuce. Only Ninja Turtles love pizza."

Worthwhile weeding

I love the fruit of the garden, but weeding has never been one of my favorite things to do. There are a lot more interesting things in the this world than spending a couple of hours ripping plants out of the earth. Sure, it is good exercise. Yes, weeding leaves the nutrients and the garden space for plants that we eat.

It is still a pretty boring task.

Earlier this morning, I tackled the Queen Anne's Lace that invades our garden ever year. It comes up through the fences to the north and the east. We have always had a big problem with it around our grapevines because the property behind that is a rental, and none of the tenants have ever cared enough to get out there and weed the fence line. I rip it out a couple of times a year, and, slowly, it is making a difference.

Today, I discovered an extremely unexpected benefit to weeding. As I ripped out a clump of the Queen Anne's Lace, something in the roots caught my eye. Small, round, gold. It was a little ring, tangled up in the roots of the weeds, buried underground for the last four or five years.

How do I know it was buried for only four or five years?

This is not just any ring. It is a ring that my godmother gave me when I was a young child, one I wore for years until I outgrew it as a young teen. I gave it to the girls when they became old enough that it fit. One of them lost it a number of years back.

I cannot believe that I dug this ring up with the weeds. I have been convinced for years that it was long gone and would never be seen again. I guess there are some benefits to doing a hated task like weeding, eh? My little sapphire ring is now tucked away in my jewelry box to await a future granddaughter.

I do hope that she will be more careful with it.


*This photo is not of the ring in situ, obviously. Had I realized what it was while it was still all tangled in the roots, I would have run in for the camera to photograph it there. Instead, I stuck it on another plant to photograph it.

Disappearing Magic

Luis is a fan of those "Weird Places in Wisconsin" books and websites. He likes finding out about the odd little spots that most of us simply drive by and never realize are there.

Every once in a while, when he gets on a kick of looking for odd spots near us, I remember one that my father took us to as children. It was a miniature village located on a hillside. This was just down the road a little bit from the driveway to a farm that my parents owned in Vermont Township. If someone was driving along, all that would be seen is set of wooden stair built into a hillside, Civilian Conservation Corp style.

I remember walking from the Vermont farm down to this hillside with my dad a few times. Walk up the stairs, and it was like entering a world of gnomes. There was a little village up there: church, farm, homes, buildings. It was truly magical to me as a child.

Once, when Luis was looking at a book or website on oddball sites in Wisconsin, we even found a reference to this hidden village. It was listed as a spot that used to exist, but that had likely fallen into disrepair or had disappeared.

This weekend, we were on a family outing that took us up to Mount Horeb, and we took the back way to The Shoe Box in Black Earth. I thought of the little village as we went past Tyrol Basin, and I directed Luis to take a small mystery trip.

As we parked on the curve just past Peculiar (if you know the story of that name, you an old-time local), it did not look good. The stairs were long gone, and the path was completely overgrown with small trees and underbrush. I couldn't even say for certain where the stairs had been until after I had already climbed up the side of the hill and looked down.

The older three kids and I scaled the side of the hill and fought our way through the brush until we found it. The village was no more, but surprisingly, there was still a clearing there, an open spot on a hillside that is now full of small trees and bushes. There were a few old relics of the village in the clearing, enough to let me know that I had not misremembered things: a church, a barn, the old silo, a "brick" foundation of another building balanced upon a flat rock. The two buildings had been moved next to one another, and both were missing their roofs. There was small saplings growing up through both buildings.

It was a little heartbreaking to see something so magical simply falling apart, but that is what happens when the person who envisioned the magic is gone. I am sure that the creator of the village was an older man, and that he has long since left this world.

As we were up on the hillside, someone who lives in the farm below and across the road come out and got his lawnmower out of the barn. We were not stealthy at all, parking blatantly on his property on a curve and trespassing on the hillside rather noisily. Vincent said something to Luis about the man mowing his lawn not knowing what we were doing. Luis replied that the man probably did know.

That statement has been sticking with me. I hope that that man did know what we were looking for. I hope he knew of the village before it fell into disrepair. I hope that he remembers the magic and that he is happy that someone else in the world remembers it too, remembers it enough to bring her family to come look for it.

As long as there are a few people who can remember, magic lives on.

Logic

I started working out regularly again last month. Yes, time to get moving on that once more. The last year was not a good one for fitness for me.

So, tonight I was lamenting the fact that we no longer have a YMCA membership. I would like to use the elliptical or stair stepper and use some of the muscles that the Nordic Track and walking do not work quite as well.

Luis helpfully pointed out to me that we own multiple staircases.

I spent twenty minutes going up and down two steps in the basement. Whooooo, can I ever feel it in my calves. So much for using that as a great reason to get the Y membership back.

Why must my husband be so bloody logical?

Vincent just walked inside and told me this:

"Mama, I'm getting creative in the back yard. I just need two big nails."

Should I be worried?

I had the interesting experience of chaperoning Abigail's girl scout troop the to Dell's last weekend. Ten tween girls, two hotel rooms, two adults, no soy lattes to be found anywhere in the resort complex.

Good times.

Anyways, soy lattes aside, it was rather fun. I always enjoy watching the kids interact with the friends. Isabella was invited to join Abigail's troop, and I liked having some time with just the girls. It seems like too often these days, I end up going places with just the boys since the girls are old enough to stay home alone together.

I spent a lot of time people watching since going to an indoor waterpark is pretty much a Geneva Convention forbidden form of torture in my opinion. Bizarre tattoos and swimwear aside, I really like people watching. I enjoy observing how people interact with one another. One of my favorite things was watching fathers with their young children by the water. Protective and fun at the same time would sum up most of the fathers. I particularly liked watching them around the lazy river. The way that the fathers would cradle their toddlers in their arm as they floated around the river in the tubes was heart melting. A professional photographer could get some wonderful photos there.

Truly, it made me long for Luis and my boys as I watched other fathers.