Locals, Lore, and the End of Main Street

6/28/14



Congratulations to Mike and Elizabeth (different Elizabeth) on the occasion of their glorious wedding. You are beautiful. Your wedding was beautiful. We were honored to have been included in your celebration.




Congratulations to Elizabeth and Mike (at the Semple Mansion in Minneapolis). 6/28/14




6/29/14



The garage once again filled (despite a complete purge and restructuring) with chairs and other supplies, including a porch swing that was a wedding present to my parents. Four hours of prep and loading. Two hours of driving. We had just enough time to water the sod (which looks great), mow the crab grass (which looks okay), and plant two more trees (which will someday look spectacular).

Dwayne stopped by to help us unload a giant vanity that Elizabeth procured for the bathroom that doesn't exist and he talked about the history of the town. There is still one building left of the main street just a half mile or so down the road from us. So cool.




Last photo of Main Street in Ellson. 7/4/14




Things took a terrible turn toward the tragic when Elizabeth decided the tractor sprinkler was impractical. The poor little tractor was unceremoniously detached and abandoned. I am devastated.




Elizabeth planting the oak. 6/29/14




At 9:30pm the sun has just crept beneath the horizon. The wind has calmed to a light breeze. It is cool and quiet. The crickets and frogs are singing to one another. There is still plenty of work to do, but even a few moments of stillness provide all of the motivation required.




The field is covered with these little pollinators. 8/2/14




8/2/14



Elizabeth is building an outhouse out of the scrap wood she piled in the driveway a year ago. Dad, Sylas, and I met with the septic guy out at the schoolhouse. Takin care of business.




Scrap lumber for the future outhouse 5/23/14




Turns out the water table is pretty high and you can't have your septic system below the water table. This might mean doing a mound system which is more expensive. Not the best news. But Travis was super knowledgable and keen to chat. I feel like we're in good hands.




Wildflower in the field. 8/2/14




A car load of neighbors stopped by this morning. Jenny and her boyfriend (she did not say fiancé) are from St Paul. They bought undeveloped property just up the road from us and intend to build their dream home where they will get married in a couple years. She was super friendly and excited to meet some people with which she had some things in common.

Her friend Theresa, also from St Paul, has a place around here as well. She said she was glad to meet us, but she also said she was upset that the schoolhouse was off the market. She kept making disappointed sounds while we showed them around the inside. Theresa's boyfriend didn't even get out of the car.

We talked about the best time for a wedding up here as far as weather and mosquitoes. Both thought the least chance of rain was mid July if we didn't mind the heat. Jenny talked about some kind of worm that comes out mid May through mid June that in turn feeds the flies. Best to avoid those.




Seth, dad, and Sylas chillin on the lawn. 8/3/14




Dad, Sy, and I took a stab at moving some dirt to the base of the foundation to improve the grading, but it is backbreaking work. The soil is more compact now than it was in the spring and we're fighting weeds and wildflowers that have grown up to cover the moonscape.




Bee in flight. Amazing photography! 8/2/14




The ground cover has largely halted the erosion. Super good. There are bees everywhere. The hillside buzzes as they work to pollinate everything repeatedly. There are flowers and butterflies. Sylas saw a deer early this morning.




The erosion has largely been halted by the bits of green that are coming up. 6/12/14




We knocked down two paper wasp nests and there is a third that is too high to reach.

The sod has not been watered in more than a month and somehow it has neither died nor grown enough to require mowing. All of the trees we (read: Elizabeth) planted are still alive, but all have suffered with the lack of water and the oak looks sick. Hopefully we'll be able to give all of it the attention it needs this weekend and next.

Dwayne's field has corn where there was nothing a month ago.




The new corn 8/2/14




And there are even a pair of tomatoes growing on the plants mom planted!

The flower bed that we did the first weekend we came up here with Lily is completely overgrown with weeds and crabgrass. Shocking.

Dad is asleep now too.




Dad's (mom's) tomatoes. 8/3/14




Tony stopped by in a beat up old pickup truck that made me think he could buy a car for a hundred bucks and keep it running for a decade. The little kid in the passenger seat was not introduced. Tony lives half a mile north of the schoolhouse on forty acres. He does some trapping and hunting. He said his sons are raising about ten head of beef cattle and that his mom lives just up the road from us as well.

There's a little bit of animosity between Tony and Dwayne's family. Tony talked about it with a smile but wouldn't elaborate. I'll bet there's a story or two there.




Harmless? 8/2/14




For some reason dad brought his old .22 that I've never seen fired before. He also brought the bullets that I'm pretty sure are older than I am. I almost killed a bald eagle (unrelated to the gun or the bullets). We went to lunch at Peggy Sue's Cafe in town. On the way back a GIGANTIC bald eagle jumped up from the ditch ahead of us and flew in front of the truck for just a second. My immediate thought as I swerved to the left side of the highway was, "Please don't let me kill a bald eagle." It banked right and headed off across a field. Spectacular.




Shootin with dad's ancient 22. 8/3/14




8/3/14



Bat.

About 10:00 Friday evening I caught some movement in my peripheral vision. I knew instantly that it was a bat. Sylas grabbed his stuff, said, "I want to go home," and left the building. He only came back because the truck was locked.

Dad grabbed a rake and went up to the loft to see if there was any damage he could do but the bat never resurfaced. Luckily, Sylas had brought a tent in case there was a bat and seeing as how there was a bat, he proceeded to set up the tent in the middle of the room.




Safe room. 10/3/14




Dad called us chicken (which we were) and set up his cot out in the open and we pretty much went to sleep and left the bat alone.

The same scenario was repeated last night.

This morning a humming bird stopped four feet in front of me to investigate the new guy.





NEXT POST: Reality

Swallowtail (not a hummingbird). 8/9/14