Spring Days At Home

 Graber boys and their treehouse. I found this in Elv's mother's photo album last weekend. This picture conjures summer memories.  There are three boys here. You'll easily see two of them.  The third is opposite the leaning boy standing in the leaves there.

 Jen, Frank, Brad, and Amy with Grandma Graber.  The children will look back one day and thank me for making them stand here and get this with a camera. Time flies and life is full of swift transition. There, we pinned down one tiny moment. Ha!

We have been sitting on the banks of The Channel now of evenings to watch the beavers, ducks, and whatever else we can notice.

The children have grown up understanding the value of stillness and quiet if we expect to see anything.  Yesterday when I was walking in from the clothesline, Brad spoke softly from above me out of the ash tree, "Mom, a nuthatch just landed on my leg a minute ago."  Only patient quietness would garner such a thrill.

 Fish were spawning near the banks of the channel.  Elv thought they could have been walleye. They were coming into shallow water swimming above the grasses just under the surface, so that we could see them sticking out of the water briefly. I had never seen such a thing before. They fled with a splash when they saw us standing right there.

 Tea by the hearth after dark. The perfect way to celebrate a good day's work outside doing spring clean up.

HOME

Slightly reduced in size but renewed for a another few years. What a lot of hard work is a patio made of red brick. Elv has had just about enough of maintaining this patio.  So I consider this renewal very valuable. When this one crumbles it will be replaced with boring concrete.  Deck chairs, a small table, potted herbs, and geranium will not look the same on concrete. We will get in as many teas, sunnings, book reads, and visits as we can for two or three more summers on this patio.