Summer Begins

 Summer is here with warmth and sunshine and green grass. The leaves burst out of the bare branches overnight seemingly and the water temperature on the surface of Lake Windigo last night was a swim-able 74 degrees. We asked the family who was tubing last night if it was really warm enough. Mr. looked at his boat dash and informed us the exact temperature. So! Summer is here.
    Along with lawn mowing, AC installation, and pretty patio baskets. And hot, humid days followed by thunder storms.

It was an eventful spring. In the end, Amy married her Tim. The wedding was small in our own simple style, but woodsy pretty. We are grateful for all of our family and friends who helped make it a lovely celebration. More on this later with pictures.
   For now the days of summer work followed by evenings of canoeing or yard work are here. It feels especially nice this year, maybe because of that long winter.
   It seems especially nice to me also because we are now in the era of "after the wedding".  Now summer may commence as it will with crazy days at work where customers are pleased or not as they will. And with campfires and weekend jaunts to see friends or family hither to the north shore or thither to Nebraska or Sparta as we will. And of logging, safely tucked inside cool, clean cabs away from the heat, dust, and bugs of our northern Wisconsin days.
    This posting is just for momentum. Scribblings have all but stopped for the last few weeks for real reasons. But I don't want them to stop. There are many weddings and funerals going on, it's hard to find time to process these things in my mind as they happen, not to mention blogging. Sometimes I think that time is actually going faster than it ever has before. 
    
  

So we defied the flying minutes and went canoeing. On Lake Windigo, in the evening, time seems to stand still. I observed from the middle of our red and white canoe, Elv's life jacket for my cushion, that we have two pairs of loons living there this summer. On the east shore of the small island there is a pair of blue herons nesting. They were quite anxious about our approach and hoped with hovering squawnks that we would not discover their nest. There's a pair of mallards nesting on the opposite shore of our favorite fishing hole, and the Canada geese pair have made their nest right near the fishing hole itself. Mrs. Goose was very unimpressed with our presence. Lucky for her we hadn't gotten our fishing licenses yet.
    We stayed and paddled around looking at all our old haunts to see what's what this year. We found a floating log out in the water off one of the islands just lying in wait to kill someone's prop. So Elv hung on to the tip of the iceberg so to speak and Brad and I hauled on the oars to bring it to shore. We felt a bit triumphant to leave it resting along side another downed tree that the DNR has anchored to it's own stump. The fallen trees will shelter fish we hope to catch this summer. We saw that there are designated, accessible places along the shores of the islands to have picnics or camp. Maybe we will picnic there this summer sometimes.