Merry Crispness

Dear Family: The saga begins the week before Christmas. Dan had a plumbing emergency with the toilets backing up. More importantly, Daphne got sick, sick enough that they took her to the emergency room to make sure it wasn't pneumonia and to get early treatment if it was. It turned out to be Influenza A, so she didn't have to stay at the hospital. However, then Roslyn came down with it. The next day, their new puppy came. She is a shelter dog that was being brought up from Tennessee, so they couldn't very well refuse her. Plus, she really is a nice dog. Meanwhile, Sally and Alex were wrangling two toddlers into the bus for the airport and only then saw the notification that their flight was moved up an hour. Fortunately, they got to the gate in time for the flight...only to be told it was delayed. By the time they got to Milwaukee the plane was only 5 minutes early. If you remember from the summer, Misha does not like the car seat; or maybe the car ride. At any rate, he cried the whole way. Luckily, it is only a 20 minute drive. So, then the New York contingent went to visit friends in Chicago for the weekend. It went better because public transportation in Chicago is not much different than in Manhattan, so the visit went easily. They enjoyed the Aquarium with their friends. By Monday, Daphne and Roslyn were still very under the weather, so we changed plans. Originally, the second and third generations were going to trek to Illinois to have Christmas dinner with Aunt Nancy and her family. Not wanting to infect Granny Jo if she came, or Gracielynn (Nancy's granddaughter who is three months old) they opted to stay home. Roslyn still wanted to host Christmas Eve for all of us and her family as well. So, of course, their toilets backed up again. They have found a good plumber who came out and fixed the problem and diagnosed the greater problem. Basically, what their renovation contractor did was not best practice work even though it is up to code. Christmas Eve was a yummy dinner with present pandemonium afterwards. A good time - albeit a loud one - was had by all. Christmas Day was at our house; a little quieter, but not much. Misha and Sofia are warming up to the grandparents, but still having moments. Daphne was pretty good with her cousins, but they are all very young. I will skip what Daddy used to call my organ recital, and just say we are loving the situation but it is very tiring. I hope you all had a delightful Christmas, full of precious moments. love, Gill

Bounty of the Earth - or at least our corner of it

Dear Family, Congratulations for all the good news. I tried reading all the Pulitzer Prize winners one year, but some were hard to find and some were just not my cup of tea. I see why Edith Wharton and Henry James got the prize, but I can't say I enjoyed reading their books. So, kudos to you, Kathie! Congrats to Geoff and Sue, and welcome home (I hope!) to Karen and Rich. Rick has been hard at work harvesting and we had a true bounty of cucumbers to make pickles.

whoops! We can't eat those chickens! Try again. I am so done with programs suddently doing things differently! or maybe it's just me. I can't get this to put in the photo from this tablet. We have lots of jars of pickles and gobs and gobs of peppers. I t guess that's it then. Resigned lyrics, not to mention autocorrect!!!!!!!! Gill

Reading

The Last Book! #104!

Hello all:

My news is just that today !  I finally completed reading my Newbery list of books - it took 5 months to read 103, from the end of April to the end of September, when I finally finished up the last (rather boring) ones from before I was born (!) and a few I thought I had read but hadn't. But I was avoiding this one, the winner from 2022 because it was one of those future dystopian/apocalyptic stories where people are put to sleep on a spaceship that will travel for 400 years to the inhabitable planet on a distant star. I've never liked anaesthesia!

Other than this, our life is pretty quiet. We are waiting for them to start repairing our roof and siding (since July!) that got damaged by hail when there was the big tornado in May. It finally rained and now it is suddenly cold and I finally cleaned up the vegetable garden that I hadn't worked in for ages (since July!). I'm glad I did that yesterday since we got our shots this morning and I feel yucky, but that means I did finish the book! Does this sound like a Daddy-letter yet?

Waiting to hear more from Karen and Richard on their exotic adventures, it was fun to see the photos, thanks!

love, agelaius

PS to Richard - I did finish Rifles for Watie - once I got halfway through it was really good, I guess I was really turned off by the romancing of going off to war, but you have to have that part to make the realization of the soldiers make sense.

 

Happy Fall

Hello-

 Here's some news from the Hoyer/Greenlee clan this fall.

After our annual Fall Color Tour with friends, Geoff and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary in Petoskey in northwest Michigan. We also had a nice visit with Tom and Chris Hammond

 

 

We also did some arty things during Detroit Design Month

 

 

 

And Geoff fixed my friend Lucretia's bumper

 

 

And to end with a nice early morning shot at my work (Cranbrook Sunken Garden SunPatiens beds) 

Love to all! Sue
 

Catching up...

I finally got my certificate on Saturday!

and then on Monday, we hit thirty years - I think the tequila has aged enough...

Now, working backwards to February, here's Rubén's beautiful Icon from the June workshop:

You probably heard we had a tornado...here's the 10 minute destruction at Bowood (also had to replace the main roof and the roof + solar panels on one building) (really nothing compared to all the neighboring houses and buildings) as well as our front yard - it was all hail in Overland:

In April we had a middle-eastern Easter celebration with matzoh from the Holy Land!

Lastly, Karen's birthday presents from the last two years for my Herb Gardening Design class:

Back to the future...

with the monster fence up there aren't any good pictures from the garden, but here's R's chilis:

and my Alley Garden sunflowers attracting pollinators:

See you in two days!

Agelaius

My turn

There’s not much newsy news from our house…
just a few pictures to update since the reunion (some were on instagram already)

The Big Event at MoBot went well, a full house of garden members - Lizzy gave an overview of the history of  Bowood Farms and I declaimed on how to build four-season container plantings [something I don’t do myself]. I’d been very nervous about this event especially since Lizzy didn’t work on her half until the week before (!) and not until I had made a powerpoint of photos to be an outline for her talk. She really hates public speaking but we worked really well together with a lot of back and forth during my half, I talked about the concepts and she explained her plant choices.

Next I took care of Boowood which was based on the Olympics for some reason, sprinting plants and a boxwood panel of breakdancing judges. Then voting - we were hopeful because there were NO republican signs at our polling place, but it was not to be and frankly I’ve more or less shut down ever since then.

 

Stir-up Sunday (figgy fruitcake)

Solace from cooking and baking and sewing with Lucie and our nightly escape with the Doctor. [aside to Rick and Gill: when I used to watch with popcorn and you after S & D were in bed, did we just watch one episode? because they’re only 20 minutes long…or were they all strung together without the repeat scenes at the beginning of each episode?] We started with the 5th Doctor last summer because Lucie doesn’t like the 1st and I don’t like the 4th, so by October we'd gone all the way through to movie 8th Doctor (bleghh) so we went back to start the 1st and so far we’re halfway through the 3rd, which seems much more political and feels very apropos to the world we’re in right now.

Winter Yoga

We don’t do much besides work, church, and grocery shopping and (not) cleaning the house, but Rubén and I went to another reunion with our pilgrim friends in early December which was happy/sad, we were joined by family members of our friend Lisa who died last spring - she had brain cancer but had lived four years beyond her prognosis, the last of which she went to the Holy Land with us, such an inspiring person to know.
In another self-imposed anxiety binge, I spent November and December cramming for a test I thought would be in January or February but it turned out they changed the scheduling so it won’t be until June 27th, cross your fingers for me! If I pass I will be a certified Grow Native! Professional - it’s all about native plant landscaping but so much of the topics don’t really intersect with my actual job, burning the prairies and all that - but Lizzy is supporting me since her father was such an advocate for natives and habitat restoration.

January 6th

January 13th

February 18th

 

February 19th

January and February have just been a lot of snow, I couldn’t even remember when each of the big three happened, good thing pictures have dates on them!

We had a lot of animal tracks in our yard as well, though we haven’t seen “the monster” since November but we did see a racoon !!! running along the top of our back fence on January 6th (the first big snow) but now it sounds like I’m conflating a racoon with josh hawley and the groundhog with The Beast, which mark is on the forehead of his followers. I told Lucie I won’t call him the anti-Christ because I didn’t want the name of Jesus anywhere near El Bobo.

But I won't finish on that note, instead, here's a squirrel for you!

lots, of love, too, Agelaius

Between Birthdays

Dear Sibs, etc. Yes, Geoff, a year-long catchup is a good idea. I have the Starling linked to my email which was a super idea as I forget about it if it isn't in my face (as email is). Anyway, how about using the time between our parents' birthdays to do the catching up? We all saw each other just before Daddy's in September and I know you all found out about my appendicitis. So, I am old enough now to have all sorts of itises. A few weeks ago, I had such pain in my side that I could hardly walk. It wasn't sciatica as it didn't go down my leg; could it be end stage ovarian cancer? Was I dying of some unknown dread disease? Fortunately, my husband insisted on taking me to Urgent Care and the very nice Italian doctor - Guiseppe Beneddetti for heaven's sake! - diagnosed it as Sacroilitis. Seems like there should be another syllable in there. Anyway, in laymen's terms, I had a pain in the butt. It went away with ibuprofen, but I was relieved it wasn't anything more serious. So much for my organ recital. We are still living with our beloved extras. Dan and Roslyn's kitchen/bathroom renovation has now taken longer than the total house renovation we did in Naperville. While we love having them with us, I think it is wearing quite thin with them. Their February hex has continued, though, with Daphne coming down with Influenza A just before their scheduled trip to Cancun. Fortunately, she got better before they left today. Now we are just waiting to find out if the internet crazies were right about US citizens being given difficulties getting in and out of Mexico. I doubt it, but at this point the juju just seems to be everywhere. We have all been sick with various ailments that seem to be flu-ish and I am the last to come down with it. So far, just congestion and no energy. Good thing I am retired. Let's see if I have any photos on this computer to tuck in - I agree with you, Geoff, about the frustration of getting photos onto this platform in any kind of interesting placement.

Woah! Does that come across to you as photos? My faith in Google has plummeted. Love, Gill

Year-long Catch up

   

I suppose that one advantage of a round robin is that when the letter arrives, then you are prodded to write something. With this stationary one I guess I need to set up a reminder or something! 

So, always start with a cat picture.  This was Temmie back in May. Still looks about the same. 

She continues to snuggle up to me, and be mean to Sue. And annoying at 6AM when she bangs at the closet doors to try and get us up to feed her.

The big surprise lately was when she bit though the bag and took a couple of bites out of the donut Sue picked up when we came back from dropping her car off. 

Maybe we need to start a cat Donut business?

  

When we had out first snow of *this* year, we got to see all the wildlife which runs around in our back yard. I'm sure we have a rabbit, and several wandering cats.

The snow has been much more prevalent this year than perviously, but not too hard to handle. Mostly light (since it's cold!) and only a couple of inches at a time. 

We did have a thaw after the first big snow, so our back walk which slopes down in front of the garage filled with the draining water, which then froze very solid. So we have a patch which is and inch thick of very hard ice. We typically walk around it, or go out onto the sidewalk!

   

And we had some home repairs this year. 

Spectacularly, we had a drip in the kitchen ceiling right in front of the stove. Turned out the pipe from the sink in the bathroom above had rusted out -- luckily no back flow from the toilet or tub! So that was a months long struggle of cleaning out the kitchen, having guys come in to saw out drywall (with three layers of plywood under it, and then replace the pipe, and then the ceiling and then repaint everything. 

And since the cat was tearing up the hall/stairs carpet, particularly right by the bedroom door (scratching to get in) we decided to tear it out. We were thinking of putting in new carpet, but Sue acquiesced to my opinion that the wood floors were just fine. Though we had to have a patch made at the bottom landing where there was just a piece of plywood. No hidden treasures underneath, unfortunately.

Sue's brother Chris came to visit us, and so we went around to a couple of the local cemeteries to care for the gravestones of some of their family. Kinda weird to jump out of the car, haul a bunch of shovels out and wander around in a graveyard. 

But we cleaned up the stones where the grass was growing in around them, and took some pictures. 

And there are a number of really nice cemeteries around in Detroit, so we've made a number of trips around to walk in the big trees and see the ridiculously large plinths and buildings of all the rich people. Crazy. Mulch me, please.

We got to the catch the eclipse in April -- we took a trip down about 2 hours into Ohio, looking for a nice park right on the totality line. The first scare was pulling into a rest stop and seeing the absolutely packed -- I've never seen a rest stop with no parking spots!

Then walking around in Findley, where *every* shop had some eclipse related tchotchke, and all the street banners were  all about the eclipse.  So we had a beer, and the people next to us were also down for the eclipse, and said the park was pretty packed.

So Sue found another park a little further out, and we hauled our cooler and chairs up a hill and past the frog pond to a really excellent view, and waited an hour and watched it fill up before the awesome show. 

So happy I got a "diamond ring" picture. That's with an eclipse sunglass held in front of my phone camera!

In October there was a major aurora visible all the way down to us, and even in the well lighted suburbs! I was able to get pictures of it from our back yard, which is rather amazing. Trying to find a good time lapse and exposure setting was hard, but kinda amazing (again) that I could get something half-decent with my phone. Luckily it wasn't too cold or too late. 

We went camping about 3 times last year. Our friends Tim and Sharon are the main movers of our camping expeditions -- it makes for a comfortable time, often familiar places, splitting the cooking, a little friendly competition in making it fancy.

Our big expedition is when we help them when they do their 4-day canoe camping trip. We shuttle the cars, and we canoe one day, and Sue kayaks another (and I read in a hammock! Bliss) This time we tried sleeping in Sue's Rav4, which we discovered is just a little short for me.

But the rest of the days we booked in B&Bs, including one right on Lake Huron. Really plush spot, with a great beach, and the couple running in make an excellent breakfast, and the windows out the room have a terrific view of the sunrise.

And I was going to fill up the rest of this space with the 11 other selfies that I pulled out of my camera roll, but that's a little ridiculous, and formatting pictures in blogger is already about to get me frothing at the mouth so I'll just put in the two bookends from the year.  

It means so much to me to get out of the frozen north doing the winter, so last year we tripped down to the gulf coast in February -- Sue's cousin Tim has a nice house which he offered up to us while he did his round-the-world trip. 

So of course there was a cold snap and the pipes froze one morning. But we had a great trip out to Dauphin Island.

And this year we made our big circle trip down to St. Louis and up to Chicago. Lots of fun, visiting family and friends (and I stupidly didn't get any pictures of people -- just selfies. Oi) But at least I got one warm day in STL.

So I'll leave you with a picture of the Applesauce cake I made (straight from the the Betty Crocker Cookbook) in memory of Mom's birthday. 

Love to all