More Lotus Seeds and RBG Biopic

 

This evening it was lovely out, but kind of windy, so Travalon and I didn't go into the lake when we took the boat out. We went into the marsh and collected a couple of lotus seed pods, then we went to the patch in the river just before the lake and got another one. We saw our neighbor who sometimes takes us sailing, and I asked if he has already put his boat away for the year. He said yes, but he was going sailing - he was on a paddleboard, and then he held up a little thing like a bright orange parachute, and he glided along. We came home and I ate the lotus seeds, and this time Travalon had a couple and decided they were not so bad when they are totally ripe. The thing is that one "shower head" contains about twenty seeds, but of those about five will be good. The rest have gone brown or never developed. I wonder if this is true of cultivated lotuses, or if it is because these were wild lotuses that didn't have people pampering them?

Then I went to the Duck Pond with my neighbor to watch the movie On the Basis of Sex. It's a Ruth Bader Ginsberg biopic, and it was stunning to see how much sexism she endured. When she was in law school, she had a baby daughter and her husband was sick with cancer (he survived), so she was going to his classes as well as hers. How did she do it? Some people must have a lot more energy than I do, because I could barely do my own schoolwork, never mind someone else's while taking care of a baby. I have RBG to thank for a lot of things, like having my own credit card. It's mind-blowing how recently women didn't have a lot of basic rights, and some people would like to take them away again. There's a movement afoot to take away women's right to vote. Some people say only one person in a household should vote, but if women can't, then what about Tiffy? She's a household of one. Of course, most of the people saying this are men, and I would hazard a guess that they are white men. I would think a valid argument could be made that, because white men had the right to vote for over a century before anyone else could, then maybe they should be the ones who lose the vote for the next hundred years, but I personally think that would be unfair to the current white men, since it's not their fault that previous white men didn't let other people vote. It's amazing to me that the current white men who want to take away everyone else's right to vote can't see that what they are proposing is manifestly unjust as well.

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Halfway Prairie County Park

 

Today I had band practice at 12:30, and I was already grumpy about that, because it's such an inconvenient time right in the middle of everything. In fact, I barely had time after Mass and brunch to get to it... and then my neighbor texted: "Want to go sailing?" Do I ever NOT want to go sailing?? But I had already missed the last two practices due to Tiffy visiting and Travalon's buddy's funeral, so I had to turn sailing down. Then I was so grumpy at band practice that my bandmates probably wished I had just ditched them for sailing after all. Even though we sat outside and were twenty feet away from each other, Hardingfele insisted that we wear masks during the entire practice. That didn't help my mood. Travalon brought me there, then since the zoo is across the street, he hung out there while we practiced. He made this video of the otter swimming on his new phone.

Then we called Kathbert and Richard Bonomo, and all four of us went hiking at Halfway Prairie County Park, which as it turns out is the park right across the street from Indian Lake County Park. There is a two-mile trail that goes between cornfields and woods, and online people said it was a good place to see wildlife, but the only wildlife we really saw were some dragonflies. Travalon did take some pictures of the views with his new phone.

Then we went across the street to Indian Lake and hiked up the hill to the chapel. Halfway up we met a couple we knew, but it wasn't that surprising since they are super outdoorsy. I guess Travalon and I are too, since there are all these random photos of us doing outdoorsy stuff on the internet, like on the canoe rental page for Mirror Lake State Park there is a photo of us in a canoe, which I didn't know until Hockey Girl clued me in. Also, there was a photo of me on the website for Rib Mountain for many years, but I think they did take it down at some point. It's the photo of me on this blog. If any of my readers find any more photos of us being all healthy and outdoorsy, feel free to let me know. At least that's what shows up on the internet for me, not compromising photos, although if there are any of those that exist, even I don't know about them. Anyway, Travalon took some photos from the top of the hill with his new phone. These first couple are of the chapel, which was built in 1857.

So we are pretty tired tonight. I only walked five miles, which is my usual daily distance, but my phone says we went up sixteen flights of stairs, which is eleven more than I usually do in a day!

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Jilly Moose's Birthday Hike

Yesterday I took the day off of work for Jilly Moose's birthday. She, Travalon, and I drove to the Saint Philomena Shrine in Briggsville, a small town on the shore of Mason Lake.

Then we drove to the Dells and walked along the banks of the Wisconsin River.

We had lunch at Moosejaw Pizza and Brewery, and then we took a long hike at Mirror Lake State Park. By the end of the hike, I had walked over eight and a half miles! My FitBit buzzed when I hit 10,000 steps and again when I hit 20,000 steps. Travalon forgot to bring his good camera, but I took some photos with my phone of the beautiful Ishnala Trail that follows a creek.

Jilly Moose took this photo with her phone.

After that we drove back home, and as we passed Sauk, I said too bad the Mixing Bowl wasn't open, since I had earned a piece of their shortbread. To our surprise, there were two open signs on and one saying the drive through was open, so we checked it out - and it was! So I got my shortbread. We were so tired after all that hiking that we had a quiet evening at home, and after my weekly chat with Tiffy, I was too beat to blog, so that is why I didn't post anything yesterday.

Travalon's phone screen had gone purple on Thursday evening, so this morning he went to get it fixed, and that took the whole morning. We had been thinking of going to Holy Hill, but I said let's go somewhere closer, like Indian Lake County Park. However, it was more packed there than we had ever seen before - people were parked all the way along the road into the park. So then I suggested we go to the riverwalk in Sauk City where I had seen a bird party four years earlier. Today there was no bird party, but there were some people selling a bunch of random stuff. I asked if they had any rosaries, and they had a beautiful jade rosary that they sold for only $10. Wow! It was like the rosary was calling me to that spot to find it. Then we went to the VFW park and took a walk along a trail that went all the way to the dam. Here are photos of a sandbar and two really cool bluffs we always see across the river.

After that we tried to drive around Fish Lake, but the road is still flooded.

We saw this beautiful raptor in a tree - I think it's an osprey?

Then we drove to Mazomanie to try to see an island in the Wisconsin River, but we couldn't find a road with river access nearby. We did see this Bird Party of cranes in a corn field.

We tried to find another county park called Halfway Prairie and ended up back at Indian Lake County Park, this time at the dog park section. Here I am wearing my newly acquired jade rosary.

And this is the hill across the lake where the chapel is.

On the way home we saw this stoplight that was smiling at us!

Then we got dinner from Athens Grill and sat on our dock to eat while watching the sun set. I had an eggplant and hummus sandwich, and was that ever delicious! Today I only walked six miles, but that's still a mile more than a regular day for me.

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Ripe Lotus Seeds

 

This evening Travalon and I took a lovely boat ride to Governor Nelson, then on the way back we stopped by the patch of lotuses in the river, and I picked one of those seed pods that look like shower heads. We had to row the boat into and out of the lotus patch, since it was too thick to use the motor back there. (This is why we didn't go into the marsh at all.) Once we had rowed far enough away from the lotus patch to safely start the motor again, I broke open the seed pod and tried a seed. My colleague who is originally from Shanghai said they are delicious raw, but she said the ones I collected last year, in early September, weren't ripe yet, so I thought maybe by now they would be. And they were! They were kind of nutty tasting. I gave one to Travalon, who didn't care for it, so I ate the rest of them. I have no idea what kind of nutritional value they have, but a lot of cultures value lotus seeds, so they must be pretty good for you.

Then I had a Zoom meeting with a "secret" club I am in where we look for wonder in our everyday lives, and when they asked if we had done anything wonderful today, I mentioned collecting the lotus seeds. They were all surprised and said, "You can eat those?" and I said, "I'm still alive, so apparently, yes." I also mentioned in the Chat about Travalon making videos of birds and how I set them to tropical music. The thing about this group is that we are already probably all people predisposed to look for wonder, so we can all appreciate each other's efforts, but the people who would really get the most out of it are the people who would never join because they see no use for wonder. Which is a shame, really. What is life without wonder? 

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Sunrise, Sunset

 

This evening I played tennis with my neighbor, and then Travalon came home, so the three of us played. My neighbor got tired, so Travalon played against me, and I ended up playing tennis for almost fifty minutes. That's a lot of tennis at my age! Fortunately I don't have to do anything more strenuous tonight than pray with the Rosary Ladies and then lead Night Prayer.

Here are some more photos. This first one is two free rosaries that came in the mail surrounding the rosary I thought was supposed to be a Sacred Heart chaplet.

When Tiffy and I hung out on State Street, I bought a charm to protect against the Evil Eye, because I got one in Turkey many years ago that I can't find now. Also, I got a hamsa, which is a Mideastern symbol for Mary because her eye watches over us and her hand protects us.

My neighbor's phone takes such beautiful pictures, they almost look like paintings. Check out her photos of a crane and a sunflower.

The sunsets have been very hazy the last few days because of the wildfires on the West Coast - the smoke is blowing over here. This is the best of a bunch of pictures I took of the sunset last night.

Then this morning I got up and saw just the same kind of sunrise. My neighbor and I were out walking around 7:30, and I took these photos.

I showed the pictures to Travalon when I came back into the house to start work at 7:45, so he went out with his good camera and took some photos.

Over lunch my neighbor and I were walking, and we saw where a squirrel had stashed a couple of walnuts in the branches of a fir tree.

I thought that was pretty funny, but it was even funnier when my neighbor edited her photo of it!

Then she said, "Let's sing." I said, "Out here in public? People will think that we're crazy!" and she said, "So what? They already do." So we thought of songs we could sing where I could do the harmony, and we sang to the family of cranes, but they didn't like it too much, so I guess we won't be taking our show on the road any time soon.

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