Snow and Grass

How can one have snow and then green grass the next day? Just live in Minnesota. Yesterday we awoke to another light April snow, today we awoke to green grass. As I looked out the window I was reminded that soon the riding lawn mower would be removed from the shed and I would be making the passes, back and forth across our lawn in summer gear. Woo Hoo!

The joy of watching the birds peck and hunt in our front and back yards is a spring time joy. We have a pair of robins that squat under our deck eaves, alternating each year. They use one next one year and the other the next. I wonder which nest it will be this year; the robins have been hunting in the yard a lot lately. I have not seen the flickers yet. They come to our back yard each spring, a sure sign that spring is here and seed time will begin.

The river is finally starting to drop from the high of over 16 and 6/10 feet. It runs wild and free, way out of the backs and onto the fields still. It is receding finally. It is going to be a very late seed time this year and we probably won't be able to see all of our fields. The field north of Badger is the only field that looks even close to getting dry enough to drive a drill onto.

Following the rain and snow we had on the Sunday was the worse driving conditions on our country roads I have ever encountered. The roads are greasy and rutted no matter where I drove. Today is it partly cloudy and I don't think there is any rain in the forecast so hopefully they will dry out; the grader will come by and all will be well again.

Perhaps a little total hip replacement (thr) and total knee replacement (tkr) update should be noted. It is amazing how quickly the body recovers from surgery. Except for periodic stiffness and not always having the range of motion I would like to have, things are wonderful.

At this point, most days I can fairly run up and down stairs, walk a mile or two easily, sleep through the night without any pain, and generally feel better than I have in years. The terrible back pain I experiences prior to my hip replacement is gone, although once in a while I do have some back pain on the other side. This is annoying but livable pain; after all I have arthritis along my lower spine with many spurs to deal with. Would I advise these surgeries? Definitely!

There is lots to do at work, the Minnesota History test to complete, a news article to put together and some research to do. Time to head into work.

Harvest Continues

Yesterday turned out to be very nice, 80 and sunny. Ardmore took off the last of the canola and heading north to the home farm to continue with the wheat. Took a couple of hours to finally get rolling as we had to change combine headers. He had considered swathing but it was so nice he decided to just go with the straight header. Hurrah! I would have been the one on the swather and as much as I can entertain myself with my Ipod, hours and hours of going up and down on the swather gets monotonous, plus it is so much easier when we straight head the wheat. I think the wheat is running about 60 bushels to the acre this year. We took off 600 bushels in about 3 hours yesterday.

My Knee
Could I say I am less than happy with the tkr? Yes. It is painful. I think the biggest problem is that I have varicose veins behind my knee and they are giving me so much pain my range of motion is being limited. I wonder now if I would have done this replacement if I would have known this would have been a complication. Well, I guess I will have to see it to the end, whenever that will be, and see what the outcome is at six month, one year, etc. I hear it does get better. I sure hope so.

On September 8, we celebrated 46 years of marriage. Wow, 46 years with the same person seems like an awful long time! Yup, it is. Would I do things differently, perhaps and then perhaps not. I guess the old cliche "life is what you make it" rings true in a 46 year marriage.

What have I learned being married to someone for 46 years?

• You can't change them and they can't change you.
• Be independent.
• Always look for the good in any given situation.
• Have a life of your own and allow them the same.
• Take vacations alone periodically.
• Always remember the things you have in common and don't focus on the things you don't have in common, after all, you don't look alike, do you?
• Enjoy each day for what it brings.
• Last but not least, tell each other you love each other and show it

Harvest with the family

With our two younger men home, one would think the wheat would be all off, right? Wrong! Dad does not like to combine in the dark and would quit even if there was a hot wind and the wheat was dry as popcorn. Needless to say Brian, James and Mom were not happy. Brian had work starting on Tuesday. On Sunday evening, about 9 pm, Brian and I were on our way to Winnipeg where we spent the night so he could catch a plane to LA. Ardmore and James continued to combine until dark. After dropping Brian off at the awful hour of 5, I went back to the motel to sleep and when I awoke it was raining. Discouraged because no stores were open, I headed back home immediately. When I arrived, the sun was shining and James and Ardmore were combining. That was the last day we hit the fields, it rained great drops of rain that night, 1.25 inches. It put an instant stall on the harvest. We did have about 115 acres off and have about another 95 of wheat to go. The canola is laying and probably shelling out. At least the wheat isn't laying, it is still standing. I hope we have enough warm weather for the soybeans to ripen.

I did get a couple of good photos of the men on the combine and will place one here one.

James heads back to LA tomorrow and then we are left to pray for better, warmer weather so we can get the rest of the crop off.

As for my knee and hip, it does seem to be getting better each day. I have done some heat, massaging, and icing to keep the hip from spasming again. I had pt this afternoon. I need to work on getting my knee to reach its maximum movement and that is very hard. Today I had a different pt and she gave me some new exercises. one for the hip and some for the knee. I will be trying them out tonight.

So what have we eaten when the guys were home? Lots of blueberries. This has been the year for good blueberries and I have purchased more than our share. We had a blueberry pie and an apple pie. I still can't top the Twin's apple pie so don't even try, I just order one instead. We had cheese burgers, Brian's fabulous spinach scrambled eggs, lots of fresh fruit mixes, lemon chicken, and of course, potato salad. No, I didn't bake any cookies this time, bought some instead. I figured if I baked, I would eat more than anyone else. Its a good thing it is coming to a halt, I have gained three pounds and need to take it off pronto!

Tomorrow will bring a state of quiet to our home and the lack of family will haunt the house.

Charleen

Hip and Knee Replacements

I can see that my hip and knee replacements are going to improve my life tremendously. Today at pt my knee flexibility ratio was 113. PT will be having me climb down stairs this week so I decided to try it on my own this weekend. I found it went better than anticipated. I need more to do it comfortably, but I was able to do it easily without much pain.

Beautiful day again so I mowed the lawn late this evening. It seems our grass doesn't know when to slow down this late summer. Usually by now we are turning brown, not this year. Just when it looks like the weather is going to be too dry, we get a shower to keep it growing. The hot weather we have been having this past week has really helped our crop to work toward maturity. Hopefully when the guys come home we will be able to combine something. Yesterday when we took the truck south we drove past our canola field, that is turning also and will be ready to be swathed soon.

I added a new page to our Roseau Co. Historical Society website. What Minnesota Means to Me. It will probably keep me busy if it catches on.