Refugee Nation

Friend, Kathy B, invited us to see REFUGEE NATION at the Intermedia Arts Center tonight. It's a three person stage show of the Lao experience of war and being refugees. Very well done. A very interesting book besides Yang's THE LATE HOME COMER is Dervla Murphy's ONE FOOT IN LAOS. She rode a bike all over Laos.
Factoid: The US dropped a plane load of bombs on Laos every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day for nine years for a total of 260 million tons. Laos is about the size of Minnesota.

Trygve's such a leader!

Trygve, the wonder dog is such a leader. Yesterday he took me over the Stone Arch Bridge to St. Anthony Main. Today, not to be out done, he led me to the new bridge...the 35 W one that replaced the one that collapsed. However, I think it was all a plot on his part because we came back through Farmer's Market. I think it was the smell of elbeskiever frying that attracted him.
We must be moved in because we had our first over night guest. Linda, from Williston, ND, got the honor. She's in town for her niece's wedding and went with us to the Guthrie Thursday.
At the Guthrie we saw the stage adaption of Louise Erdrich's book 'The Master Butcher's Singing Club.' I enjoyed both the book and the play. I thought the play was a good adaptation of the book. It's nice to live withing walking distance of the Guthrie.

That's why we moved downtown!

Several times a day little things happen and I think "that's why we moved downtown. Take Saturday night for example. We have tickets to the Minnesota Orchestra and there was a concert Saturday evening. From our condo we walked two blocks to Nicollet Mall to catch the free bus. (It runs Nicollet Mallfrom Washington Ave. to the convention center every ten minutes during the day and every twenty five minutes at night.) We got off near Orchestra Hall, had dinner and then went to the concert. After the concert we left Orchestra Hall and caught the free bus just outside the Hall and rode home.
We not only saved the $9.00 parking fee we decided that we enjoyed the concert more when we did not have to drive. That's why we moved downtown.

Still alive!

On Thursday, 9/30, 8 men in two trucks made quick work of emptying our house. It took them only an hour and a half to load and slightly longer to unload. The condo had reserved an elevator for their use so that worked well. Everything came through in good shape.
Now it is Tues. evening and we have the kitchen and both bedrooms quite settled. We've also made some progress in the rest of the area. The number of boxes left is dwindling. That's a good thing because space is filling.
We took time off yesterday to close on our house which had a couple of minor wrinkles. Susan, one of the buyers, had an expired drivers license. According to the terms of the Patriot Act buyers must have a valid id and an expired drivers license doesn't qualify. We felt sorry for her. They had closed on the house they sold in the morning, loaded their stuff, were closing on ours and then moving in all on the same day. She had to go get her license renewed to finish signing the papers.
Before we got home we were called back because a typo was found in on the deed. Susan uses her maiden name plus her husbands name but doesn't hyphenate it. The deed had it with a hyphen so the document had to be retyped and resigned.
We decided that we had done our grief work because all we felt at closing was elation. We couldn't have picked a better couple to buy our house. He, like Joanne, is a Concordia grad. They have a three year old boy, Gavin. So, for the first time, there will be a child living in the house.
I'll likely post more regularly now. I have some downtown stories to tell.

Many thanks for all the expressions of support, concern and well wishes. We feel blessed by your concern.

Hard to keep up!

Moving is a lot of work! How's that for stating the obvious? Almost everything is packed. On Thursday, 9/30 5 men and 2 trucks are scheduled to appear at our house at 7:30am to schlep our stuff to the condo. We console ourselves that unpacking will be easier. At least we'll be on the downhill side.
Our contractor assures us the condo will be ready for occupancy in the next day or two. That means the all new floors, kitchen cabinets and counter tops, all new appliances, new shower, new vanities in the bathrooms, all woodwork, walk in closet with built ins, new opening from kitchen to great room, door closed off to den, new shelving, and everything painted will be complete. All than in just over 30 days! Yes...it did need some work. :)
We took this weekend off and are in Chicago where we got to babysit last night when Mai-Evy's
parents went out.

Grassland

Three years ago I was able to enroll some of my land into the Federal Conservation Reserve Program. Native grasses; Big Blue Stem, Switch grass and Side Oats Gamma were planted. The subsequent years have been very wet and idea for starting grass plantings. Now the Big Blue Stem is taller than I am. The Switch Grass is about 4 feet tall and the Side Oats Gamma about 3 feet.

In addition to soil preservation it makes wonderful wildlife cover. Many varieties of birds and mammals use it. There are also many butterflies and especially Monarchs who use the Milkweed for their larva.

It is one this land that I plant 6 acres of corn each year for winter food plots for wildlife. The last two years I sprayed much of the corn with Roundup which has given good control of the thistles. Therefore, I did not have to spray it this year because the other weeds do not spread on the wind like thistle seeds do. I cultivated it twice which was sufficient for the corn but left many weeds. With the abundant rainfall, at least double the average, the corn has grown well and so have the weeds. Any self respecting farmer would be ashamed to have such a field. But I'm delighted because my goal is wildlife cover. The corn and weed mixture; fox tail, wild sunflowers, rag weed, pig weed, etc., make wonderful habitat full of food that will feed the critters all winter.

In addition to the corn I also planted six acres of trees. They, too, have benefited from the abundant moisture and are growing rapidly. The varieties were chosen to provide winter cover and food for wildlife.

I'll enclose some pictures of the prairie grass.

Learnings

Ah so many details around moving. I thought that changing addresses online would be sooooooo easy! Wrong. It turns out that it is much easier to do by snail mail than online. The online process requires a password and much more rigmarole.
The house passed inspection with three small things to correct. Therefore we are still on schedule with plans to move on September 30, and close on this house on Oct. 4. Our contractor tells us the condo updates will be done on time.
I had pack almost two thirds of our stuff to stage our house. So I decided to pack the rest and only hire movers. Now I'm almost done packing, however, there are problems with that. During a hot spell I packed all our cold weather clothes forgetting that September can be cold. We had tickets to Prairie Home Companion at the State Fair on a cold evening. God show!