Big Holiday Weekend

Memorial Day is the un-official start of summer here in the upper Midwest. It more or less delineates the end of the school year for most kids, big and little alike. Summer vacation is a vestige of earlier days when a mostly agrarian society needed the extra hands around the farm in order to get the most out of the three or four month growing season for the benefit of family survival. Those days are way behind us. Just try to get a teenager to do some real work these days.

Dar went along with Mom and my Aunt Nancy to decorate family graves in the area. I stayed near the bus-house -- mostly nursing a slightly sore shoulder. Must have pulled something while moving paving brick or sprucing up the car with an oil change and a scrub-job yesterday.

Not many plans for the holiday weekend though. We may run up to Dar's Uncle & Aunt's place near the Wisconsin Dells tomorrow. They have a big holiday weekend get-together with family and friends on each of the big summer 3 -- Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day. I can smell a big picnic lunch in the deal. I don't know why but there's always far more food at events like this than can possibly be eaten by all the attendees put together... even if they've been starved for days prior.

While procrastinating this afternoon, I took some photos of the menagerie of birds that, for some reason, have made this place their home. After I cull the hundreds of photos down to a handful, I'll try to remember to stick some in the Journal in the days ahead.

With Sandhill Cranes calling in the distance...
Thom