Indy and I are settling in for a few days visiting my parents at their lakeside home. It’s a fairly short trip. We left after church on Sunday and arrived in time for a quick swim before supper. The plan is to go home Thursday or Friday.
It’s the first time I’ve been to the lake with just one child; the dynamics are definitely different without warring siblings!
After supper on Sunday, Indy asked to watch an episode of Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye with my mom. It’s a tame criminal investigator show (based on the true story of a deaf lip reader who worked for the FBI) and both kids love watching it with my parents. While they did that… I very happily decamped to a lawn chair overlooking the lake to read Sipsworth which is a charming story about a widowed, grieving mother who unexpectedly finds herself caring for a pet mouse. (A bit of an odd premise, but it works!)
The evening was spent the way I expected the evening to be spent: fishing. For about an hour there was nothing. Then the sun dipped over the horizon and the fish started biting like crazy. Indy has a great racket going—he fishes and when he catches something, he brings the fish back to me to take it off the hook. He caught perch and sunfish and they both have spiky fins and even with special gloves, one spike managed to draw blood on my hand last night.
A few of you recommended the Percy Jackson series so we started that! He is LOVING it so far. I read while he fished, but eventually it got to be too much of a nuisance to find my place and start reading to almost immediately be called upon for fish removal duty. Ah, the delights of being the mother of a pint-sized fisherman. (Who was apparently too lazy to hold his rod at certain points!)
The sunset was gorgeous.
Eventually, though the fish kept biting, so did the mosquitos. That was our cue to go inside. I abandoned ship a few minutes before Indy and snapped this picture on my way up to the house. This is him living his very best life.
Apparently the wind has been horrible all month, and we came on the first day the lake calmed down.
Monday morning we woke up and the water was like GLASS. My parents said they haven’t had a single morning like that all summer.
Indy and I spent a good chunk of the morning playing badminton. I bought a discounted badminton net at the end of last week ($40!), and John grabbed an inexpensive set of rackets and birdies. We have had so much fun playing in my parents’ back yard. I’m decent, but don’t really want to lunge for things. So if he hits it in my general direction, I’m great. If he gets fancy and tries to get me to charge the net, I’m decidedly less agile and enthused.
After that… more fishing! This time, Dad took us in his motorized canoe and we went to our favourite fishing spot. I kid you not, Indy would drop his line in and within two seconds a fish would be on. I’d take it off and, two seconds later, another fish would be on. They were all quite small, but it was a VERY fun hour of fishing.
En route we spotted two deer on the shoreline. And when we rounded a corner there was a blue heron right in front of us!
When we came home, we were on garden duty. We went up to harvest the yellow and green beans ready in my mom’s garden. She plants a garden every year and it is never very successful. For some reason she does not lose hope and optimism despite dealing with the same level of shade and poor soil for several decades. She is DETERMINED and feels a lot of joy over whatever she gets.
Last year her bean harvest was especially sparse so she is delighted to have a bumper crop this year! And we were happy to help her eat them 🙂
After lunch we went swimming with some neighbours who have some wonderful inflatable things that mean I can be in the water without fully submerging which is good because I hate being cold. Being wet and cold is even worse. Alas, I still got cold. I’m such a delicate orchid in my old age. When I was a kid, I spent hour after hour in the water but now I mostly prefer to look at the water, not be in it.
After supper, we were back to Percy Jackson! Indy approves.
And then another round of fishing to finish off the evening. This time we came prepared with bug spray. There were lots of fish, most quite small, but two decent-sized catfish which are grotesque looking but in a fascinating way.
When I posted about visiting St. Fagans, Birchie commented that something had felt a bit off lately since there had been a dearth of Indy tree poses. Her suggestion: I think that your trip set the standard that there needs to be at least one Indy tree pose per post, regardless of the subject.
So know that this final picture was taken with you specifically in mind… and Indy says hello!
Your turn.
- Do you have a fruit or veggie garden? What’s your favourite fresh produce?
- What book(s) are you reading this week?
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