Summer officially ends this Tuesday at four PM or thereabouts. Time to get caught up on end-of-the-summer memories!
We paid a short visit to the cabin this weekend. We got some free hostas from a friend, and we had to get them in the ground before they died. We drove up during the afternoon on Saturday. Neither of us wanted to do any gardening when we got up there so we had a glass of wine and some hors d'oeuvres and took the party barge out to do some fishing instead. I started to back the boat out and got maybe ten feet before it quit. Luckily the wind was strong and from the south so it blew us right back to the dock. We had a reserve tank of gas in the garage so we filled it up and tried again. That was lucky! We might have been stuck out there for days!
We enjoyed sitting in the middle of the lake fishing. The wind died down and the sun set in pink splendor to the west. We only caught two crappies, but they were big enough to keep, clean and eat the next day for lunch.
Sunday morning we got a lot done. We got our plantings in. I mowed the lawn and Dar cleaned up the beach. It's Fall and there's a lot of dead effluvium in the water right now. Lots of snails and weeds and muck. It's a losing battle trying to keep up with it all, but it does make our small little beach area look a little more inviting.
I decided I was going to take a break and cast a jig and minnow out to catch one more fish. It immediately got caught on a weed so I pulled the canoe down to the shore, and Dar and I started paddling out to unhook it. Louis, our dog was going crazy! He was running up and down the dock barking and whimpering. On our way back to the shore he all of a sudden jumped into the water!
Louis hates the water. When someone runs water in the tub he hides under the bed because he thinks he's going to have to take a bath! He hit our lake with a bellyflop and sank. Dar read an article recently about dogs. They don't know that they're supposed to hold their breath under water so they drown easily if their heads go under. I knew as soon as Louis hit the water that Darlene was going to bail out of the canoe to try to save him. My life didn't pass before my eyes, but I did see myself being tipped into the water after her and emerging a sopping mess with lake crap all over me!
Somehow Dar got out of the canoe without tipping it! And a miracle even greater than that, Louis surfaced and started dog-paddling toward shore. We both yelled out in surprise, "Louis! You can swim!" He got to shore all by himself! It was one of the proudest moments of my life. "That's my boy!"
Then he started running up and down the shoreline like a madman. If there wasn't terror in his eyes then at least it was utter confusion. If he could have talked he probably would have said, "What the HELL just happened to me!" He was a dripping wet Leo Bloom streaking around the yard yelling, "I'm hysterical! I'm in pain . . . and I'm hysterical! I'm WET . . . and I'm in PAIN . . . and I'm HYSTERICAL!"
It was definitely the highlight of the weekend!
Two weeks ago we went up with Tyler and his friend Peter. We had fun, I hope they did. The water was a little messy then too, so we drove the boat over to a calmer part of the lake and swam. We also went fishing and caught a few: some crappies, some sunnies, and a giant whale that bit through Tyler's line and got away. We kept a few. They were the first fish we've kept, cleaned and eaten this summer! A first!
And, alas, gardening season is over. Dar planted four tomato plants up there. Whether it was the lack of sun or the lack of watering or the lack of TLC, our crop was dismal. We got two edible fruit and they were about the size of large grapes! I'm sure we'll try again next year. We're sadists!
