Family Mellmann

I said farewell to Katherine and Joerg this morning as they loaded up the Honda Civic headed north back to Montana.

The family is together again one last time in Arizona before Patrick moves to Chicago. We enjoyed a nice sushi dinner, conducted a little family business (Jörg is returning to Montana with his old Honda Civic which Patrick has been using for the past two years), and said our farewells. Tomorrow Jörg and Katherine will return to Montana, and I get to stick around to help Patrick drive his household across the country.  At least I’m not responsible for this move.  😎🤪

This isn't a particularly stellar photograph, but it shows the blue sky and our beautiful mountain view pretty well.  This is also your last look at that view through these dirty windows.  I have finished cleaning all (well, almost all) of the windows on the inside and tomorrow a window cleaning service is coming to clean the outside windows, and the higher windows in this photo and at the front door (both of which require a ladder taller than what we have...that's my story and I'm sticking to it!). I know what you're thinking.  "You can get a window cleaner out to Absarokee in the middle of nowhere?!"  I know.  I was also surprised.  It turns out that they are going to be in Columbus tomorrow and are happy to have one more customer to do while they're in the area.   

It looks like we have seen whatever snow this winter is going to bring so Bernie our excavator is back to flatten piles, spread dirt, and finish up the exterior ground work. We are so pleased to see the rocky pile across our back yard finally disappear. With that long pile of rocky soil gone, it starts to look like an actual yard rather than a dirt bike track. We are still loving this view (taken on the county road as I was leaving...our house is the dark grey one to the right of the tan one on the right side of the picture)

In more than 20 years of ringing bells in college, a church choir, a community group, and teaching at Trinity, I have never seen more than one handbell group ring together at the same time.  At a special concert in Livingston, we had the opportunity to see 14 bell choirs perform a free concert after a day-long rehearsal. Each choir practiced the music during their own rehearsals and then came together - from all over Montana and Idaho - for a ringing workshop.  It was a real treat, and made me a little homesick for my old Trinity students in the junior and senior high chime choirs.  It was a very nice concert and ringers did an admirable job given the physical distance from the director (reading music means looking down but following the director means looking up).  Next year this gathering and concert will take place in Billings.  

It has been a fairly low-snow winter season this year.  Cold temperatures have come and gone but the snowfall has been starkly absent.  This lack of precipitation has people concerned about the impact this will have on the late summer dry season and the potential for wildfires.  We spent a couple of days completely covered in clouds where all we could see were the hazy outlines of the rolling hills of our back yard.  When the clouds cleared, we were greeted by dusty white mountains.  We are still loving this view.  

Since winter seems to be a no-show this year and Easter is right around the corner, I decided it was time for a "refresh"... what the interior decorating crowd calls a seasonal or periodic change to ones decor.   I framed a map that Joerg and I found two summers ago at a local market.  It's a map of Yellowstone that was created by German scientists so while the location names are in English, the map text is in German. While Jörg was out of town, I was finally able to use the printer to print photos and prints which I could frame for our shelves. And, after two years hidden away in a storage box, the komodo dragon we brought back from Indonesia is finally back on display.  And a few spring flowers for the island. I'm still working on the kitchen shelves, but I made a start. This vase is carved out of waste wood from a Russian Olive tree.  Russian Olive grows wild and aggressively around here.   

Montana has been quite gracious to us as we weather our first winter in our new home.  But if you like cold and snow (and a fully stocked pantry and freezer) then what some might see as graciousness actually feels more like disappointment. We have had very little snow this year and the temperatures have been quite mild.   Although we have had some crazy strong winds (highest reports were gusts of 70-80 miles per hour), winter has been MIA (missing in action) this year. On the bright side, when I picked Joerg up from the Bozeman airport, we stopped in Livingston for lunch which was served in the open air; both garage doors were wide open and we enjoyed our sandwiches (almost) outdoors.