The Chitalpa Tree

I am on a roll! 2nd post this week!  

In all fairness, I actually started this post with pictures back in OCTOBER.  Not sure what happened, but I found it sitting in my drafts and so here I am 9 months later, finally posting it! 

It seems appropriate to post about our Chitalpa tree now since I just snapped some new pictures of this beautiful tree which stands in our back yard.  It took us three years to remember how to pronounce it.  [Kih-tal-pa].  We called it all sorts of combinations of these sounds...Kiptalpa, Kiltapa...but I think we finally have it down now.

In late June it blooms with these beautiful white flowers.  It lasts for about a week before they start falling to the ground and our yard looks like it is covered in popcorn.

I love all the branches too!  Makes me want to be 10 years old again to climb up there and hang out on one of those branches reading a book. 

Or making weird bird calls to make the neighbors wonder...

Or whatever it is 10 year olds do...

I was a weird kid.  So I've been told. 

Anywho...

It is such a cool looking tree and makes such a statement.  Our first spring here in 2008, we were concerned the tree was dead because it didn't bud along with the rest of the trees.  We noticed it had woodpecker holes in it and even caught the little bugger pecking a few times that first spring.  We thought he had killed it!  Fortunately, we haven't seen him since!

But then it budded and we learned from several people familiar with the Chitalpa tree, that it is always a late bloomer.

Funny, that's the first time I've used the phrase "late bloomer" and actually meant it literally!

This was one of the first pictures we took of it our first spring.  This was taken from the other side as the rest of these pictures.  It's interesting for me to look at these pictures, because our place looks so different!  That little yellow playhouse in the background was only there for a few months because the old owners came to pick it up shortly after we moved in.  That huge ugly bushy thing on the left was a lilac bush that we cut down nearly a year and a half ago.  I LOVE lilacs, but that bush was only beautiful for about 10 days out of the year and the rest of the time it looked like the singing bush in The Three Amigos.  Obscure reference, I know, but it seems like most fitting description.  Once we took the lilac bush down, that's where I put in that little patch of perennials lined with wine bottles.  The jury is still out on how permanent that little creative landscaping place will be, but it is a good conversation piece for now. 

You might also remember seeing the Chitalpa tree in some of my older posts, like this one back in February 2010 where I posted these pictures.

Tell me these pictures are not such a true representation of Minnesota and our seasons?  Amazing what a difference 6 months can make that we can go from beautifully blooming covered in white blossoms, to beautifully dormant covered in snow.

And then of course there is autumn somewhere in between, where it looks like this...

I took this I think in early October, when the leaves were just starting to turn.  The colors don't get quite as vibrant on the Chitalpa as they do on other trees, but the foliage is beautiful nonetheless.

I took all of these tree pictures standing on our deck.  I can't imagine what our view would be without it.  Or where the dogs would go for shade.  Or where we would sit to enjoy a glass of wine outside after a long day. 

Here is one other picture I took standing on our deck just the other day, except I was facing southeast, rather that straight south where the tree stands.  I had just gotten home from work when a huge, gusty winds storm passed through, quickly followed by blue skies and sun.

A rainbow! 

If only we didn't have those telephone wires and birds there to clutter up this picture. 

24 Hour Snapshot

Going into this past weekend, we had nothing planned the whole weekend, except to go to my parent's on Monday for their annual July 4th party.  That probably makes us sound really lame, but we were actually looking forward to a long weekend to get some vineyard work done, relax, and enjoy the weather.  We figured we'd have some unexpected plans come up, as they usually do. 

But our anticipated low-key weekend ended up being quite the contrary.

Here is just a 24-hour snapshot from this past weekend.

Saturday

3pm:  We are home and I spot a car out in the middle of the vineyard.  We thought it was our friend, Scott, who mentioned he'd by stopping by with his mom, who was in town.  We walk down, realize it is our vineyard worker, Les, with his wife, and her parents, who are in town visiting for the weekend.  They wanted to show them the vineyard.  We chat for a while, Aaron gives his grapevine spiel- they leave.

4pm: Our friend, Scott, and his wife, Julie, stop over, with Scott's mom, who is in town for the weekend.  They had just been to Parley Lake Winery, which just opened this past weekend for the season and they bring a bottle of their Apples and Vines wine for us to enjoy.  Delicious!  Parley Lake is just a few miles away from us, so always happy to support our fellow neighborhood grape growers and wine makers and have some wonderful local wine!

5pm:  Aaron gets a text from some friends that they are going to be out on our side of town tonight and we manage to make some fairly last minute plans to join them.

7pm:  Aaron and I bring the baby to my parents.  We put him to bed there at 8pm and go to meet friends out for drinks.  My parents were already watching my brother's three kids, so we decided to piggyback off of them.  What's one more kid to babysit when you already have three, right?  We have a good night out by the lake with friends. 

Sunday

12am:  We pick up baby, head home, transfer him back into his crib, and we are in bed by about 12:30am

2am:  He wakes up.  I go into his room, calm him down, get him back to sleep. Go back to bed by 2:10am.

4am:  Something wakes me up.  A knocking sound?  I whack Aaron to wake him up. 
"Aaron!!!" I whisper loudly. "Did you hear that?"

"Probably the dogs..." he mutters.

We hear it again.

"I think someone is knocking on the door..."

Then the doorbell rings.

"Go see what's going on!"  I shove him. 

Aaron gets up and with only slight hesitation, walks to the door in his boxers while I hover behind him, although unsure of what I should be prepared to do.  I can see two flashlights shining through the window by the front door.  I can't even start to imagine what could have brought them there at this hour. Aaron opens the door a crack to see two Sheriff's standing there. 

"Is that your Hummer out back here?"  one of them asks right away, his flashlight shining through our front entry.

I recall a conversation Aaron and I had on our way out to meet friends earlier. He said, "remind me to put the new license plate tabs on the cars this weekend.  I keep forgetting to put them on and I got them updated like three months ago." 

"You could get a ticket for that, you know," I had told him. 

This conversation being fresh in my mind, my first thought seeing these Sheriffs at our door was that they must be some sort of night cops who lurk around people's garages trying to bust them for expired tabs.  And they must have found the Hummer still with 2009 tabs because it hasn't left the property in two years.

Sometimes your mind thinks weird things at 4am when you are already sleep deprived.

As it turns out, it wasn't the expired license plate tabs.  Phew!  Apparently, the car alarm was going off on the Hummer.  When Aaron built it 9 years ago, he put an alarm on it (why he did that is whole other question), but said it hasn't been working for the past 5-6 years.  At least that's what he thought.  It must have shorted somehow because apparently, the alarm woke up one of our concerned neighbors who called the cops.
Aaron tells the two Sheriffs to hold on while he puts some pants on, then goes outside, fiddles with the alarm to shut it off and comes back to bed.

4:45am:  I wake up to hearing something through the monitor, but it's not crying.  More of a jingle.  I realize it is the rattling of a dog collar.  I roll my eyes as I lay in bed, annoyed that I have to get out of bed, not because of the baby, but because of the darn dog.  Belle had snuck in his room and was curling up on the floor.  She loves it in there!  I shove her out of the nursery, whispering sharply to her to "get out" so as not to wake the baby, close the door tightly and go head to bed.

4:48am: The baby wakes up crying again right as I am crawling back into bed.  Apparently my whisper and the jingling dog collar in his room were enough to disturb his slumber.  Light sleeper...

I go back in, calm him down and am back in bed by 5am. 


5:45am:  Belle is now whining outside of our door.  The dogs have been doing this lately.  They often want to go outside and play in the middle of the night, so 5:45am isn't too bad.  Aaron gets up, let's them outside.

6:45am:  We wake up to hearing the baby cooing in his crib.  It's the best sound.  Aaron brings him into our room and we snuggle and let him play quietly while mom and dad try to get a few extra Zzzzzs.  He actually is pretty good at letting us sleep in a little and sometimes even snoozes with us for a bit on weekend mornings.  We needed it this particular morning.

8am:  We get up.  After some play time and breakfast, Aaron goes outside to work.  I decide to make a few batches of baby food--summer squash and bananas. 

Aaron heads outside and bumps into a few neighbors down by the lake who are congregating after finding out our neighbor Rita had heard an alarm coming from our house the night before.  Aaron apologizes for waking anyone up and explains it was just a faulty wire on his home built truck.

10am:  My mom calls.  She tells me they just picked up my Grandma and Grandpa and have my brother's three kids and they're on their way over. 

"See you in a few minutes!" she says.

I am still in my nightgown, my kitchen is a mess, baby is napping.  In her defense, she had mentioned that they may stop out at some point that day.  I just didn't know it would be then...and with a two minute warning. 

I quick change, throw the baby food I am in the middle of making in the fridge, wipe down the kitchen counter.

Baby wakes up. 

They drive up.   Kids run out of the car, dogs, who are still outside, get all excited and want to play, kids get scared and scream. We put the dogs inside.

They stay for a while, enjoy the outdoors, leave.

11:30am:  Staci stops by, as planned, to check out the garden.  I think she knows I could use an extra hand with it this year, so I appreciate her help.  We spend an hour trying to decipher between plants and weeds and what exactly is coming up because we forgot to label everything after we frantically planted before a storm was coming in last month.

2pm:  I am finally back to making baby food in the kitchen and back to making a mess.  I am also back in my comfortable clothes trying to stay cool in the heat. My mom calls to tell me some of our family friends are in town for the weekend and may be stopping out at some point that day to see the vineyard and take some pictures.  "Sure!  Tell them to come out!  It's just a revolving door over here!"  I love having visitors.  I really do, despite the craziness of the day. 

2:30pm:  Aaron comes in for a very late lunch.  As we're sitting at the kitchen table, we see a truck and trailer pull in the drive-way.  Now who's here, we wonder?  It's our friend, Kevin, coming to drop off a 4-wheeler he let's Aaron use in the summers.  Long story...but they have a nice little mutually beneficial agreement.  This is a pleasant surprise since Aaron thought he would be going to pick it up from Kevin on Monday instead.  Aaron grabs a couple of beers and we hang out, while they get the ATV unloaded and go for a couple of test runs. 
So that's a day in the life of a wide open, unplanned weekend at our house.

Hope you all had a great 4th of July weekend!