Greetings 2001

For a long time most of you have suspected that Lee leads an uninspiring life. These suspicions will be confirmed when he admits here that the past 12 months were spent engaged in the following activities: moving by wheelbarrow 30 cubic yards of dirt to various swales around our estate; collecting and placing along the eroding river bank about 50 tons of rocks; spreading 20 cubic yards of bark as dressing around the flower beds; improving the course of the stream from the pond to the river; raking debris out of the pond; raking leaves off the lawn; raking deep snow off the roof; burning piles of yard debris that seems to constantly rain down from the trees; frequently irrigating the lawn during a dry summer; grinding and repainting the yard-light poles; finish flooring the attic; trying with varying degrees of success to catch offending moles, squirrels, raccoons, and possums; taking steps to stop the deer from dining on our decorative shrubs and flowers and dissuade the crows from eating the suet put out for the resident song birds. If you managed to read this without yawning, then it is probably because you have already fallen asleep. The only thing worse than having to peruse this boring account is to actually live it. Now, the prospect of avoiding such a dull existence should ensure that you have a merry Christmas and a happy new year.


	Us in wet suits with river rocks.

Dot, besides helping do all those yard things listed and a few of her own (digging new beds, finding plants for them and planting them, and constant weeding), has continued teaching part-time at LCC (two classes of Photoshop each semester) as well as working part-time at Porter's Orchids, a 6000 sq. ft. greenhouse of nothing but orchids. She has also enlarged her own collection of the same after having won the "grand prize" of $600 worth of orchids just by visiting all the orchid greenhouses in the Chicagoland Orchid Festival tour. She drove 3 other members of our local Orchid Society on that excursion, and one of her passengers won the 2nd prize! Sounds stacked? Well, she did purchase at least one orchid at each greenhouse… But then, so did just about all the hundreds of other people who also completed the tour!

Ready to grind

Lee grinding the lamppost.

Lee after the grinding (and before a shower!)

Lee also wrote several articles published this year in Michigan History Magazine, completed a book he'd been researching for about 20 years and sent it to Wayne State University Press, and is still finding new information for his Memorial Highways of Michigan tome.

With all that luck and work, we had a good year, and hope you had a good one, too.
Dot & Lee