Monday, April 25, 2011
We skipped Easter Day's blog because I really didn't do anything regarding running a resort. We invited some neighbors to join us for our Easter dinner, I went to church in the morning with my mother-in-law, and our dinner was great. My son drove all this way to eat Easter dinner with us. That was great. The picture is of Orla sitting outside on Saturday morning. My car with the dent and branches on it is in the background.
Monday morning was sunny and beautiful so I went outside to work on getting the dahlia bulbs into dirt. I went up to the pump house, which also doubles as my potting shed, and got all the containers I could find. I took some dirt out of a planter, from under the deck behind the lodge and various places around the basketball court. I put the dirt in all the pots, put a few dahlia bulbs in, and then filled up the rest of the container with dirt.
I needed to water the containers so I headed down to the lagoon where there is open water around our piers. I was scooping up a bucket full of water when I noticed Orla had joined me. Before I could finish saying, "No!" She had stepped onto the ice that was next to the pier. The ice moved away quickly from her and she went under. For a horrible second I thought of Senna but I grabbed Orla and hauled her out before her back even got wet. She was very surprised and shook off, then ran around a little. She sure looked funny all soaking wet. I dried her off with a towel and she was back to herself in no time. I hope that means she won't be afraid of the water from here on out.
I finished 90% of the dahlia bulbs, and then we decided to take a drive. John's mom was visiting and this was her last day here so we wanted to make the most of it. So we drove up to Lake Superior. We stopped at Little Girl's Point, ate a picnic lunch, and walked the beach. Then we drove to Saxon Harbor and walked the beach there. Everyone who saw Orla loved her and a little boy was so very happy when Orla acted like she wanted to follow him home. That was so cute.
We came home around 4 p.m. and I finished the bulbs. I put them all in the basement until the weather gets warmer. Some I will plant here at the resort, but the majority go into the gardens at the church in town. It is a tradition that I keep up in memory of Mary Russell. She is gone now, she died when she was 91, but she is a northwoods story I have to tell.
When I first married John and moved to Mercer, I was introduced to his neighbor, Mary Russell. At that time she was in her 80's. She told me, "You know that John is one in a million, don't you?" She wanted to make sure that I knew she regarded John highly. I agreed with her and we became friends.
Through the years I noticed a lot about Mary. She was generous, a hard worker, and never quit when she set her mind to something. She was amazing and I hope to be just like her when I reach my 80's, God willing. She would give anyone who visited a jar of her personally-made jam or jelly. She made a chicken casserole for her customers who would stay at her coach house rental, that she would have warm in the oven for their arrival. She gave her time and craft projects to the people in the Wakefield Hospital during the holidays, and loved to create chef-style meals for friends and family. She also loved to give people tours of her huge, historic home.
I used to give her a present every Christmas: it was a card that had inside a statement, "I will give you 3 hours every week of my time to help you with whatever you need." She used my present to the fullest. I would go over every Wednesday afternoon and help her with whatever she wanted. She asked me to do preparation for her taxes, organize her greeting cards, put dahlia bulbs in dirt containers in April, helped her plant them outside at the end of May, cleaned her floors and much more. She and I became very close and there is one story that nearly broke my heart.
One winter we got a foot of snow in one storm. Mary was due back into town the next day from a trip she had taken to Mexico to visit some friends. It turned out though that she decided not to stay at the hotel in Wausau where her planed had landed. She decided to drive home because she wasn't tired. No one knew this though. She got stuck in her long, winding, hilly driveway. She got out, in the dark and cold, and decided to walk the rest of her driveway home. She went down the snowmobile trail instead, thinking it was her driveway. When she got to the intersection where she saw the large brown arrow that points to our resort, she then knew where she was. So she turned around and went back. By the time she got back to her car, she was disoriented and thought that someone else was stuck too! She should have gone into her car and warmed up, but she was too anxious and probably suffering from hypothermia at that time, so she didn't even recognize her own car.
She turned toward her house, rightly this time, and continued on her way. It was quite a ways to her house and she kept falling into the snow because by this time she was getting exhausted and hypothermia was setting in. She was not dressed appropriately from her trip from Mexico, which didn't help. She told me later that she actually started crawling because she knew she couldn't take another fall. So she crawled up the last hill and saw the one light she kept on in her house. She prayed, "Thank you, God, for getting me to my house. I know where I am know." She decided to rest, which was a very bad idea. She passed out.
The next morning the plow driver, Herbie, for whatever reason, decided he had to do Mary's driveway first. When he saw her car, and a trail of footprints, he became so worried that he slowed way down. At the top of the last hill he saw Mary lying face down in the snow. He called 9-1-1 and couldn't tell if Mary had a pulse.
We got a call from one of our neighbors, Harry. He had a scanner and had heard the ambulance call for Mary. We were in shock. We called the hospital and since we were on their list for Mary's lifeline, they gave us some information. When she was found, her body temperature was 71 degrees. She only had a small spot of frostbite where her guardian angel pin had been against her skin. She was on a respirator at the time and it was not known how well she would recover.
John had planned on going to Milwaukee that day, so he decided to stop and see how Mary was doing along the way. When he got to the hospital, he saw Mary's doctor, who was also John's doctor and our neighbor. She seemed very sad, so John was afraid to ask how Mary was doing. She said, "Oh she's fine. She's sitting up and eating breakfast. I'm just tired." John was very shocked and sure enough, as he entered her hospital room, she was sitting up and talking to the nurse. She later told us, "It's hard to kill a Lithuanian." She lived many years after that. But I think it took a few years off of our lives. She was an incredible woman.
So I do the dahlias every year in memory of Mary. They were her bulbs, which she gave to the church. If it weren't for me the last 2 years, they would have all dried up and withered away. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up Mary's tradition for many, many years to come.
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