aka a “blast from the past”… September 2002, I put my Whitefish home for sale and moved into a furnished rental on Flathead Lake for the winter. The furnished lake rentals are very inexpensive through the winter - rent for a month is less than 1/2 of the summer weekly “cottage” rental price. It was an opportunity to leave my home furnished for sale appeal and try out Bigfork area as well as be “on” the lake for a wee bit. As it turned out, it was a glorious late summer/early fall and the boys and I got to enjoy our beach many afternoons.

All photos taken October 2002 with my Canon Digital Elph - a whopping 2.1 megapixels - circa early 2001. I was remembering that fall and the photos from that time - I want to try some Photoshop techniques on the photos of the boys near the water…to bring them out and blur the background. Fun for the future! - for now, these still jog the memory.

…maybe the last sweet corn of the summer…we have enjoyed excellent sweet corn since late June. With one exception, it has lived up to its name and been sweet, tender-crunchy and something we’ve indulged in frequently. Corn, blueberries and asparagus - this summer they have been plentiful and wonderful!

As Montana does, one day summer, the next fall - it has been cool, sometimes overcast with a bit of rain, but often in the afternoon, the fall light that I love - from the lower, southern sky - casts a warm, glowing light in the sunroom.

This weekend we have actually been “laboring” - final touches on a few projects…

the ground rod for the electric… 5 of its 6 feet were in the ground and we couldn’t budge it any further so Bill cut it off

a tree that never straightened up after the June snow…Bill put it out of its misery and my line of sight!

the hose and sprinkler “system” dismantled and stored for winter

yard mowed - hopefully for the last time!

some maintenance on the truck and bus as Bill prepares to head for Florida - the 8th or 9th - depending on hurricanes, other weather (winter weather advisory at elevation today…) and the receipt and installation of a few interior parts for the bus

One of the benefits of self employment (me) and retirement (Bill) is choosing to work on this type of holiday and take our time off when everyone else isn’t.

So, this Labor Day…

is for laboring.

Psalm 19:1-4 **

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day, they pour forth speech, night after night they display knowledge.

There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.

**Thank you to a faithful reader for pointing me to the 19th Psalm - inspired by the Blue Holes post.

Photos are from Spearfish, SD - April 2008

My thoughts and prayers with the people and animals who call the Gulf Coast home as the skies there look to bring difficult circumstances in the next days.

Yesterday morning was heavily overcast. I have learned to take the camera no matter what. As we left the property and entered the adjacent land which opens to the full sky and mountain view, a vivid blue hole in the overcast appeared. In my head, I said “a blue hole” and it reminded me of “The Blue Hole” - an anomaly in Castalia, Ohio.

“The Blue Hole” was one of those things like “House of Mystery” or “the largest” whatever. In my memory, it was the only venue of that nature that we ever stopped to see when I was a child. “The Blue Hole” was a deep water thing - supposedly of some nature that made it impossible to determine the depth. Also, it apparently lacked oxygen in the water. My memory is of a very blue water hole, surrounded by a fence and about 50 feet in diameter. I remember leaning against the fence and peering into the depths.

The thing is, I think I remember stopping at “The Blue Hole” more than once…and I think we had to pay to see it. And now I wonder why, as we never stopped at any of the other oddity tourist things.

The clouds brought up the memories of “The Blue Hole” and I was forming the blog post in my head…thinking to get any current information and web site links that had more information than I could dredge up from memory. When I googled “The Blue Hole Ohio”, I had a small shock. A number of entries referred to the scam that was “The Blue Hole”. Other sites had explanations. Some links were blog entries as this will be - childhood memories from people my age. “The Blue Hole” as an “attraction” no longer exists…and, of course, it had oxygen in it!

So, “The Blue Hole” of my childhood is a bit of a mystery. But the experience remains and the memory of the vivid blue..the memories surfacing today as I looked at the “blue holes” in the overcast sky of northwest Montana.

Blue holes…a bit of a mystery.