Sioux Falls, etc.

We made a quick jaunt with B&G last weekend to Sioux Falls in a sorta celebration of G's 21st birthday.  On the way we ate lunch at Channel Inn (not an inn at all, just a small bar/grill) on Hall Lake in Fairmont, per G's request.  He loves being near lakes, rivers, oceans.  The food was fine, nothing special, but the view was lovely.

Photo from VisitFairmont

In Sioux Falls we visited the falls, looked at big fancy houses (one of G's favorite pastimes), and drove around spotting things hubby remembered from when he lived there as a child.  The pink rock is jasper, or Sioux quartzite, which is found all over that region.

We ate supper at Roots of Brazil, an expensive restaurant serving not-great food.  Next morning we had better eats at the Phillips Avenue Diner, our usual breakfast spot whenever we visit.  Then we headed home.  On the way we passed by a farm with a large collection of windmills.  Hubby thought they should have had a large Don Quixote in the midst.

We stopped at Pipestone National Monument for an hour or two.  I've never been there before and it's been on my wish list.  They had carvers inside the visitor center, demonstrating their craft and chatting with folks.  Pipestone (catlinite) is a soft red rock that runs in veins through much harder quartzite in a few areas of North America.  It's been used for centuries by the Dakota and Lakota people for traditional carvings and crafts, including ceremonial pipe making.

 

Photo from Horsekeeping LLC

It would have been a lovely visit except that while climbing some steep uneven steps the nerve in my hip twinged again, and I spent the rest of the ride home in discomfort.  A few years ago I injured my hip while walking down a hallway, and couldn't walk without a cane for several months.  Multiple xrays, MRIs and a cortisone shot revealed supposedly nothing, and the orthopedic doctors were less than helpful, sending me to physical therapy without giving me any useful information.  The physical therapist surmised I had a nerve impingement, which is basically a pinched nerve.  In any case, since then once or twice a year it flares up and I have to stay off my feet for a few days, walking gingerly with a cane for a couple of weeks til it settles down.  

Fortunately my activities this week (besides work) haven't involved a lot of walking.  Hubby peeled and cut up the remainder of our harvested apples, made a large apple crisp, and we placed the rest into freezer bags for tasty winter desserts.  I clipped elderberry clusters from our bushes, froze them, then stripped the berries from their stems into a bowl.  Another hour of using tweezers to pick out the small stem bits and green berries and I had a full quart of ripe purple berries.  Those were also placed into a freezer bag for future syrup making.

I also went through the mass of overgrown aloe and spider plants on my plant shelf.  I was cut-throat over what I kept and what got chucked into the compost pile.  

Just a wee bit root-bound

I've kept five aloes, three spiders, and one ivy.  I put a few more cuttings of ivy into a jar on the window.

My sister smuggled the original ivy from England many years ago

I've done a bit of quilting, trying to finish B's flannel shirt quilt so I can move onto other projects.  I have a rule that I can't be working on more than three sewing projects at once, to push me to finish the ones I start.  Right now I have B's flannel quilt and my chain rail fence quilt going, so I could technically start a third but I really want to finish B's first.  I'm about half-way done with the quilting on that one, and after that just the binding to do.  Then I'll need to wash it and run a lint brush over the whole thing because SOMEONE thinks it is the best thing in the world to sleep on.