Since I was tiny girl attending mass with my old dad,  crowded into a pew with my many siblings, I have watched the church organist with fascination and the utmost respect.  How do they do what they do?  They're up there at the front of the church, Sunday after Sunday, organized, full of confidence, hands and feet working the keys and pedals and clicking buttons to get just the right sound.  They made it possible for me to sing at the top of my lungs, giving me a chance to make up what I lacked in pitch, with volume.

How, I wondered, could they play like they did and turn their own pages?  And think of the commitment it must take to be there every Sunday morning.  Who decided which songs we would sing?  Were they often required to learn new ones?  What if they had too much coffee to drink before they got to church that morning?  I assumed they were a little bit closer to God than the rest of us.

One day, earlier this fall, when my friend Melanie, who just happens to be an organist, and I were touring Saint Paul, we spotted the socks on the organ player (well, we saw them - they were already spotted) at the James J. Hill House on Summit Avenue in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and I realized that organ players truly are as fascinating as I had imagined.  And maybe then some.  I think they may have secret lives.

God bless the organ players who keep congregations awake and singing on Sunday mornings.  Thank you for making it possible for us to rattle the windows and shake the holy rafters.

It's no secret that my friend, Melanie, and I don't know what we're doing half the time.  The beauty of operating this way is that we are open to spur of the moment adventures.  Yesterday was no different. 

First of all, the weather was unseasonably warm for November, putting us in high spirits.  Our goal for the  day was to get to Mankato to take pictures for a project I'm working on, and on the way we ran into a pesky detour along highway 169 in St. Peter.  While Melanie was navigating the detour, we debated where we wanted to eat lunch.  I was sitting there with my brow furrowed, thinking real hard, when Melanie made one of her quick-stops, and pulled over to the curb.  "How does this look?" she wanted to know. Well, it looked to me like our expectations for the day were about to be exceeded.

I've never been more right in my life.  We entered a promising-looking establishment called Richard's Restaurant and Pub, which is certainly a cut above any place I had expected to see in a community the size of St. Peter.  (Sorry St. Peter) I'm not just being nice.  This is as fine an establishment as I've seen, and I said so to Melanie.  The bathrooms even had little white terrycloth towels to dry our fingers on.

Melanie ordered the french onion soup which looked fabulous.  I was tempted to order the same, however, even though I love onions, I'm sorry to say, they don't love me back. It's a sort of unrequited love.  Not to be outdone, I had a bowl of the best squash soup I've ever tasted.  As a rule, Melanie doesn't like squash soup, saying it reminds her of the texture of pureed baby food.  That's generally true,  but this squash soup was creamy like a bisque, rounded out with the smoky flavor of bacon.

A meal at Richard's Restaurant and Pub is worth a drive out from the Twin Cities.  Richards is located on the first floor of the historic Konsbruck Hotel, circa 1901, offering beautifully renovated accommodations for overnight stays.  Being waited on by elegant young men was the icing on the cake.  They made our fine dining experience complete.  Well done, gentlemen.

Kasey and Jayvyn invited me to visit the MN Harvest Apple Orchard near Jordan in southeastern Minnesota for my birthday a couple of months ago.  Well, heck yeah I went.

I believe in feeding the spirit.  I'm not sophisticated enough to meditate or digest self-help books, but I am able to raise my vibration to a whole new level by just plain being in the presence of nature.  Of course, I haven't always appreciated being in the midst of nature.  Back when I was a kid, nature meant walking miles of fields with the sun beating down while we picked up rocks, or pulled stubborn weeds, or detassled corn.

There were couple of years we also had huge pickle patches. Well, cucumbers actually, the pickle part came later.  For all my complaining about crawling among dew-wet cucumber vines, getting those tiny, invisible thorns worked into my fingertips, and dragging my muddy burlap gunny-sack through the rows, at the end of the day my dad made it all seem like a game. 

Dad would haul us kids, with our cucumber harvests, down to the Gedney pickle-sorting station in Wanda, Minnesota.  One by one our gunny-sacks were emptied into the old sorter and we would watch with baited breath while the old machine put up a  racket shaking and shimmying and finally spitting our cucumbers out the chutes, neatly separated into different sizes. 

The smallest were the most valuable.  One by one, we each got paid for exactly what our sack of cucumbers was worth.  I hope God puts a big ol' star next to Mr. Frerick's name for being such a good sport about counting our payments out, separately, for each of us. It took up a good deal of his time.

With our pockets full of crinkled bills and coins, we'd pile back into the station wagon and dad would take us to Chris' Cafe in our tiny hometown of Wabasso, and we'd deliberate whether a float, or a malt, or a coke and french fries was the best possible purchase for that day. I always fretted that one of my brothers was going to order something just a little better than what I got.

Well!  Enough of that. I think my point is that spending time in nature, whether we're working or playing is good for us.  It's just that I prefer the playing part.  And not even playing so much as just being.  Maybe just being with a cup of coffee laced with heavy whipping cream, and a slice of MN Harvest Apple Orchard pie.  Even better, spending time in nature with someone we love. Now that's what I call feeding the spirit. Happy birthday to me.  Thanks Kasey and Jayvyn.