Our grandma, Evelyn Wood Moyle, is an inspiration and one of our favorite people in the world - over the years, she's been an avid birder, gardener, biologist, and potter. She lives on Lake Minnetonka in Excelsior, Minnesota. Here is she is pictured as a young woman, across from a portrait of her husband, John B. Moyle, and there's one of her many birding notebooks!
Her house is full of wonderful things, including plants, books, musical instruments, pottery, and ephemera. Here are some highlights...
Grandma's greenhouse is where she tends to all kinds of plants and battles the occasional aphid infestation. She made pottery for many years, so there all kinds of ceramic friends peeking out from nooks and crannies...
Her front porch is a wonderful place, and has this fantastic painting of loons (an inhabitant of the lake where she lives) on a faded piece of wood.
Her house is full of vintage toys that she used to play with as a kid, and which our parents played with, too. This Eeyore doll was always a favorite.
Some balls, bobbins, and a boat. We used the bobbins to go fishing on the lake...
All of these items could be found tucked in a corner of the porch, where we used to hang out, have meals, read, and look out at the lake, which is beautiful in the summer time with sailboats everywhere.
In the winter, it's a little less inviting!
There are books, magazines and binders everywhere, mostly pertaining to our grandfather's studies of Minnesota lakes. He was a conservationist for the State of Minnesota where he helped protect its famous system of 10,000 lakes, including stopping sewage from being dumped into them! There he is in the portrait on the wall...
The sleeping porch upstairs is where we used to spend a lot of time as kids (when we weren't in the lake). It still feels like summer camp up there!
Down the hall is our grandma's room where she keeps a collection of vintage dolls from her girlhood. The big doll was given to her when she was born - her aunt won it for her at Coney Island!
Here she was as a girl, and here she is today! So on this day of thanks, we want to say THANK YOU to our grandma for being such an inspiration! At 94, she's still just a spring chicken! Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Thanks to Anh-Minh Le (who also writes a fabulous blog!) for her article about us in today's San Francisco Chronicle!
