Category Archives: Mother Nature

Too Much of a Good Thing or…The Winter That Would Not Quit

Posted on by

Have you ever had brain freeze from slurping a DQ treat on a hot summer day, a tummy ache after 17 different State Fair foods “on a stick” or a toothache while feeding your sweet tooth it’s favorite Butterfinger candy bar? If you have, you know that no matter how wonderful something tastes or how beautiful it may look, it is possible to have too much of a good thing.

State Parks = good things

Winter Wonderland = good thing

Snow making the State Park closest to your North Shore weekend lodging a Winter Wonderland in April = not that great a thing.

A Celebration of Christmas

Posted on by

Here are a few offerings for this Christmas Celebration. Mom and I celebrated and sang some of Dad’s favorite carols.

White Christmas

Santa Baby

The Hanover Winter Song

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Blessings also for other past and future celebrations: Winter Solstice, Pancha Ganapati festival, Yule, Kwanzaa, Chanukah

The Rumford fireplace

Posted on by

This is the time of year that I like to fill this thing with wood and sit with a book all evening.

The design is an interesting one called “The Rumford”, based on Count Rumford’s London design from around 1796. It has a tall, wide opening with a not-so-deep firebox and a flue restrictor whose purpose is to speed up air and improve updraft for a less smokey fire. The better updraft allows for the more shallow firebox, bringing the warmth of the fire closer to the front and more into the room.

I’ve spent many a pleasant Friday evening with my toes pointed at the fire and my nose buried in a book, with three happy dogs sprawled together, held back from the heat only by the fire screen.

Sinking of the Edmond Fitzgerald

Posted on by

There have been a lot of boats and ships that have met with trouble on Lake Superior. Growing up on another reasonably large Minnesota lake, Lake of the Woods, gave me a lot of respect for large bodies of water and what the weather could create in conjunction with them.

The 2012 Anniversary of the Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald

This year I was in Lutsen, MN on the anniversary of the sinking of the Edmond Fitzgerald and spent a little time around the lake. It was cold and windy, probably nothing like the actual day the great ship went down in 1975, but certainly impressive for anyone contemplating a water excursion.

I’m not sure I knew that the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company was the owner of the Edmond Fitzgerald. There are a lot of other interesting facts and lore at attic.areavoices.com Split Rock lighthouse was lit up on this anniversary again to honor the day and the lives lost in this inland sea disaster.

Of course Gordon Lightfoot also immortalized The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald in song the next year, 1976. Its classic and moving folk music and very popular still, especially in the iron range and arrowhead regions of Minnesota. If you haven’t heard the song, there are several versions out there on YouTube…here’s one.

Lakes and water have been important and influential to me my entire life. Lake Superior’s arrowhead region has a special hold on my imagination and my heart.

Scotland – Kilts and Nessy

Posted on by

I’ve always loved the countryside. Not because I hate cities or convienience or people, but because I love the smell of new growth and the bright colors of spring flowers, the lush green of summer, the burnt oranges, yellows and reds of autumn, and the frosted crisp white of winter. I grew up in Northern Minnesota, where wet lands, rivers and lakes abound and it has etched in me a need for four seasons and, maybe especially, water.

There are always too many potential destinations on my mind, but there are a number of reasons I want my next trip out of my home country to be to Scotland. I know Scotland is not only countryside. I’ll be visiting Edinburgh as well as the moors; however, here is my list of reasons:

  • I love lakes and water. There is plenty of that in Scotland.
  • I have a little Scottish in me…
  • I love castles and I’ve seen them in many parts of Europe and the world, but none yet in Scotland.
  • Nessy…need I say more…
  • I also have some favorite authors who write about or from Scotland. I would like to do a pilgrimage to some of the places they have written about and from.

I would love it if you would do two things for me…(other than comment, like, etc.).

Number one, if you have been to Scotland tell me the one “can’t miss” experience you had there…you can include 100 others as well, but let me know what #1 was for you.

Number two, suggest your favorite destination and why you love it. If I get enough–or any–I’ll blog about them as well!

 

Babies starting to grow up.

Posted on by

I know that sweet baby red foxes don’t quite fit the definition of “blastie” for the Scots, so for animal Tuesday a week ago, I blogged pictures of a mother red fox and her four kits in our back yard. They were little greyish sort of blobs then, just starting to find their legs. Oh what a difference a week makes. I’m sure I’m imagining things, but it seems like the rabbit population has already dwindled. I caught these pictures of one of the four kits this morning from our bedroom window as we were getting ready for work. All four of them are still around, happy and playful. They’re moving much faster now, which is why I could only get a good shot of one of them.

I can see it now, I’m looking forward to a few years rodent free down on our end of the lake!

Fox in the chicken coop.

Posted on by

For the last three years or so our yard in the northern suburbs has been overrun by rabbits. They get into anything green in the vegetable garden and eat lots of the budding flowers as well. It seems like the population of rabbits and foxes ebbs and flows in an alternating cycle in our area.  When there are so many rabbits that the in-breeding starts to show (stumpy ears, funny feet, etc.) the fox population starts to pick up. It seems we might be at that stage now, as here are the new squatters at the north end of our yard. All the pictures aren’t great, but we have seen a mommy fox with four babies!

Old Greybeard at Lake Christine

Posted on by

When we first started coming to Lake Christine, near Lutsen, MN, on a regular basis. The moose were easier to see and Old Greybeard, a mistress of the area, was a well known sight.

She was known to have twins almost every year and would raise them, during the earlier part of the summer, in and around the lake. We would most often see just her, eating the tender cedar branches hanging over the water, but caught glimpses of her twins once in a while as well.

I think it was two years ago that we heard she had died. I believe there was a rumor of both her death from simple old age as well as her having been shot by a hunter with a moose license. Either way, the result was the same, she doesn’t show up across the lake from where we stay anymore.

 

Snowy Leap Day!

Posted on by

All winter it has been brown, not to mention basically above freezing where I live.  As I get older the idea of no shoveling does become more… intriguing, if you will, but for someone raised in Minnesota, on the Canadian border, snow is part of winter.  In fact, we lived so far north that I curled as a HS sport and did this three days a week, in Canada, twenty minutes away.  Also, when my older sister went to Kindergarten she started singing “Oh Canada” when the class sang the national anthem in the morning for the first time.  We got one TV station and it was from Winnipeg; she was sure that was our national anthem.

That said, here it is, March 1st on three years out of four, February 29th this leap year, and we’re getting one of our biggest snowstorms of the season.

The last couple of weeks have been in the forties with the sun shining and I even went and bought a couple of spring bulb flats just to see the narcissus, hyacinths and crocuses bloom in the office (okay, actually at Paul’s insistence).  My spring fever started two weeks ago and I’m essentially done wishing for snow.  Now all I can say is “well, we do need the moisture…”  How about a gentle 45 degree rain?  I guess Mother Nature has no desire to be predicable or boring.  I also think she’s a bit of a control freak.

Whatever, we’ll all slog though this mess and do our best to stay warm and dry cause Mother knows best.  I’m just glad we aren’t an agrarian economy anymore, I just can’t see myself selling blocks of ice to California and Texas all winter waiting for our three month growing season.