Friday, 8:00 AM. 36 degrees, the wind is W, calm. The channel is calm, the sky is blue except for dark clouds on the eastern horizon, and the barometer predicts partly cloudy skies. There is frost on the rooftops and lawns this morning. I finished bringing the plants in yesterday afternoon.
Jack Erickson, of Rocky Acres Berry Farm died last Sunday. I had not heard that he was ill. Like the eagles he loved, Jack was a tough old bird. He was not afraid to speak his mind and could swear like a sailor when the situation warranted. We bought all our raspberries and strawberries from him, mostly because I enjoyed his banter. I learned more about eagles from watching them congregate in his trees and swoop over his fields in the winter (he fed them fish guts from the fisheries) than I ever did from a book. Our friends at the DNR of course couldn’t stand being upstaged by old Jack, so they shut him down on one pretext or another, and Jack cussed them out good and proper. Jack was a curmudgeon, no doubt, and there are too few of the species left. In my youth all the old guys were curmudgeons and society was the better for it, and I aspire, with time and practice, to help fill the current void.
The paper birches have suddenly turned to gold. It’s as though they simply decided last night that the time was right to do so...kind of like old Jack.
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