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Friday, May 20, 2011

5/20/11 JUNEBERRIES AND FOG

A FOGGY DAY IN BAYFIELD TOWN

MADELINE ISLAND EMERGING FROM THE FOG

JUNEBERRY TREE

JUNEBRRY BLOSSOMS
Friday, 7:30 AM.  46.5 degrees, wind S, calm. Heavy fog is rolling relentlessly up the bluffs from the lake, obscuring Madeline Island, even though the sky is cloudless and the sun shining brightly.  Fog horns resound from  the ferries and the city breakwater.  The barometer is down but it neither looks nor feels like rain. 
    I replanted seven of the eight roses which I dug up the other day and planting them around the herb garden, and am a bit stiff and sore this morning.  For once Lucky is more spry than I.
    Juneberry, serviceberry and shadbush are common names for a number of  native Amelanchier species.  A. Canadensis is usually shrubby in nautre, and A. laevis more tree-like, but there are eighteen species in the northeastern  US and Canada, and many hybridize, so one must be an expert in the genus to correctly identify them, and I will not even try. They all have attractive white flowers which bloom before or with the first leaves in spring, and small purple, edible fruit.  There are now shrubby varieties being grown for fruit production, and a number of ornamental selections are used in landscaping. The native species are excellent woods under story and wildlife plants. 
    I have been following with interest and concern the stories about impending starvation in North Korea.  As a Christian and as an American I am disturbed by the prospect of anyone starving, even an enemy, so I am not in the least against our giving food aid to the common people of North Korea.  The dilemma, of course, is how to assure that the aid actually gets to those who need it, instead of to their military, or that it will not end up being sold on the black market.  Hard-hearted as it may seem, I do not think food aid should be given unless verifiable, on site inspection of food distribution and consumption is allowed, as the communist regime has proven time and again that it will abuse and starve its own people with impunity.
    South Korea, with the same ethnicity and similar physical resources, is a modern, even wealthy country.  The sooner the communist regime falls, the sooner their people will prosper, and the specter of famine will fade away , like the fog over Madeline Island

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