3/31/12 BEAVERS, WOODCOCKS AND A BROKEN PLEDGE

ANOTHER COOL, DAMP DAY

BEAVERS AT WORK ON THE NORTH BRANCH OF PIKE'S CREEK

WELL, LENT IS ALMOST OVER ANYWAY

OLD FRIENDS

Saturday, 8:30 AM.  38 degrees F, wind WSW, calm.  The sky is overcast, it is damp and the barometer predicts rain.
    The beavers have rebuilt their dam on the north branch of Pike's Creek and it is quite an engineering feat.  I hope nobody traps them out.
    Joan, myself and Buddy went to camp dinner at the Lasen’s sugar bush yesterday evening, and master chef Andy outdid himself cooking beef tenderloin medallions wrapped in bacon over an open fire, and Judy added salad, asparagus and a wonderful mixture of mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes to the menu.  Topped off with lemon cream pie, one of my favorites.  Old mutual friends Paul and Joanne and their two dogs, along with Buddy, and the Larsens dog)  made us quite a raucous crowd.  I was compelled to break my Lenten ledge to give up hard liquor for the duration (sorry, Lord, but Lent is almost over anyway). 
    We spent some time outside listening and watching for woodcocks doing their mating flight to impress their ladies, and I did see two of the diminutive daredevils in the dusky sky, hurtling earthward after their corkscrew ascent.  I head the plaintive call of the male acrobats on their upward flight, but their very high pitched “Peent! Peent!” call on the way down is out of the range of my old ears. 
    Anyway, as an experience it was a cut above several springs ago when Andy led us on a supposed walk through the woods to find the woodcocks’ dancing ground, which ended up being a forced march through every blackberry patch and frog puddle in the neighborhood, in the dark.

3/30/12 SURF'S UP, AND POINTING ROBBINS

MISTY MORNING

SURF''S UP

THE NOBLE BIRD DOG POINTS A ROBBIN

Friday, 8:00 AM.  35 degrees F, wind WSW, calm.  The sky is overcast, it has been drizzling a bit, and the barometer predicts more of the same.
        The weather has not been cold but it has been cloudy and windy and by and large rather unpleasant.  The wind was mostly out of the east or northeast yesterday, creating pretty heavy surf conditions on the western  shores.  No  surf fishermen or small boats were seen at the beach yesterday afternoon.
        Buddy has been trying to implement his heritage as a bird dog, and has taken to pointing robins that are looking for worms on the ground.
        I am becoming rather busy with requests for landscape design plans and bids for spring work so some of these current postings may be a bit abbreviated.  

3/29/12 DRACULACARE

CLOUDY, COOL MORNING

FORSYTHIA ARE IN FULL BLOOM

Thursday, 7:30 AM.  35 degrees F and rising. Wind NNE, calm.  It is mostly overcast and the barometer predicts about the same.
        We held the second Bayfield in Bloom committee meeting of the year yesterday morning, and we are on target for our Bayfield in Bloom kickoff program on Friday, May 11th.  It will be the tenth anniversary of Larry Meilor’s Garden Talk radio show being held at the Pavilion in Bayfield.  It has always been a very successful spring event and we look forward to participating in it again. If, however, you wish to see the spring daffodil display you must visit well before then.  They are just beginning to form flower buds so it will be about two weeks until their peak.  Watch the Chamber web site for the best weekend to view them.  Forsythia bushes are in full bloom now.
        The Supreme Court Justices gave the Obama Administration lawyers a tough time yesterday as they presented the case for Obamacare.  I prefer to call the bill Draculacare, as it will suck he lifeblood from the economy if not struck down.  And, like Dracula, it must not only be killed, but a stake driven through its heart so it can never rise from its crypt to threaten the Republic again.

3/28/12 JUST CALL ME HUMAN

BEAKED HAZLENUT FLOWER

Wednesday, 8:00 AM.  39 degrees F, wind W, calm to light.  The sky is overcast but the barometer predicts sunshine.
        The male catkins of the beaked hazelnut bushes have been obvious for some time, and they have now been joined by the tiny purple female flowers which, once fertilized, will develop the nuts.
        It has been many a US census since I have declared my race as anything but “human.”  I have thought it not only presumptuous but probably absurd as well to declare myself “white” when I, nor anyone else can be absolutely sure of one’s true and complete lineage, and particularly since some zealots will claim an individual to be part of their racial group if the person has “a single drop of X blood,” such as will many Indian tribes, or deny an individual is part of their racial group if the person has “a single drop of Y blood” such as will white supremacists. Such arguments are specious and unsupportable in logic. 
        In addition they can cause great mischief, such as in the current case of the black youth (read half white, half black) who was shot to death by a “white-Hispanic” man, a case made prominent by the comments of our “black-white” president.  All this to the apparent joy of the racial trouble-makers such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who would be completely irrelevant without constant racial conflict.
        I have particular disdain for the Rev. Sharpton, since we lived and worked in New York during the infamous Twanna Brawly case, Sharpton ginning the totally unsubstantiated ramblings of a deeply disturbed young woman into an explosive racial incident.
        And I have to say I am very tired of having the racial description “white” used in the accusative and assigned wily-nilly by racists to implicate guilt.  I suppose I could claim that myself and millions and millions of others others  are being discriminated against because of our melanin deficiency, but will not embrace that tar baby.  Just call me human.
       

3/27/12 POPPLE BLOOMS, LAKERS AND HOT FLASHES

BIG LAKER BEING LOADED WITH WESTERN COAL

ASPEN  BEGINNING TO BLOOM

Tuesday, 8:30 AM.  46 degrees F, wind WSW, very brisk at times.The sky is completely overcast and the barometer predicts rain.  It is a dull, cool day.
        The aspen trees (Populus tremuloides) and other poplars, collectively called “popple” in the vernacular, are beginning to bloom, the male and female catkins are on different trees, all of which are beginning to look alive, gray-green and fuzzy.
        I had an appointment in Duluth yesterday afternoon, and can report that the Great Lakes shipping season is well under way, with ships actively leaving their winter births, although some look as though winter maintenance never caught up to them.  The big laker pictured was being loaded with coal from a veritable mountain of the stuff, which must have come from western mines by train.  I would guess its destination is Midwestern steel mills or electrical generation plants, as the ship looks too long for the St. Lawrence Sea Way locks and access to the Atlantic Ocean.  The photo was taken while heading east on the Blatnik Bridge between Duluth, Minnesota and Superior, Wisconsin.  The coal dock is located in Superior.
        Both President Obama and Senator Santorum committed verbal gaffes yesterday, the president having a “hot mike” experience in which he sounded as though he were alluding to secret concessions to Russia on arms control if he were reelected, and the senator getting hot under the collar at a reporters question, and using the minor expletive “bull shit.”  I pass judgment on neither situation, but I can guarantee that the liberal press will virtually ignore the first, and blow the second out of all proportion. 
  

3/26/12 NEBRASKA SAND HILLS, ROSEBUD REZ AND HOME

SHOULD BE A NICE DAY

ROSEBUD CASINO

OGALLALA  SIOUX INDIAN ESERVATION

SAND HILLS AND HIGH PLAINS GRASSLANDS

Monday, 7:30 AM.  29 degrees F, wind SW, light with stronger gusts.  The sky is mostly clear and the barometer is down slightly.  It will be a nice day as it warms up.  The maple sugarin’ is evidently  a bust this year, the sap run occurring very early and short lived at that.  Andy and Judy have about given up.  I imagine the sap will flow today, however, as it got cold last night and should warm up nicely today, conditions which produce a sap run, until the trees bud out.  I am sure some producers watched conditions closely enough to produce some maple syrup but in general it was a bad season.
        The last leg of our journey, the return to Wisconsin, was via I 75 north from Denver to I 80 east in Nebraska, and then straight north on US 83 again through Nebraska from North Plate to Valentine, Nebraska and through the huge Ogallala Sioux Rosebud Indian Reservation to Murdo, South Dakota. Then east on I 90 across South Dakota and Minnesota to I 39, then north to Minneapolis/
St. Paul to I 94 east.  Once across the Mississippi and St. Croix Rivers into Wisconsin, we took US 63 North to Hwy 2 and on to Ashland and Bayfield.  We take Hwy 83 through the Nebraska Sand Hills because it is arguably one of the most beautiful stretches of highway in the country, the Sand Hills compelling for its unique scenery of grass covered dunes and oasis-like prairie potholes.  The Sand Hills merge into the stunning expanses of rolling grassland in the Dakotas. 
        The  prairie potholes did not yet have many migratory waterfowl, but soon will be filled with ducks and geese.  Our trip overall offered a lot of wildlife viewing, even if only from a moving vehicle.  Many deer and antelope, eagles and hawks, including a huge golden eagle in Texas; turkeys aplenty and a Wisconsin bear.  Nothing exciting perhaps but good proof of the ecological fitness of most of the country.  Our route did not cross the usual flyways of the sandhill cranes and we saw none.  More obvious than wildlife, wesaw hundreds, maybe thousands of newborn calves, in some places virtually a calf for every cow.  Obviously a good spring for the cattlemen. 
        As I have aluded to previously, the Rosebud Indian Reservation is a true American tragedy, as are many of the reservations, but the Rosebud is truly an example of failed federal policies and the result of centuries of cultural failures on both sides of the ledger.  I will give my analysis and viewpoints at another time.

3/25/12 FISH, RATTLESNAKES, VOLCANOES AND OIL

BEACH BIRCH

DON'T FORGET YOUR SHOES

THE BIG HOT TUB

ANCIENT VOLCANOES...

...AND RATTLE SNAKES

Sunday, 9:30 AM.  35 degrees F, wind W mostly calm but with sudden gusts  at ground level, NNW in the upper atmosphere.  It is partly cloudy but a welcome change from the constant fog of last week.  Neighbors tell us we missed glorious weather the two weeks we were gone.  Well, that’s how it goes.
        I took Buddy for a run on the beach earlier, he is still on a long rope as I don’t trust him not to dash off after something and be out of my control.  One of these days we will give him another chance at freedom and responsibility, but not yet.  Fishermen are trying their luck waiting for the Coho salmon to run up the Sioux, and there is a lot of fishing at the hot pond at the Ashland power plant, I don’t know for what in particular.  I am still nursing a painful hip, the result of falling on the ice while shoveling the driveway during the last snow storm, so I don’t know if I will do any spring fishing or not.
        Reverting to an account of our recent trip to Texas and Colorado:  We headed NW on US 383 to US 83, across Texas and through Abilene and into the NE corner of New Mexico, a favorite landscape of ours, with mesas, canyons and fantastic ancient volcanoes.  The few rest areas all have warning signs for rattle snakes, so I kept a close watch on Buddy as we walked.  The drive on I 25 north to Denver was in pretty heavy traffic most of the way but the scenery in the southern reaches was beautiful.  We saw lots of antelope in New Mexico, and mule deer in Colorado (all too difficult to photograph from a moving vehicle, even when close to the road).
We only had time to stay two nights with Eva, Doug and grandchildren Nickolas and Katie but that was just as well, as it is a busy household, everyone preoccupied with school and work. There were very high winds in Denver along with some rain, but no tornadoes.  Much of the economic news in Colorado relates to the newly discovered oil and gas deposits in northern Colorado, Montana and the Dakotas.  It has to be having a great impact on the economies of all those states.  If I had the time I would cross North Dakota to see for myself. According to all reports jobs at $125,000 per year are not uncommon for skilled tradesmen, and even an unskilled laborer can make $25,000.  I have heard that the work week is 80 hrs, with every other week off, which makes it feasible for people to commute long distances to work in the oil fields, but housing, including motel rooms, is very scarce. The last leg of our journey was the return to Wisconsin; more about that tomorrow.

3/24/12 TEXAS!

WHISTLERS IN THE FOG

KIDS

TEXAS BARBECUE

TEXAS REDBUD

INDIAN PAINTBRUSH

Saturday, 9:00 AM.  40 degrees F, wind NW, calm.  There is dense fog again this morning and everything is seeping wet.  The barometer predicts rain.
        Whistling swans are migrating through to their far-northern nesting areas, and there was at least one large flock on Chequamegon Bay off Fish Creek at Ashland yesterday, the great white birds almost invisible in the rather dense fog.
        As we went further south on our recent trip we encountered many signs of spring…spring bulbs and other flowers … but most obvious and welcome were the flowering trees, particularly red bud (Cerciis canadensis) and also flowering pears and cultivated peaches, and native cherries and plums along roadsides and in hedgerows.  Another sign of spring was burnt prairie and pasture, the spring fires set to promote succulent new vegetative growth and eliminate cool season, non-native  grasses.
        Our first actual destination was Weatherford, Texas, west of Fort Worth, home to our son Dutch, daughter-in-law Leslie and four year old granddaughter Allison Eleanor, as well as Leslie’s folks.  The big event of our too-short visit was the birth of baby goats, which were amazingly cute and sturdy at one day  old.  The horses couldn’t compete with everyone’s interest this time, but their pasture yielded a real treat…Indian paintbrush flowers (Castilleja coccinea) which I hadn’t seen in years.  By all accounts this is the best spring for Texas bluebonnets in years, but we had no time to go looking for them in the Hill Country and beyond.  Texas barbecue, as always, was yet another treat. It  rained a good deal while we were in Texas, hopefully putting an end to their extended drought and consequent range and forest fires.  All too soon we were off to Denver, Colorado.
    An aside: I am not a particular fan of the TV personality Bill O’Reilly, and I had thought the title of the new book by himself and co-author Martin Dugard, “Killing Lincoln,” rather distasteful or even disrespectful. 
        I read the book anyway, and do not hesitate to say that it is the most exciting, eminently readable history book I have ever encountered (and I have read a lot of history).  And, it is true history, well researched and documented.  Its accounts of the last battles of the Civil War are exciting and vivid, and the porrayal of Lincoln’s assassination deeply moving. The assassins’ plot unfolds like a murder mystery and the capture and demise or sentencing of the perpetrators reveals stories seldom told in history books.  It is so well writen that it is a quick read, a few evenings at most.

3/232/12 ROUTE 66 AND FORT LOST IN THE WOODS

FORSYTHIA ARE BLOOMING...

...CROCUS ALSO

EVERYTHING HAS  CHANGED

TOGETHERNESS

POST GAS STATION

POST HEADQUARTERS

Friday, 8:00 AM.  44 degrees F, wind NNE, calm.  The sky is completely overcast and there is thick fog rising up the bluff from the lake, and fog horns are sounding.  The barometer predicts rain.
        Crocuses bloomed spontaneously yesterday, and a few Forsythia blossoms are opening today.  Perhaps a bit early for each, but after all Tuesday was the first day of spring, so we can’t be too far off the mark.  I will continue with another vignette of our trip.
        As we traveled southeast on I44 through Missouri we paralleled old Route 66, the iconic American highway.  One can see it often and easily get off the I road and travel it for a bit but frankly it doesn’t interest me that much, as I remember when one had no choice but to drive it, and it is twisty and hilly and full of tourist traps and greasy spoon eateries, all of which is now considered picturesque. 
        Also along old Route 66 lies the army post, Fort Leonard Wood, where I did basic training in the winter of 1957-‘58.  It is a few miles off the I road outside a little town called Waynesville, infamous back then for its dives. 
        I decided we would see what "Fort Lost In The Woods," as we called it, looks like  55 years later, and although the hilly, wooded environment looks the same, what was a motley collection of wooden shacks back then now looks like a college campus.  We stopped at the gate and were waved on through by a very courteous young soldier who asked me if I had served in ‘Nam’ and I had to disappoint him by saying that I had not. 
        We stopped and filled up at the very busy, modern post gas station which had the cheapest gasoline of the trip at $344.9.  We drove around for a bit but it was all so foreign to me that there was no point in spending much time there.  I thought we would encounter some marching columns of basic trainees but it was rush hour on  the post and none were to be seen. 
        It was fun to think back and renew some old memories of scrubbing the wooden barracks floors on hands and knees and never, never stepping on the strip of buffed red linoleum (the Bloody  Mary) that ran down the middle of the barracks, and waking up in the morning with soot from the soft coal burning furnaces covering everything and everybody.  I do remember the food as being plentiful and pretty good, contrary to expectations.

3/22/12 RAISING OUR CHILDREN FOR LIFE IN THE STONEAGE

THE SAINT LOUIS ARCH

MADELINE ISLAND EVERGING FROM THE MORNING FOG

BEAKED HAZLENUT MALE CATKINS

BEAKED HAZLENUT BUSH

Thursday, 9:30 AM.  46 degrees F, wind W, calm.  The sky  is overcast, it has rained a bit and it was foggy earlier.  It feels like an early spring day, and the barometer predicts sunny skies.
        Another sign of spring: the male catkins of the beaked hazelnut bushes (Corylus cornuta) have emerged and although not quite yet at full anthesis are very obvious, even from a distance.
        We started our trip to Texas with an urban forestry meeting in the capitol at Madison.  The protests, or whatever they may now be called, continue, although they are not as disruptive as a year ago.  The “protest” I witnessed this trip was a large group of grade school children singing some kind of “mother earth” song under a teacher's direction, which of course related to the mining controversy.  Which has, incidentally, gone away for the present as GTECH, the mining company requesting a permit, has given up in disgust at least for now and withdrawn its request, leaving the whole scenario in limbo, along with thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in tax revenue.
    If our children are fullyindoctrinated by the  environmental extremists no one will be able to legally drill a water well one day.  We had better be raising hardy progeny, as  stone age life is rather tough.
        From Madison we headed south on I39, and then took I55 to St. Louis, and then I44 to I35 and south to Texas. The St. Louis downtown is easy to negotiate, at least if it is not rush hour, and the Gateway Arch is always spectacular.  The ride up in a little cab like a space capsule is worth the effort, as are the views from the top.

3/21/12 GOOD TO BE BACK

FOGGY MORNING IN BAYFIELD

Wednesday, 11:30 AM.  56 degrees F, wind W, calm.  It has been a foggy morning but is lifting now.  The barometer predicts sunshine.
        Our two week trip to visit kids and grandkids in Texas and Colorado was short, hectic, but all went well, and all are well.  We left Bayfield with about three feet of snow on the ground and came back to none at all, and early things beginning to leaf out.  The Forsythia are in full bud and the red maple (Acer rubrum) on Manypenny between Eighth and Ninth streets is in full bloom.  Daffodils are five or six inches high in the herb garden. 
        The bears were emerging when we left, and we were greeted by one along the side of the road north of Hayward as we returned last night.  Gasoline was $379.9 a gallon when we left and was still that when we returned.  We paid between that and $355 on the trip.  We averaged 17.2 miles per gallon in the truck, which was loaded pretty heavily from Bayfield to Texas and from Texas to Denver, carting furniture around as well as the three of us and our gear. 
        Buddy had a great time visiting, and stayed in the truck nights we were in motels.  He is a really good traveler.  In the next few blogs I will post some vignettes of the trip.  It was good to go, but just as good to get back.

3/06/12 STAYING VERTIAL; AND, SPRING IS HERE!

A PROMISING MORNING...

...BUT I GOTTA HAVE SOME FUN

BEYOND THE FRONT DOOR

SNOW-BIRD BATH

Tuesday, 8:30 AM.  36 degrees F, up ten degrees in the last hour.  Wind SW, calm at ground level but clouds moving gently at high altitude.  It is a partly cloudy day and the barometer is trending up.  It shows promise.
        It was a yak-track morning, the roads very slippery.  Buddy is very good about not pulling on the leash and will walk well at heel, he seems to know when I am having trouble staying vertical.  I saw the footprints of a long-legged runner in the frosty road this morning.  Someone who has not yet fallen and broken something that will come back to haunt him whenever the barometer hiccups. 
        This will be the last post for a while as we head first to Madison tomorrow for a forestry meeting on Thursday and then on to Texas and Colorado to visit kids and grandkids.
        Hope we have good travel weather.
   Post Script:  Lily at the Ace Hardware Store says bears are being sighted up on the Rez, and the sap is running in the maple trees.  Spring is here!  Ignore the snow!

3/05/12 SNOW

AMERICAN HIGH BUSH CRANBERRY

ANCIENT APPLE TREES

ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE THE UP

WINTER WOODS WITH MORNING SHADOWS

Monday, 8:00 AM.  22 degrees F, up from 16 degrees last night.  Wind S, calm.  The sky is clear and the barometer is high, and it will be a beautiful winter day after the stormy  spell.  For more time-lapse photography of ice and water from Weedengraphics.com, go to http://youtu.beWhz3AcsXJ6Y?hd=1 
        Wanting badly to get out of the house for a while yesterday Joan, Buddy and I drove around the orchard country and the back roads looking at…you guessed it…lots of snow.  I would judge there to be 3’ of snow in the woods and much deeper where it has drifted.  Ancient apple trees draped in snow were an artist’s dream, but I didn’t see any painters sitting in the drifts with easel and palette.  American high bush cranberry bushes, Viburnum trilobum, with their clusters of bright red berries, stood out in the landscape. It was a very clear afternoon, and the shoreline of the UP (Upper Peninsula Michigan) and the distant Gogebic Range was clearly visible from the highest point on Hwy. J.

3/04/12 BAD WEATHER AND A FAIR BARGAIN

NEW SNOW...

...EIGHT INCHES OF IT

PUT ''ER IN FOUR WHEEL DRIVE

WAITING FOR SPRING

STRANGE WINTER BIRD

Sunday, 9:00 AM.  25 degrees F, up from 18 degrees earlier.  Wind NW, calm.  The sky is overcast but the sun is trying desperately to shine through.  We got a surprise 8” or so of fluffy snow last night, and adding it all up I think two feet of snow in the last several days.  The barometer predicts more.
        While complaining to myself yesterday about the Bayfield weather and longing for spring, I was suddenly embarrassed by my own self-absorption and corresponding lack of empathy for the many victims of the recent tornadoes.  And as regards the slippery walking conditions we have been experiencing, I suddenly remembered my own mother, in her eighties, walking to the bus stop on the snowy streets of Milwaukee to go to work.  I will shut up and stop my complaining.
        Which sentiment I will strongly extend to the young woman law school student who testified before congress the other day about her entitlement to free birth control, while going to school on a scholarship, to boot.  She said she could not afford the three thousand dollars it would cost if she had to purchase birth control herself.  My first thought was, how does she have any time to study?  My second thought, why should I have to pay for her personal recreational activities, either as a tax payer or through higher insurance premiums?
        People can’t have it both ways; telling the government and the rest of us to stay out of their bedrooms, but insisting we pay for what goes on there.  And the implied threat is, either we pay for birth control, or pay  for an abortion or for raising an unwanted child. 
        Sorry, young “lady,” but you are on our own on all counts as far as I am concerned, and if you end up with an unwanted child you and its father should be obligated to pay for raising it, or you can both go to jail, to hell or both.  I think this is a perfectly fair bargain: I will stay out of your bedroom, if you will stay out of my pocket book.