MORE TREES AND SHRUBS IN BLOOM

VIBURNAM LANTANA

MOUNTAIN MAPLE

RED TWIGGED DOGWOOD

HORSE CHESTNUT

Sunday, 9:30 AM.  50 degrees F wind variable.  The sky is overcast and it is raining.  The humidity is 94% and the barometer is trending down at 29.67".  It will be a wet day.
   Our trip to LaCross, Wisconsin, for a quarterly Governor's  Urban Forestry Council meeting was very interesting, and a nice little getaway.  LaCrosse is in the southwestern part of the state, about a three-hundred mile drive.  It is an old Mississippi River town that has become a vibrant, modern and very pleasant small city.  I will take some time in tomorrow's post to write about "Green Infrastructure," the topic of the meeting.  But as far as the trip was concerned, the weather was cool, cloudy and sometimes rainy, but pleasant nonetheless. We followed the Mississippi River north on our return as far north as Minneapolis-St. Paul, and then the Saint Croix River north as far as we could without going too far out of the way.  The two rivers form most of the boundary between Wisconsin and Minnesota, and the whole river-way is very scenic.  The St. Croix is as significant a river as the upper Mississippi, and has been federally designated a Wild and Scenic River.
   The most salient comment I have about the trip is: Wisconsin is sure green!  The cool, wet spring has made the entire state absolutely verdant, and pretty much erased all traces of the rough winter.  Most of the terrible desiccation of pines and other conifers has been eliminated by new growth, and all vegetation is lush, and many hayfields are already yielding their first crop.
   Spring and early summer trees and shrubs are through flowering in the rest of the state, and coming back to a still-blooming Bayfield was like stepping back a month in time.  Among those still in flower are Viburnum lantana, one of our forest-edge shrubs; the far-northern native mountain maple, Acer spicata, the little-appreciated forest under story tree; red-twigged dogwood, Cornus stolonifera, so prominent in the winter landscape; and the horse chestnut tree, Aesculus hippocastanum, one of the largest flowering trees.
   When we got back to Ashland to pick Buddy up from Blue Ribbon Kennels, a north wind was blowing off the white-capped Chequamegon Bay, and the temperature was only fifty degrees.  Welcome home to the Northland