What I planted

I was so tired last night I realize I forgot to tell any details of what I planted! Or maybe it was brain fog caused by the beers I had in celebration. The hops in Two Hearted Ale certainly have been known to do that before.

I have two potato bins planted, one with Red Gold and one with Viking Purple. I still have several other varieties that need a home: Yukon Gold, Desiree, Garnet Chile and French fingerling.

The tomatoes in the hoophouse bed, which apparently were shielded well enough against cutworms last night, include Amish Paste, Brandywine, Rose, and Cherokee Purple.

In the next bed over I planted broccoli (Packman, plants purchased from the local nursery), cabbage seeds (Some hybrid red kind from Johnny's and a white heirloom called Danish Ballhead), Chinese (Napa) cabbage, and kohlrabi.

The next bed over is kind of a mixture: tomatillo verde plants, Diva cucumber plants, pickling cucumber seeds, and rutabagas.

In the next bed I have three kinds of eggplant that I started indoors from seed: Casper, Rosita, and Listada de Gandia. There are also jalapeno pepper transplants and space enough to plant some of my own pepper seedlings that are still too small to plant out: Sheepnose pimento, Fish, and Healthy, all interesting names from the Seed Savers Exchange catalog. Or was it Baker Creek?

The first bed in the next row contains one zucchini plant, plus several hills of seeds including yellow zucchini, crookneck squash, pumpkin, and Rainbow winter squash. I mentioned the next bed in my previous post, where I planted butternut squash beneath two bean tepees planted with Kentucky Wonder and Ohio Cutshort beans. The next bed over is the lettuce and other greens that I first planted April 9th. The lettuce, arugula, orach, and spinach are ready for fresh salads!

The last bed that was ready to plant contains garlic (planted last fall), red onion sets, carrots, parsnips, and radishes. There are three more raised beds that still need soil, and Russ is going to make a couple more beds this week; all of these I think will get planted with tomatoes, and I still won't have enough space for all of my tomato plants!

Planting time

I am absolutely exhausted.

We were blessed with two days of beautiful weather, so I seized the moment and planted our gardens. There are still tomatoes and potatoes to plant, but everything else is in the ground. We are planting in raised beds, because our soil is so rocky that the tiller jams up about every ten seconds if we try to till. And we have two years' worth of composted horse manure that fills the beds very nicely.

I was thinking today as I planted, "What if we were real homesteaders?" I mean, what if our lives depended upon what I was planting today, what if there were no Plan B? I would be totally scared. I don't think my gardening skills are that great. And there are the unexpected things, like cutworms...I planted eight tomato plants in a raised bed, covered with a tunnel of plastic, only to find this morning that four of them were cut off at soil level. I consulted my gardening books, and cutworms were the only thing that matched the symptoms. So dh and I spent a lot of time making "cutworm collars" to try to keep these fiends away.

I am especially proud of my bean tepees that I made this morning, out of hazel stems I cut myself. I planted butternut squashes beneath each one. I am not that artistically inclined, but I think the tepees add something visually to the garden.

Too tired to write more.

Starflowers

The starflowers are in bloom. I just saw them for the first time today. Starflowers are one of the wildflowers that line the path, the original path, not the new driveway, to our cabin. They are, like their name, star-shaped, although every one I have seen has had seven points. How unique. You don't see seven of much in nature, or in music. New Grass Revival has a tune called "Seven by Seven" which is the only somewhat-popular song to be written in that meter.

I would have posted a picture, if I had had enough money left over from our tax refund to purchase the 250 dollar digital camera I have on my wish list. But alas, that money got spent on frivolous things like car repairs and getting our driveway in driveable condition. I do have a picture of a starflower, the one I took just after graduating from high school (20 years ago--aaack!!!) when I went on a Boundary Waters canoe trip with my church group. My appreciation of the small things hasn't changed much I guess. Or has it. I think that picture 20 years ago was only a beginning on the journey to the person I am now. I still see starflowers, but now I see so much more. Maybe that starflower, that I thought enough of to photograph, was speaking to me, foretelling of the wondrous discoveries in store for me. Who would have thunk it. Life just keeps getting better!

My latest band name: A Quorum of Losers (Thanks Dan for the post that started it all!)

Night noises

One advantage to having no indoor plumbing is that I have a reason to go outside in the middle of the night. I see the stars and hear all of the nocturnal creatures. The night this time of year is not dead quiet like it is in the middle of winter; the frogs never seem to quit singing, and if there is any moonlight, certain birds will be calling all night. Even woodcock and ruffed grouse will call (or drum) in moonlight. One bird I have not seen here yet, but have come to know through its nighttime calls, is the sedge wren. It doesn't have a very musical call; it's more like buzzing and clicking. Why does it sing by night? I don't know. The other night I heard at least one, and possibly two, barred owls giving their loud, rhythmic hooting.

And this morning, although it was cool and wet, was filled with bird song. At any given time I could hear red eyed vireo, goldfinch, chestnut sided warbler, black and white warbler, rose breasted grosbeak, chickadee, yellow warbler, ovenbird, veery, song sparrow, and several more I might not know yet. And, oh yes, a wild turkey gobbling! Ten years ago the wildlife managers were saying turkeys would not survive the winter here. Now we know better, although I am questioning whether the resident ruffed grouse, who have not lived with wild turkeys for many years, if ever, are adapted to handle the competition, if there is any.

The war has hit close to home

I just heard the news that Matthew Lourey, son of state Senator Becky Lourey, who represents my district, was killed in a helicopter crash in Iraq.

I know some of the Loureys. Becky and her husband Gene had twelve children, many of them adopted. I got to know Becky, Gene, and some of the family while working for a short time at their family business two years ago. I don't think I had met Matthew.

Becky is a liberal Democrat who counted among her friends the late Sen. Paul Wellstone.

My heart goes out to the family for their loss.

Thanks, George W. How many more will it take?

Real butter from a family cow

We have been enjoying a treat this week. When we visited Tom and Sal on Friday, they gave us some homemade butter from their cow, Annabelle. (What a name--it doesn't get any better than that!) It is the creamiest, richest, smoothest butter I have ever tasted. Even the kids can taste the difference between it and store-bought butter.

I grew up on margarine, mainly because it was cheaper than butter. When I started getting interested in dietary issues, the "experts" were still promoting margarine as healthier, and I believed it. But when I was married, my husband refused to eat anything but the real thing, so I gradually became a convert to butter. I also began finding out that what the "experts" say isn't always true, especially when the "experts" are supported by the corporations that produce our so-called food. Now I am convinced that butter, being a substance that can be processed by anyone with a cow, or even a pint of cream from the store, is naturally superior to anything that has to be processed in a factory, never mind the fact that it just plain tastes better.

Russ told his mother about how good the fresh butter was, and she instantly understood what he was talking about. She grew up in rural South Carolina and still has an appreciation for the simple, good things that life had to offer. I have a feeling, however, that if I told my mother or grandmother about it, they would only tell about how much work it was to milk the cow and make butter. Some things are worth the effort.

I want a cow.

The fishing report from Sand Creek

I'm still fighting off this miserable cold. Last night after dinner (king salmon on the grill-yum!) I took Togo for a walk along the creek. Well, actually it was more like Togo took me for a walk, and would have taken me for a run if I hadn't felt so sluggish. He's very strong, and he likes to run. He would make a good sled dog.

I like walking along the north side of the creek. Our property extends a hundred feet or so beyond the creek, and it is part of a larger hay field that the neighbors mow. The creek is straight as an arrow there; it was ditched in 1918 and for some reason is still listed as a county ditch even though to my knowledge there is no agriculture except maybe pasture upstream. Even though it is a ditch, it is also a designated trout stream, and a pretty good one for this area. Pretty good meaning that it actually has a brook trout or two in it. Numerous springs keep the water temperatures cool enough, and the bottom is clean sand and gravel. I have seen redds there, the round nests in which brook trout spawn in the fall. I would like to eventually do some habitat work on the stream, restoring some of the natural meanders and thus providing more variety, more pools and riffles, more cover and feeding areas for trout.

For all of the eleven years we've been coming here, and the 2 1/2 years we've lived here, however, I have yet to go fishing on Sand Creek! Even though I work in fisheries management, I really don't know a lot about fishing, particularly trout fishing. But last night after I got back from my walk, Russ took the kids fishing for the first time. Unfortunately I was too exhausted to come along, but I was thrilled that they were actually going out. I just sat in the back yard and watched chickadees flit among the new birch leaves. I identified one new warbler for the year, a Nashville warbler. Twenty minutes later I heard them coming back. "Mom! We caught a FISH! Come and see!" Nina was running up the path with a coffee can sloshing water. Inside was a six inch creek chub (Semotilus atromaculatus). The kids were so excited, you would have thought they had caught the new world record brook trout.

Ah, the simple pleasures.

Last year's bounty

My home, my refuge

First of all, I wanted to thank Erich and Sylvia for stopping by, and welcome to Sand Creek! Sylvia, I'll work on that challenge.

I'm staying home from work today; somehow I caught a nasty cold bug over the weekend. I called in, and John, my coworker thanked me for not coming in to infect everyone else. I was disappointed though; someone had called from church and asked me to play music Sunday morning. I thought I was okay to do it, but on sunday I woke up with no voice and not feeling like playing flute either.

I should try to relax today; the weekend was hectic. Friday was hectic in a fun sort of way; Tom, a new friend, called up and invited us to dinner at his house. He and Sal, his partner, have a beautiful farm. I would call them true homesteaders; they raise pigs, chickens, and one cow for milk, and he does some very artistic woodwork for extra income. Their children, Red and Ada, are the same ages as Vincent and Nina and they have a great time together. Fred and Missy were there so of course after dinner Fred and I played some music while Russ and Tom and Charlie plotted how to overthrow the system through peaceful self sufficiency.

Saturday we had a family obligation in the Twin Cities. Going to the cities for me lately is like having teeth pulled. I hate the traffic, the noise, the speed. It's almost as if I'm living at a totally different pace out here. I can handle Duluth, I love Duluth, but I would be very happy if I never had to set foot (tire) in Minneapolis or St. Paul again. Not to mention I was starting to feel under the weather, and as usual my family wasn't much for conversation. I did have to laugh at the irony though; my parents brought Lilith's body to me, double bagged, frozen, and in a small Styrofoam cooler on which my mom had written "Lilith, 1991-May 10, 2005". All the way home I kept thinking "I have a dead cat in the car...I have a dead cat in the car..." Well, to me it was kind of funny. I buried her yesterday.

I was so frazzled by being in the cities that I could not wait to get home, to the peace and quiet of our home place. I realize now how much I need this place. I need to be out in the country, to have some space, and to be able to appreciate things like the first red eyed vireo I heard yesterday. Even though I was moving kind of slow, I worked on my garden beds a bit on Sunday morning. It's been difficult for me to get in gardening mode this year for some reason; maybe it's the weather. But it was wonderful to get my hands in the dirt, and now I'm inspired. My greens bed is doing well; maybe we'll have baby lettuce, spinach and orach leaves in a week or so. We will have twelve 4x8 raised beds this year plus a few potatos in bins; that's more garden space than I've ever had. We will need to get some black dirt from a farmer we know from church, but we also have lots of great composted horse manure to mix in.

Our afternoon work was interrupted while we chased a steam engine train. Russ heard the distinctive whistle, and remembered someone had told him a steam engine would be passing through Sunday afternoon. So we hopped in the van to find it. We barely missed it at Askov and Sandstone, so we got on the freeway and sped towards Hinckley. I saw the smoke so I figured the best thing would be to drive on to Brook Park and catch it there. We managed to get there with time to spare, and we stood in a great spot by the tracks as the mighty engine roared by. The kids had never seen a steam engine in motion before; there's something so much more beautiful and romantic about a steam engine than a diesel. As I was holding Joey up on my shoulders to see it I was reminded of the Greg Brown song "The Train Carrying Jimmie Rodgers Home".

One more great gray sighting

Russ just called to tell me he saw another great gray owl this afternoon at about 1 pm. This was in an entirely different location, along the road between Kerrick and Sturgeon Lake. Something tells me there are more of them here than meets the eye.

Off topic: Just for fun, go to Google and type in "Persistent Timberdoodles", and look at the top result. Google is watching me!

Recreation, land ethic, and choice

Disclaimer (cover my arse): The following statements are my personal views alone, and do not necessarily represent the position of any employer, past or present.

In any activity in one's life, from providing the basic necessities to seeking fulfillment and pleasure, one has a moral responsibility to question whether one's methods and choices are adversely affecting others in the land community, and to make choices that prevent undue harm. By the land community I mean all who dwell in and on the land and waters, human and nonhuman alike, living and non living. Aldo Leopold in his essay "The Land Ethic" describes this type of community:

The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land...A land ethic of course cannot prevent the alteration, management, and use of these 'resources', but it does affirm their right to continued existence, and, at least in spots, their continued existence in a natural state.

In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow members, and also respect for the community as such.

Jesus had a command: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Wiccans have a similar code: As it harm none, do as ye will.

We cannot avoid doing some harm while meeting our basic needs for survival, although we can and must make choices that are the least harmful. Our recreation, however, is a complete matter of choice, and we can choose, in fact if we believe in a land ethic we have the moral obligation to choose, forms of recreation that have the least impact on the land community. It is arrogant and self centered to do otherwise.

All terrain vehicles have known impacts to the land. One rider, driving once through previously undisturbed vegetated land, will at the minimum:

• Injure and uproot vegetation
• Compact soil, disrupting aeration and habitat of microflora and fauna
• Create noise enough to disturb wildlife
• Leave a trail of gas fumes
• By discretionary consumption of gasoline , give tacit support to the military machine and domestic habitat destruction necessary to support our nation's level of fossil fuel consumption

With more riders, and there certainly more of them everywhere you look these days, these effects multiply. From the Sierra Club website:

Off-road use of vehicles can present serious and special problems of impact on the environment and incompatibility with other users of the land. Experience has shown that off-road use of vehicles may result in one or more of the following effects:

All vehicles:

1. Physical soil damage, often readily visible, resulting in:
   a. Erosion, causing soil loss and damage to stream banks, streams, and fish habitat;
   b. Soil compaction and serious adverse impact on flora and its regeneration; and
   c. Degradation of trails, including rutting and breakdown of trail edges.
2. Disruption of wildlife breeding and nesting habitats, especially of vulnerable species, resulting in loss of young;
3. Disturbance of wildlife, leading to weakened physical condition, death, and possible extinction of some species;
4. Damage to archaeological, scientific, historical and other significant sites, and damage to natural features, sometimes with irreversible effects, especially on rare features of interest for scientific study;
5. Facilitation of illegal hunting fishing and the talking of game and non-game wildlife;
6. Danger to the safety of other land users because of vehicle speed, steep terrain, sharp curves, slippery or unstable trail surfaces, and/or limited visibility; and
7. Competition with other land users: vehicle operators, with their increased mobility, generally use a greater quantity of scarce land per recreational user.

Motorized vehicles:

1. Introduction of air and water pollution to areas presently removed from any such sources;
2. Excessive noise, which, in close proximity, may result in physiological effects on animals and humans, or may induce anxiety, altering animal behavior patterns, and which, in most circumstances, seriously degrades the solitude of wild areas for other users;
3. Litter: by virtue of mechanization, operators of vehicles carry more gear, with potential to leave more litter;
4. Vandalism: motorized ease of access is often coupled with increase of acts of vandalism on public and private property; and
5. Fire: illegally or improperly operated vehicles can often create a fire hazard on public or private lands.

I have nothing against the responsible use of all terrain vehicles as part of farm or land management work, or by those who have a genuine disability who need to access certain areas and have considered the ramifications thoughtfully. But these are by far the exception to the use patterns you see today. Most use is purely recreational.

Does this sound like a form of recreation that is compatible with a land ethic?

Follow the money. It's just industrialized, corporate sponsored, mechanized, mass marketed land rape, catering to the irresponsible, self centered "me first" generation.

Homestead happenings

We now have a driveway that isn't completely mud and one foot deep ruts! We got two loads of sand/gravel yesterday morning, and in the evening a neighbor brought his skid loader and smoothed it all out. Needless to say, Joey had a good time watching the dump truck and the skid loader work. And, much as I deplore the misuse of heavy equipment in shaping landscapes to human ideals of perfection, I am thankful for the hours of manual labor that were saved. It was fun to watch this neighbor work the skid loader; he moved quickly and with great agility, almost like a dance. Kind of odd, though, I don't even know this guy; Russ was referred to him by another neighbor. He arrived, drove up in the loader, and went right to work, and I was watching, expecting him to stop and talk at the end, and I was ready to pay him. But as soon as he was finished, he took off at high speed down the driveway, loaded up the skid loader, and disappeared down the road. Not much for conversation I guess.

Speaking of heavy equipment, the guy who brought the gravel said he had a large backhoe and could double the size of our pond and dig it down to 20 feet in depth. We might take him up on it; if fish rearing is to be part of our food production, we could use the extra space. The area we want dug is an old gravel pit anyway; it would not be changing or destroying a pristine piece of land.

The muffler finally fell off my Honda Accord wagon yesterday as I was leaving work, so after I got home we brought that and the other Honda Accord, which needs some kind of ball joint replaced, in to the garage and picked up the Astro van, which was having an alternator transplant. When it rains, it pours! Thank goodness we have a dependable local mechanic who charges a fair price. A necessary evil of country living, this dependence on automobiles.

We got a new member of the family yesterday, a 5 month old male Siberian husky puppy named Togo. He seems pretty well behaved and good with the kids. I wasn't thinking about getting another dog, but a friend was giving him away and I've always liked huskies. He needs to run, though, and I need the exercise, so he may be my new inline skating partner.

Russ is getting some fencing ready for the three sheep we are getting soon. Sheep are something new to me; who would have thought ten years ago I'd be raising sheep and chickens? Who knows, I may even take up spinning and knitting; I'll take a good pair of wool socks over cotton athletic socks any day.

We won't be getting the chickens until next month; with all that's going on, and the cold weather, the chicken coop wasn't quite ready for them and neither were we.

I am hoping to take the day off on Friday to get some serious gardening done. The weather is finally supposed to cooperate.

How do I do this, anyway?

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a writer. Even when I was five or six, I kept little journals, started writing stories, and wrote some poems. My grandma, bless her heart, even sent in a series of my nature Haiku poems to The Lutheran Digest, and they actually published them!

It was so easy then. I wrote about my world, the things that I thought were important and how I felt about them, and I had an adoring audience in my mom and grandmas. I thought I was well on the way to becoming a famous author, the next Laura Ingalls Wilder or Maud Hart Lovelace. After all, they wrote about their worlds and what was important to them. The trouble was, I began to realize that Laura Ingalls Wilder's world was a lot more interesting and eventful than mine. What could a fifth grader living in the suburbs and going to grandma and grandpa's lake cabin on weekends in the 1970's possibly have to say that would be interesting? As I approached the teen years and felt the incredible pressure to look and act like everyone else, I gradually gave up writing my stories and poems. I did keep diaries, full of inane drivel about the boys I liked, the girl in seventh grade homeroom who made that school year hell for me, and how I felt about the songs in that week's Top 40. The stuff teenage girls were supposed to write. Blech.

I hate to admit, I didn't read much during that time either. What a waste. There, at the prime of my life when the world was full of possibilities, I resigned myself to thinking my greatest potential was to find the perfect boyfriend. My career aspirations at the time included being a radio deejay. I even was a *gulp* cheerleader my sophomore year in high school. No, I did not fit in and it was hell.

Luckily I realized that a National Merit scholar and class salutatorian was not supposed to be on the track to go to deejay school, and I chose to attend a small Lutheran liberal arts college in southern Minnesota (that narrows it down to 2, and I wasn't an Ole!) and major in biology. The biology major was a fortunate choice; it got me back into appreciation of wildlife and the outdoors, another early childhood pastime that got squelched at the onset of puberty. But for the most part I did not take advantage of all the opportunities for intellectual and spiritual growth that the college had to offer. I rarely spoke up in class, and continued to write inane drivel in my diaries. I did not even consider majoring in English or doing something related to writing, although I was told by more than one professor that I was a talented writer.

I still keep telling myself I'll be a writer some day. I read more than I ever have in my life, and I have an outlet to whomever reads this. But I noticed the other day, in the brief description of my blog, I mentioned something about "environmental philosophy". So where, you may ask, is my writing on environmental philosophy? What are my core views, my beliefs?

Maybe I don't really know. Maybe I really don't have anything to say on the subject. Maybe I am just a shallow "enviro-lite". And that scares the heck out of me. In the words of Babs, the knitting, ignorantly optimistic chicken in the movie Chicken Run, "My life flashed before my eyes...and it was really boring!" Maybe I don't live a life that shows what I care about. Am I passionate enough to be a writer? How do I do this, anyway?

Great gray in May!

Last night Russ took Joey and Nina for an impromptu pickup truck ride. It was so spur of the moment that Nina went wearing her nightgown, which she had put on early. I declined to come along because it was a little chilly for me to ride in the open back, and Vincent was off somewhere doing his own thing. I was surprised when not ten minutes later they were back, parked out front, and Nina came running up the trail. "Mom! Bring the camera! We saw a great gray owl!" So Vincent and I jumped in the back after all, and headed up the road. Just about a mile from our house, as the (owl) flies, there it was, perched quietly and very inconspicuously in a dead gray snag. I may have missed it had Russ not pointed it out. We stopped the truck and I was able to snap a couple pictures, although unfortunately I didn't have film in my good camera. The owl was very cooperative; it had not been disturbed by the truck driving by twice before, and it was still there when we drove by and stopped again on the way back.

I had not seen a great gray owl since late March, and was wondering if a few of them would stay around here for the summer. After seeing ten or twelve of them per day for weeks (see the archives, January-March 2005), I missed them even though I had the thrill of seeing new spring arrivals. I think a few of them did stay around, just during that time period they became more secretive in their habits, not perching out by open roads looking for food. And with the absence of snow they became more difficult to spot. I'm hoping to see this one again, or maybe even see some of its offspring. There are some large tracts of spruce and alder bog around here where a pair of owls could nest relatively undisturbed.

This sighting overshadows, but does not diminish, the joy I felt in finally seeing the first hummingbird of the season arrive at the feeder. I had filled the feeder Friday night, and Sunday morning a ruby-throated male came by several times. How does a hummingbird even survive these freezing temperatures we've had? The weather is supposed to turn milder this week, but I'm still shivering (30 degrees) this morning.

Updates, and blogging musings

I heard my first rose breasted grosbeak of the season this morning. They have a song somewhat like that of a robin, but much faster. It's as if you played a 33 rpm record of a robin singing at 45 rpm. (No one under 30 will know what I'm talking about there!) I hope I can spend some time in my woods tomorrow morning with the binoculars, looking for warblers. It's supposed to be rainy/snowy and cold, though. Ah, the joys of springtime in Minnesota!

Speaking of birds, I've added a couple of links to some birding resources on the Web. Just for you, Dan!

It is nice to know that someone out there is reading this and getting something out of it. I started blogging a few months ago, mainly for myself, as a way to get in the habit of writing regularly. This having an unseen audience out there is an intriguing concept; it makes me more conscious of how I write, so instead of just rambling on to myself in a private journal I make an effort to be coherent to others. Its kind of like cleaning the house because company is coming over.

I've noticed in some other people's blogs, it's like a popularity contest, to see how many people are out there reading. There seem to be all kinds of unwritten rules and behaviors involved in the blogging world. I'm out of the loop on a lot of that, and I don't care if I stay that way. I do this because I like doing it, and I'm glad there's at least one person reading, but I'm not screaming "LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!"

I occasionally go profile searching, hoping to add to my bookmarks of blogs I like. What really gets my goat, however, are people who take the time to set up a blog, put all kinds of neat things in their profile that make me want to get to know them, and then they DISAPPEAR! They post once, saying hi, welcome to my blog, and that's it. What's the point?

Okay, rant over.

Ode to Lilith

My mom called last night to inform me that my Siamese cat, Lilith, had passed away. Lilith was 13 years old. Lilith had been living, along with my blue point Siamese, Lucy, at my parents' house because when we moved here we didn't have room for the cats inside and they are not outside cats. I regret that we had not brought them here yet; I might bring Lucy here soon.

Lilith was the first cat I had in my adult life. A couple months after Russ and I moved into our new house in 1991, and a few months before we were married, I saw an ad for Siamese kittens for $35 on the grocery store bulletin board. Not purebred, classic skinny pointy Siamese of course, but chubby seal point kittens that reminded me of Mittens, the Siamese I had while growing up. I named her Lilith after the character on Cheers, not even knowing there was a mythological Lilith who shared more than a few qualities with the cat.

Lilith was a one-person cat. I was that person with whom she shared her affection. One of my favorite photographs is of me taking a nap, very pregnant at the time, and Lilith curled up next to me. Lilith could hide and disappear from everyone else, but when I came home she was right there. Of course, I was the one who fed her, so that may have made a difference.

I regret the two major insults that I wrought upon Lilith. The first was getting Lucy. Lilith was always a shy, solitary cat, and I should have known she would prefer to be the only feline of the house. But that long haired blue pointed kitten was so darn cute, and I thought they would get used to each other. Lucy was used to being the smallest of a house full of cats, and she learned to be more aggressive and demanding.

The second was moving, several times, and ending up with no room for Lilith or Lucy. So they lived with my parents, and were well cared for, but poor Lilith hid in the basement for the greater part of her last three years. I was hoping we would get our new house done, with room and sunny windows for cats, so I could bring her here. Now I will bring her here to rest in a beautiful place with Leo and Hope, the dogs, and Topper the horse.

Dang, I miss Siamese cats. They are so much more intelligent than the mix of barn cats we have around here.

Wow...great look at an American Bittern

As I was driving down our gravel road this morning, late as usual, I saw something standing on the side of the road, about a quarter mile from our driveway. The road crosses a cattail/sedge marsh there; sometimes in the spring the frost pushes up some of the old logs from when it was a corduroy road. I knew right away it was a bird, bigger than a grouse, and as I was thinking "bittern?" it flew up. It crossed the road about thirty feet in front of my car, close enough so I could see the brown and white striping along its underside. The only other thing it could have been was a green heron, but this was much bigger. It flew parallel to the car, about 30 miles per hour, for several hundred yards before it landed in the marsh. I have heard bitterns in the marsh behind the house many times, but never seen one, especially this close. And never have I seen a bird like that standing on the side of the road!

The white trilliums are starting to bloom; I first noticed them this morning on the slope of the west bank of the Kettle River near the kids' school. I forgot to mention I saw some wood anemone blooming in our woods Sunday morning. We don't have any white trillium near our house, but we do have nodding trillium, which produces a much more inconspicuous flower.

Band names

In reading over some of my recent posts, I've noticed certain phrases that would make good names for the eclectic folk acoustic bluegrass Newgrass kickass Celtic Scandinavian roots band I dream of playing in some day. For example:

Persistent Timberdoodles
Sapsucker Moon
Technicolor Warblers
Hermit Party
Seize the Carp
Rogue Woodpeckers
Early Sturgeon

Okay, in case you're looking, the last one isn't from this blog, it's work-related.

The hermits have a party

We had a party at our place on Saturday to celebrate my husband's 50th birthday. We haven't been the most social of creatures lately; it's easy to just retreat into our little world in the woods and muse on how we're too weird for the rest of the world to understand. And our home is not quite set up for entertaining. But maybe it was the season, the greening up of spring, the emergence from a long winter holed up looking at each other, maybe it was the well known implications of turning 50, and the desire to keep that day from turning into a crisis of self reflection and eventual despair. Whatever it was, I was ready to party, and it turned out to be one of the most enjoyable evenings we have known.

Being the hermit I am, I'm not compared with Martha Stewart too often. I like good food, especially when someone else is doing all the work. But Saturday morning the spirit got a hold of me, and I cleaned the whole house then took over the cookshed preparing the feast. We had chicken flautas with guacamole, shrimp and avocado dip with chips, veggies and dip, cheese and crackers, bratwurst, grilled vegetables, and black bean salsa. We had a watermelon in the cooler for dessert, but that was forgotten when Missy brought a fabulous homemade cheesecake with dark chocolate. I surprised myself; I really enjoyed serving and seeing everyone enjoy the food.

Of course we had music, but that began fairly late in the evening as we were waiting for my guitar playing friend Bob to show up. He didn't get my email directions and ended up getting lost somewhere near the Wisconsin border, but somehow managed to find us; it had been years since he was here. Bob and Fred and I played until about midnight on guitars and mandolins. Then after Fred and Missy left, Bob and Russ and I stayed up talking and finishing off the beers until about 2 in the morning. Bob's an old friend of ours we hadn't seen in years, so there was a lot of catching up to do.

It was so wonderful to be among old friends, new friends, good neighbors, good food and drink, and great music.

Kate Wolf quotes

I'm sitting here listening to Kate's album, Lines On The Paper. I have not listened to this album as much as some of her others; although Kate can't write or sing a bad song, these songs just take a bit more time to grow on me. The only song on this album that I have played is Lay Me Down Easy In My Mind. An excerpt:

Now the seasons of my life
They go turning through the days
I've seen bitter winters come and go
And here I am in sunny times
Not feeling like I should
And wondering when the winds will start to blow

From The Trumpet Vine, which I'm going to work on tonight when I seize the moment:

Now as we come and go, in sunshine and in rain,
Some years are seen more clearly than the rest,
And if it weren't for kitchen songs and mornings spent with friends
We all might lose the things we love the best

And from You're Not Standing Like You Used To, some great timely advice:

And I wish I could make you happy some way
But that would be a lie and you know it
Find what you really care about
Then live a life that shows it

Kate left us way too early in her life. For more information visit Kate's website . Or better yet, head on out to northern California for the Kate Wolf memorial festival in late June. Great lineup this year as usual!

Return of the ovenbird

It is not hard to tell when the ovenbirds have returned to our woods. Their loud, shrill "tea-CHER tea-CHER tea-CHER" call is distincitive and is part of the repertoire of sounds that I have come to associate with this place, this season. I heard it yesterday morning for the first time this year as I slowly, reluctantly emerged from a short nights' sleep. (It's been a long time since I stayed up partying until 2 AM!)

My first positive identification of an ovenbird here, before I knew their call, was from a dead one that had crashed into a porch window. Since ovenbirds tend to stay near the forest floor and away from open areas, they are far more often heard than seen. I have not yet found an ovenbird nest, the quaint on-ground covered structure that gives the bird its name. The opportunity abounds here, I just have to go looking for one some day. I really should do a survey of nesting birds in our woods this summer.

In addition to ovenbirds, warblers are here. In a morning walk in the woods with Joey I located one black and white warbler (as opposed to a Technicolor warbler!) and heard the call of one other species I could not identify. I am still in a learning stage with warblers; I'm sure for every species I've positively identified, there are five others I have only seen for sure in field guides.

Other new arrivals this weekend were brown thrasher, house wren, and American bittern. I'm sure there were more, but I was too busy cooking and cleaning to notice. More on that later.

Carpe diem, carpe momentum

Carpe Cyprinus carpio. (Seize the carp)
Feel free to correct my Latin if "momentum" is not the correct term for "moment". I have learned that if I'm going to play music at home, it will not come in long, preplanned blocks of time during which I can work out all of the musical ideas that have been going through my head as well as run through some fundamental exercises. On all 4 instruments. Dream on! Instead, I have to be ready, like I was last night. It was after dinner, the sun was going down, the kids were playing out in front, and I certainly wasn't in the mood to start washing dishes, not on the first pleasant weather evening in over a week! So I grabbed my mandolin, sat out on the back deck, and picked a few tunes. Nothing fancy, just basic fiddle tunes I had learned years ago. A few spring peepers and chorus frogs joined in, as well as the woodcock. This probably lasted all of fifteen minutes before the kids came back, looking for me, but for just a short time I felt I was living in the moment, and I was at peace.

the early bird

I've forgotten one of the things I like best about May; it starts getting light so early! I was awake at 4:30 and the first light was coming through the window. I love these windows; I'm so glad I let Russ talk me into getting new, energy efficient, BIG windows for the new bedroom addition instead of just moving some of the smaller windows. The window right above my side of the bed faces east/southeast, so I can see the first light of day, or the rising crescent moon as I did this morning. I went outside when I woke up (call me crazy, I ENJOY peeing outside in the wee hours! :) ) and the woodcock was already peenting and twittering. Persistent little timberdoodle.
Now if the weather would only catch up with the calendar; it was 18 degrees this morning!

I'm not the earliest riser in the world, and I did manage to get back to sleep briefly after my outdoor encounter, but this time of year is an exception. It would be even more of an exception if it weren't so darn cold that even the songbirds are frozen out! I love hearing the birds and frogs in the morning. When I was in my last month of pregnancy with Vincent, who was a June baby, I would wake up every morning at about 4:30. It turned out he was born at 4:30 AM, and even in the intensity of labor and pushing I remarked that I could hear robins and cardinals starting to sing outside the open window.

Crazy weather, alders, more music

It's the second of May, and the thermometer read 25 this morning, with expected highs in the 40's. Yesterday, May Day, was windy, with skies alternating between cold sunlight and dark clouds laden with sleet and snow. We did get outside for a while; Russ has been clearing alders behind the horse pasture and the kids and I worked on stacking the branches in brush piles. I can't find much good to say about alder. They grow low and brushy, their narrow trunks slumping low to the ground, creating an impassable mess. When cut, they leave uneven stumps that can chew up truck tires if you back over one while unloading hay. Ask me how I know. The wood rots too fast to be much good as firewood, although I've heard it's good for smoking meat.

Russ has cleared back to a small pond, about 50 x 20 feet, that was surrounded by alders. The pond was probably excavated when this land was mined for gravel; I found a depth of 2 feet close to one edge, and it's probably even deeper in the middle. The pond is between the horse pasture and the creek. Previously it has been difficult if not impossible to walk to the creek without going out to the road. Now with a little more clearing we'll have a nice trail to the creek. The kids and I discovered a nice spot along the south bank yesterday, where the old logging railroad crossed. The trestle is gone, but the mounds of earth are still there, grown over with birches and spruces. The creek narrows at this spot before opening up into a wide, deep pool that probably holds more than a few brook trout. The sound of the water rushing over rocks there is very soothing. I've been coming to this land for ten years now, and we still haven't discovered all of the magic places like this. Joe asked me this morning if we could go to the stream again; to a three year old boy that was a big adventure!

I planted another flat of tomatoes, peppers, and tomatillos yesterday. My first flat of tomatoes has been doing the darndest things lately. At first I thought nearly all seedlings were lost to damping off disease; they were so spindly with tiny little leaves. Some varieties sprouted only one or two plants, and some none at all. Then some of the plants started looking more robust, and they are now doing quite well. And now, a month after I first planted, some of the seeds are beginning to sprout! I've never seen such variability in tomato seedlings.

I can't get enough of playing music lately, and I feel like I've never sounded better. I went to Fred and Missy's house for a while Saturday afternoon while Nina was at a birthday party in town. Fred and I played a few songs, then Joel, the banjo player in their band, showed up. It turns out Joel and I are college classmates; we were even in concert band together. Small world. With Fred on mandolin and Joel on banjo, I ended up playing guitar a lot more than I have in a while. I've never really tried any flatpicking solos, but when it was my turn for a break I picked a few notes, some of which started to sound like the right ones. And I sang a few songs; for some reason my voice just flowed smoothly, not shaky or tense at all. I was given the ultimate compliment when Joel said it reminded him of Iris DeMent, then later Fred told me Missy thought I sounded like Emmylou Harris. Wow! Russ has told me I sound like Emmylou before, and let's face it...I secretly want to be Emmylou! But seriously, I feel like there's a reason I'm going through this musical awakening and finding people to play with. It's a part of me that has been in the dark too long, that I've ignored or downplayed. I feel like I have a gift, and I need to use it to the best of my ability.

Missing the frog chorus

The cold weather of the last week has silenced the frogs for now. It seems eerily quiet in the evening and at night without them; about all I hear now is the woodcock, still faithfully performing his display at twilight, and one ruffed grouse drumming in the distance. The forecast does not look encouraging, with highs in the 40's-50's and nighttime lows from 25-30 for at least the next few days.

My pet theory of the day is that a rogue flock of ivory billed woodpeckers was responsible for the toppling of the Devil's Chair rock formation along the St. Croix River earlier this month. (see this link for details).

Marsh marigolds at Sand Creek

If I had a digital camera, which I may be getting shortly if there's money left from the tax refund, I would post a picture of a few marsh marigold plants, surrounded by glittering frost, beginning to bloom among the brush stubble and debris left from the crew that cleared the powerline right of way a few weeks ago just north of Sand Creek. Marsh marigolds are optimists, and survivors.

Other than that, it's been cold and rainy/snow flurries this week, not much new happening on the migration front. I ordered seed potatoes yesterday. Around here it's not too late to plant potatoes Memorial Day or later. I ordered Yukon Gold, Red Gold, Purple Viking, Desiree, Garnet Chile, and French fingerling. I'll have a colorful root cellar if all goes well! I still have to start a few more tomato and pepper seeds. Some of the ones I planted must have gotten the damping-off fungus, and some didn't sprout at all, but there are a few, notably Maskabec, that are looking healthy, about 3 inches high.

I cut some stinging nettles the other day for dinner, the young small leaves which are supposedly very nutrient dense. The first time I served steamed nettles, a year ago, Russ thought I was trying to do him in. He liked them the other night, steamed and served with melted butter. They tasted like spinach. I'm going to try fiddlehead ferns this spring; we have lots of ostrich ferns growing in the woods every year.

UPDATE: here's a good link for wild edible plants: Foraging with the "Wildman"

Sapsucker moon, and music

My suspicions were correct; the marsh marigolds are not yet blooming anywhere near my house, and with a barrage of cold fronts expected to continue through the week, they will probably hold off for now. I am reminded that the first giddy eighty degree days of April in Minnesota are just a teaser.

The bird of the weekend was the yellow bellied sapsucker. A pair of them were busy calling and cavorting among the small spruces and aspens just a few feet away from the house, apparently undisturbed by our coming and going. What an unfortunate sounding name; "yellow bellied" implies cowardice, and "sapsucker"...well, someone must have been in a strange mood when they decided to name the bird based on that particular feeding habit.

A yellow shafted flicker has been pecking at the broken top of the old spruce (See: Saga of the Spruce) the last couple of mornings. Excavating a nest cavity perhaps?

We had a wonderful evening Saturday meeting some new friends and playing music. I had been wanting to find out if there was anyone anywhere near here who played bluegrass, folk, Celtic, or other acoustic music. I had been missing the challenge and interaction of playing with other musicians as opposed to playing alone or with a recording. Ironically enough, I got in touch with someone through an Internet forum--says something about community when in your daily interactions in real life you don't get to meet the very kind of people you are looking for! He and his wife turned out to be wonderful people with whom Russ and I have a lot in common. They had also invited Tom, a friend of theirs who brought his son, Vincent's age. We had lots of good, thoughtful conversation, great food and drink, and Fred and I played some Celtic songs, fiddle tunes (though neither of us plays fiddle) and some Greg Brown, Kate Wolf, and Gillian Welch songs.

Russ mentioned that he is envious of the fact that I am able to get completely "lost" in the music I am playing. I don't know if that is completely true; to get lost in music, as in prayer or meditation, requires a degree of mental discipline, and some other mysterious element that intervenes and transforms the physical act of producing sound into a higher, more enlightened moment. A moment where I am "there" in the sound waves of my flute, a moment in which the words of the song lift my voice, a moment where my heart beats the rhythm. Annie Dillard describes this kind of awareness in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, a copy of which I don't have handy to quote.

I don't have this kind of experience too often playing music, especially at home when I'm lucky to be free from distractions. We have a banjo playing friend who at times goes off into "banjo world" to explore new improvisations. I was "there" maybe a couple of times the other night; once when we spontaneously launched into an Irish tune, and I somehow had the tune committed to memory enough that it flowed without thinking. I can't even remember what the name of the tune was. Then, after dinner (and a good single malt Scotch) I loosened up, started singing Gillian Welch's Tear My Stillhouse Down, not even knowing if I would remember all of the verses. I didn't, but we rocked anyway.

Marsh marigolds...wow they're early!

I had to make a drive cross country today, to Little Falls which is right smack dab in the middle of Minnesota. There are no major roads from here to there, just county backroads through miles and miles of rocky pastures, woodland, and marsh. It was kind of a gray dreary day, with intermittent rain showers, not the best weather for seeing things but I brought my binoculars just in case. I saw lots of kestrels and bluebirds and a few harriers, among other bird species. Then, along the ditch in a wooded area, I saw the first clumps of bright yellow blossoms...marsh marigolds! (Caltha palustris). This has to be the earliest I have ever seen them, at least since I've been keeping track of such things. I don't know if they are in bloom at Sand Creek yet, we're usually a little colder than everywhere else. I remember the first day we saw them last year, which had to be early May. I also saw some sort of small tree along the edge of woods in a few areas that was blooming with clusters of white flowers.

What I'm listening to lately

Last night on the way home from work it was a compilation of Rossini overtures on CD. Why? Because eight minutes into the "William Tell Overture"...it's The Lone Ranger! I played that one just for Joe. Then after repeating it three times, I was in a pretty good mood so I popped in Sam Bush's Peaks of Telluride. When Joe is in the car I always have to skip ahead to Pastor Mustard doing his Heen recitation. Joe can almost recite the whole thing. Then I usually skip to Girl Of The North Country, the Bob Dylan song played as a mando/dobro duet with Jerry Douglas, then one of my all time favorites, Same Ol' River. Incredible solos, incredible energy.

The album I've been playing most often is Natalie MacMaster's Blueprint. This is fast becoming one of my all time favorites. I first saw Natalie in 1994 or 1995 at the Merle Watson Festival, and was impressed with how she could get an entire festival audience tapping their feet. This album, produced by Darol Anger, has Natalie playing with a who's who list of my favorite musicians: Sam Bush, Bela Fleck, Edgar Meyer, Jerry Douglas, Matt Flinner, and so on... Medleys of strathspeys, reels, and jigs maintain Natalie's Cape Breton style but are flavored with nuances of bluegrass, newgrass, and acoustic jazz. The Ewe With The Crooked Horn, opening up with Sam Bush's signature mando chop rhythm, reminds me of another all time favorite album, The Telluride Sessions by Strength in Numbers.

The one tune that has grown on me most, however, is Johsefin's Waltz. Perhaps it's my Scandinavian heritage that draws me to this piece, written by Roger Tallroth of the Swedish group Vasen. Slow, bittersweet, dancing the thin line between light and shadow, joy and melancholy, never leaping too far to one side, this is everything a slow waltz should be. Darol Anger's spare, melodic arrangement captures this essence perfectly, and Natalie's soaring fiddle wails the full range of emotion. I can't express enough in words how cathartic this piece is to me. I compare it with Ashokan Farewell; the sound is timeless.

Spring appears overnight

Okay, time to stop being so political, for a while anyway. The way it's going, if I sit inside and rant for a day, I'll miss most of spring! That's the way it goes here in Minnesota; when spring finally arrives, as it has a bit early this year, it makes up for lost time. Things happen overnight. Now nearly all of the aspens are leafing out, as well as willows. Hills are painted lime green and ruby over the gray of branches. I went for a walk at noon along the dike between the fish rearing ponds and the river near my office. Almost spontaneously, the ground on the slope facing south, towards the river, is covered with the mottled leaves of wood anemone. No flowers yet, but maybe tomorrow. I did come across a flowering sedge at the edge of the path that I can't identify; the only thing I can find on the Internet is Carex physorhyncha, offshoot sedge. I never noticed it before.

There are a few tiny sprouts up in my garden; I don't remember which row is which at this point, but at this rate we'll be having fresh salads in a few weeks.

Lockdown "results"

In my previous post (The Lone Ranger) I mentioned the lockdown at my childrens' school on Friday. An explanatory note from the district superintendent said that all lockers had been searched, but no weapons were found. However, he reported that several students had been suspended. Russ picked the kids up from school yesterday, so he stopped by the principal's office and asked what the suspensions were for. The principal said that that information was confidential. Hmmm...he was not asking names or anything, just curious as a parent to know if his children were ever in any kind of danger. A reasonable request. So he asked a teacher, who repeated that he/she really was not supposed to give out that information, but just between them, and understanding the concerns of a parent, he/she confided that the following offenses were found during the locker search:

• Tylenol (supposed to be registered with nurse's office)


• a couple of Swiss army (pocket) knives

That's all, folks. In the name of keeping our kids safe, hundreds of students were detained in their classrooms for hours. Some poor student, carrying legal over the counter medication but not following "procedure" is now suspended from school. And as far as I know there's no law classifying pocket knives as concealed weapons and thus regulating their presence, except in schools and airports I guess.

What's to keep a school official from phoning in an anonymous threat to justify locker searches? (Orange terrorism alert; see the parallel?) Is there a procedure in place to prevent the planting of "evidence" resulting in student suspension? Why are parents not allowed to know the truth? I may be reaching here, but this reminds me of the revocation of rights under the Patriot Act.

Yes, I'm concerned for my childrens' safety while they are at school. I know there is a small but real danger that what happened at Red Lake could happen there, or anywhere. There is also a larger danger that we could be involved in an automobile accident on the way to school. Should we deal with that danger by requiring drivers to register their routes and destinations, and be subject to search and arrest if they deviate from normal routes?

Our children are being trained to accept limits on their rights in the name of "homeland (or homeroom) security".

Edited to add: I just found out that they searched all students' cars too. This is not looking good. :(

The Lone Ranger

Joe, my three year old son, is into The Lone Ranger these days. We have some of the old shows on DVD, and lately that has replaced road construction videos as his number one entertainment choice.

I admit I've been watching the shows myself. Once I get past Clayton Moore's stiff delivery of his spoken lines and Tonto's TV-Indian English, the premise of the universal fight for truth and justice is, I think, much more appealing than the shows of today which are nothing more than blow'em up special effects. I find it interesting that the Lone Ranger shoots to wound, not to kill, because it is up to the law to decide whether a man lives or dies, not the man with the six gun. The Lone Ranger brings men to justice but does not play God. And he uses silver bullets, which brought up possibly the first metallurgic discussion Russ and I have ever had. Do the silver bullets, which presumably melt at a somewhat higher temperature than lead, cause less internal injury and therefore create less chance of death? The Lone Ranger's model of justice is not an "eye for an eye", but rather that the truth will prevail and guns and bullets are just tools in the process, tools to be used with respect and restraint. The Lone Ranger does not act for personal glory; the mask hides his face, and his identity, because who he is is less important than the service he is doing. And there is a fidelity between Tonto and Kemosabe, teaching that good works will be returned to us in some way.

Maybe in today's reality of school shootings and the seeming disrespect of the young perpetrators for human life, we need to return to the old values the Lone Ranger taught us.

The reality, brought home by the recent shootings at Red Lake and most recently, a lockdown at Vincent and Nina's school last Friday due to a rumor that some students might be bringing firearms to school, has had me considering my position on the role of guns and gunplay in childhood, particularly male childhood. The boys, inspired in part by the Lone Ranger, have been having gunfights all weekend. Saturday night, when we went for a ride in the pickup truck with me and the kids in back, Joe was shooting at everything he could with his toy gun.

I say, let them play. It has been shown that even in households where toy guns are forbidden and gunplay is reprimanded, boys will use anything and everything as guns, even forming a gun with the thumb and index finger. I even did that as a kid. Vincent even used Doofus the cat as a gun! I simply don't have the patience to go against nature.

The kids that grew up watching the Lone Ranger did not turn into school shooters. Instead many of them were shipped off to Vietnam and told to "shoot 'em all and let God sort them out." Our government, acting alone, is sanctioning the killing of thousands in Iraq, in the name of defending our selfish, consumptive, amoral lifestyle. In an atmosphere with no moral compass, where going out in a selfish blaze of glory and taking innocent lives in the process is an appealing idea to some teenage males, something is wrong. We need the Lone Ranger to seek out the truth and work for justice. We need to arm our children with silver bullets of wisdom and self-restraint.

Spring green, and ruby crowned kinglets

I noticed the first bright yellow-green aspen leaves emerging from buds this morning on a few trees. Although the catkins (flowers), which resemble gray caterpillars, are out in full force, most aspens are not leafing out yet and usually do not until the beginning of May. Apparently a few scattered stands of aspen clones have it in their genes to leaf out earlier than the rest. This has been a warm April, with temperatures a few days in the 70's. While the probability of frost is still all but certain, and a snowstorm would not be out of the question, the chances of that happening are diminishing.

I have a new bird to add to the list of those species I have observed here at Sand Creek. It has probably been here before, but for some reason I had just not identified it. The bird, aptly named ruby crowned kinglet, is a tiny species, mostly grayish olive and identified by a prominent eye ring, light wing bars, and although it is difficult to see, a jewel of ruby red feathers on the head of the male. The song is distinctive, a loud melodic, precisely phrased series of notes. It is the song that first made me notice these small birds flitting around in the balsams. I stood there for five minutes with the binoculars, trying to catch a glimpse of one, yet I saw nothing but chickadees. I was beginning to think maybe the chickadees had a song I hadn't heard of, when I finally spotted a kinglet in an aspen.

What amazing discoveries are there to be made, right before our eyes, when we take the time to quietly observe!

Refrigerator musings

I don't have too much to write today, but after the last post I want to balance things out and look on the bright side of things. I came home yesterday to see our garden cart full of canned and boxed foods and our coolers full of frozen meat that the pastor had brought over. Now we need a refrigerator! We just had electricity run in here last fall, after using a generator for the last two years. We have mixed emotions about hooking up to "the grid", but the monthly electric bill is a lot lower than the cost of a month's worth of gas for the generator, and it cuts down the noise pollution here. We're still hoping to go solar some day but the initial cost is out of our reach right now. We have one panel that could provide a limited amount of power, and I think we should hook that up to the new house as a backup and to reduce consumption and pollution even if only by a minuscule amount.

But back to the refrigerator, since it was late fall when we got power there was no immediate need for a refrigerator; Nature supplies plenty of free refrigeration here in Minnesota for a good part of the year. But now the days are getting warm enough that the coolers need ice and we can't keep frozen stuff. My living without a refrigerator has changed my views on the necessity of one though; now it seems the ultimate absurdity to keep a refrigerator inside a heated space in winter, consuming electricity to keep food cold, when a cooler on the porch will do just fine.

Church politics *sigh*

We have been attending a small, rural, nondenominational church for the past two and a half years. It was nice going there when we were under the assumption that these were a committed group of believers who lived their faith and welcomed "outsiders" like ourselves. I mean, most of the members are probably related somehow. When we first attended, the church had no pastor and was actively searching. A few months later, members almost unanimously voted to call Pastor D. Although he and I have a few differences in beliefs, which I for the most part keep to myself, he has challenged me to think about what I believe, and what it means to be a Christian. He and my husband have gotten to be good friends. He spent several days helping to build the addition on our house. I truly believe he is concerned with the spiritual well being of everyone in the congregation, and he is intelligent and compassionate.

So I was deeply saddened yesterday when he stopped by to announce that he had turned in his resignation on Sunday.

Not that I was blindsided by the announcement. Russ had talked with the pastor last week and found out about some disturbing things that have been going on among certain members of the church. He shared this news with me in a 5 am discussion Sunday morning, and we decided then not to attend church that day.

We so wanted to believe that we had found, for the first time, a church where we fit in, where people acted according to Christian standards without bickering over details. Where love prevailed. They'll know we are Christians by our love, right? Wrong. These same people, who outdo each other to appear pious and reach out to others, are a bunch of self-serving, backstabbing, two faced, egotistical fakers. Apparently they don't want their pastor, the leader whom they appointed, to rock the boat, to challenge them spiritually. They don't even want him preaching on Easter and other certain Sundays! And the sweet honey voiced woman who leads singing praises, she and her uber righteous servant of God husband, have called the pastor Satan's helper and spit in his face. Literally. They have helped to create deep division within the congregation. And what for? Self-righteous bitch.

My first reaction is to leave, to seek fellowship elsewhere. I told the pastor yesterday I have misgivings about associating with that church anymore. He understood but he is concerned with the health and future of the congregation, and that we should consider staying and showing our support for what we would like to see in this church. But there are certain people right now whom I don't know if I could look in the eye and say "Peace be with you". And we're not even full members yet; how much influence do we have? I don't know. Personally, I've been considering the Quaker path seriously and I would like to check out a meeting; however the closest is fifty miles away and I don't know how I could justify driving that far, consuming gasoline, in order to find fellowship.

I think a lot of what's going on is indirectly a reaction to some events that have affected people in the congregation lately. Our lay worship leader and elder member has had serious health problems lately and has been unable to participate in a leadership role; that leaves a huge hole that maybe others are scrambling to fill for their own reasons. There have been layoffs, among those affected, the chief instigators of division. Maybe what they are doing arises out of chaos and uncertainty, maybe in their need to find something solid to hold onto they have taken a few differences with the pastor and turned that into a radical belief system.

I am praying; praying about my family's spiritual life, praying for healing in the church, both spiritually and physically.

Magic, alive evening

It is just after sunset, and the air is alive with the sound of Western chorus frogs, wood frogs, and spring peepers. The woodcock are making their amazing display of skydancing, landing in the vicinity of my garden, where today I planted my first seeds: various lettuce, spinach, mizuna, tatsoi, arugula, orach. The thermometer hit 70 degrees today, and I spent most of my time outdoors, abandoning washing the dishes when a friend from church, Richard, showed up with his metal detector. Our property contains part of the old St. Croix logging railroad right of way, which operated from 1890-1896 (approximate), and Richard is the local authority on logging railroad history. He found several artifacts today, including the best Peavey hook he's ever found. And a pair of ox shoes, like horseshoes except made in two pieces for the hooves of oxen.

The air outside is just full of music, dancing, life. What a wonderful time of year.

Me and the kids, May 2004, Wolf Creek Falls in Banning State Park, MN 

Sand Creek, August 2004 

And now...Deb learns to post pictures!

My two explorers, May 2004

Ice out, and a chorus of frogs

The pond was almost completely ice free when I got home last night. It was so beautiful to see the reflection of the blue sky and the white pines in the water once again. I went out with the boys and watched them play by the edge of the water for a while, building dams and throwing stones.

I drove home with the car windows slightly open, and as I headed north out of town I heard it--the first frog song of spring! Around here Western chorus frogs, which make a noise that has been described as the sound of running your finger along the teeth of a comb, are the first frogs to vocalize in spring. They weren't singing at home however; I think the little wetlands they hang out in on our land are shaded enough that they haven't warmed up as fast as some others.

Sand Creek is still high from the recent heavy rains, and the ephemeral waterfall along the road across the Kettle River is still flowing. I saw four sandhill cranes in a hay field north of town this morning, and what I think was a sharp tailed grouse flying across the road. What Russ and I haven't heard much is the drumming of ruffed grouse; usually by this time the woods ring with the booming sound.

My drive to work 4/7/2005

I'm going to try to record sightings/observations from my daily drive to work. I live almost 30 miles away from my job, a fact I'm not too happy about with the price of gas (both monetary and the hidden costs-environmental degradation, war, health). Maybe some day I can get a hybrid vehicle or go biodiesel; probably in the future I won't have a choice in the matter. But I do enjoy the drive; it takes me along some beautiful rural roads and across the scenic Kettle River. Very different from the 26 mile commute I used to make down Interstate 94 between Minneapolis and St. Paul during rush hour! I also get the chance to observe numerous birds, and occasionally other wildlife.

I'll start with the highlights from yesterday. In the morning a bald eagle, which apparently had been feeding on roadkill, suddenly took flight from the left side of the road. I slowed down, knowing how long eagles take to get airborne. We passed under it, as it flew just a few feet above the car. The wingspan was as wide as the car! The eagle was just getting its white head and tail feathers; perhaps it will mate for the first time this year.

On the way home, I saw three great gray owls. I was almost ready to write a farewell to these birds, as I had not seen one in almost a week. I assumed they had moved further north. They are a bit harder to see now that the snow cover is gone; all three of these caught my eye as they were flying.

Now for this morning: lots of juncos and robins, my first yellow shafted flicker of the year, mallards in the ditches, a grackle with a twig in its mouth--nest building?--a bluebird, several kestrels, and...a female pheasant! Unusual around here.

Just found a great book at the library!

And it's so ironic that the first thing I want to do is hop on the Internet and talk about it...(rolling eyes) It is The Plain Reader, edited by Scott Savage. The subtitle reads "Essays on Making a Simple Life". It contains essays by a number of authors, including some of my favorites such as Gene Logsdon, Wendell Berry, and John Taylor Gatto, on various themes: Making a Life, Choosing Health, Working, Unplugging the Media, Reclaiming Distance and Place, and Seeking Knowledge and Wisdom. Thus far I have only read the introduction, and two of the essays on Working, and I feel that many of the words are describing the direction to which my life is drawn.

What is amazing is that I did not go searching for this book. I went to the library to pick up another book I had on interlibrary loan, Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, and to browse the religion/spirituality section hoping for some enlightenment. I came back with four volumes' worth of enlightenment, and Mahler's Fifth Symphony on CD.

Notes from Sand Creek

Spring arrived in full force over the weekend, with high temperatures in the 60's. Sunday afternoon I relaxed in a lounge chair on our "beach" by the pond while the boys dug in the mud and sand. There is still ice on the pond, but it is getting darker and pulling away from the edges. The kids found a brook stickleback (Culaea inconstans)in the shallows. Our pond has been there for nearly two years, but we have not put any fish into it. So how did a school of sticklebacks get there? There is an overflow culvert, that in times of high water could connect to the creek; maybe that was the route. If that was the case, I wish a school of brook trout would find its way in there!

Saturday night I woke to the chorus of a flock of tundra swans making its way north by night. The next morning, two more flocks flew over in undulating "V" formations.

Over the last few days I have seen or heard song sparrows, robins, phoebes, and bluebirds. The woodcock makes its nightly performance. Although ruffed grouse appear to be low in number this spring, I think I heard one drumming in the woods while Vincent and I went for a walk. And Sally the turkey has apparently found herself a beau; Russ said he heard a tom gobbling in the woods, and she hasn't been seen since.

The yard and driveway are thankfully drying up. There are still a few persistent mounds of snow in shady spots, but I can walk outside without wearing rubber boots! My raised beds are still wet, and frozen in the morning, but if this weather keeps up I may be able to plant lettuce and other greens this weekend. I so long for a huge fresh picked salad instead of buying one of those pathetic bagged salads at the grocery store!

Oh, and...as I was turning on to the road from the driveway this morning, I caught a glimpse of a large, dark animal on the edge of the road near the next driveway down. It was gone by the time I got near. If it had been a dog, it would have stayed on or near the road. If it had been a deer, there would have been a few of them together. BEAR?

Sky Dance (excerpt from A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold)

Knowing the place and the hour, you seat yourself under a bush to the east of the dance floor and wait, watching against the sunset for the woodcock’s arrival. He flies in low from some neighboring thicket, alights on the bare moss, and at once begins the overture: a series of queer throaty peents spaced about two seconds apart, and sounding much like the summer call of the nighthawk.

Suddenly the peenting ceases and the bird flutters skyward in a series of wide spirals, emitting a musical twitter. Up and up he goes, the spirals steeper and smaller, the twittering louder and louder, until the performer is only a speck in the sky. Then, without warning, he tumbles like a crippled plane, giving voice in a soft liquid warble that a March bluebird might envy. At a few feet from the ground he levels off and returns to his peenting ground, usually to the exact spot where the performance began, and there resumes his peenting.

It is soon too dark to see the bird on the ground, but you can see his flights against the sky for an hour, which is the usual duration of the show. On moonlight nights, however, it may continue, at intervals, as long as the moon continues to shine....

...The drama of the sky dance is enacted nightly on hundreds of farms, the owners of which sigh for entertainment, but harbor the illusion that it is to be sought in theaters. They live on the land, but not by the land.

The woodcock is a living refutation of the theory that the utility of a game bird is to serve as a target, or to pose gracefully on a slice of toast. No one would rather hunt woodcock in October than I, but since learning of the sky dance I find myself calling one or two birds enough. I must be sure that, come April, there be no dearth of dancers in the sunset sky.

I am fortunate to be able to witness the sky dance from my own front step, or from the site of the new house we are building. The woodcock appears to begin his display near the edge of the shrub swamp, in the area we cleared two years ago with a bulldozer. A couple of years ago, before we even lived here, I flushed a woodcock out front, in a barren area of low jack pine, what used to be a gravel pit. I didn't find a nest, but I'm pretty sure there was one nearby.

Our piece of land provides ideal woodcock habitat; although I have mentioned the tall white pines, we also have an abundance of alder and willow thickets interspersed with more open areas. Woodcock probe the ground with a long, narrow bill for invertebrates, especially earthworms. Which raises a question in my mind: Earthworms are supposedly not native here in the glacial drift areas of Minnesota. They are, however, plentiful on our land. I doubt whether the loggers or the early farmers specifically brought them in, thinking "this land needs earthworms!" Woodcock seem specifically adapted to probing for earthworms; why would such a uniquely adapted creature make its home here, where any alleged "introductions" would have to have taken place only within the last 100 years?

Tomato seedlings

Two seedlings are up today, and the winning variety is...Aztec.

I saw a beautiful bald eagle sitting in a tree next to the Kettle River this morning.

Skydance!

I heard woodcock tonight! After sunset, before complete dark, there they were. "Peeent", then I saw at least one of them spiraling upward into the sky, dancing. I also saw a robin when I was going for a walk tonight. I told it how glad I was that it was back. Two great gray owls on the way home, and one bald eagle. And sandhill cranes. Three of them flying north of Hinckley.

Sightings and happenings, March 26-27

Well, spring is officially here. The most convincing sign is when my Honda Accord wagon gets stuck in the mud back by the house and I have to start parking out in front and walking in! Oh for a few loads of gravel for the driveway...maybe this year...

We drove south to my uncle's house on Rush Lake for Easter dinner. They had a lot less snow to begin with and it was almost gone. There were still a few people out ice fishing on the lake, even one pickup truck! The kids played outside, and even I got into a short game of wiffleball.

One of the highlights for me was getting a good view of a Cooper's hawk in a tree by the lake. The great blue herons were starting to arrive at their colony on the island across the bay. A male cardinal gave nonstop song all afternoon. Killdeers were calling across the road. I made a point to look for red winged blackbirds on the way there, and did not notice any, but on the way back home I saw several. We also saw the first sandhill cranes of the year. No robins or bluebirds yet, but I'm looking! I did see one northern shrike this morning.

I planted my first seeds on Saturday after rearranging the cookshed so I had enough shelf space. Russ put up a fluorescent shop light so the seedlings will have plenty of light. The first thing I planted was lemon balm; not planned but the seed packet had fallen on the floor, then one of the cats knocked over a pitcher of water so the seeds got wet. Maybe the cats were trying to tell me something, but I would understand more if it were catnip! Then I repotted two aloes and Vincent's apple tree, which he has grown from seed and is now about 18 inches tall! I started twelve kinds of tomatoes: Brandywine (of course), Amish Paste, and Stupice are tried and true for me, the rest are new. There was Riesentraube, a cherry/grape type tomato, black cherry, Black from Tula, Wisconsin 55, Enterprize, Maskabec, Tiffen Mennonite, Aztec, and Mother Russia. I'm not done planting tomatoes yet though! I also planted three kinds of eggplant: Casper, Listada de Gandia, and Rosita.

Bragging about Nina

My 5 year old daughter Nina has had her picture in the paper twice in the last two weeks! Not only was she named a "Student of the Month" for February, last week the school librarian selected her as "Reader of the Week" for a book report she had written. Nina is the first kindergarten student ever to be named reader of the week.

My favorite quote from the article is this: "Nina reads the Bible every night before bed with her dog Lady."

Am I worthy of such a blessing? All three of them are wonderful.

Mahler's First Symphony

I treated myself to listening to a CD of this wonderful piece at work today...TWICE! Turned the headphones up, closed my eyes, played air flute, and was in tears at the glorious finale. The last movement goes out in a big, triumphant way, even better, I think, than Beethoven's Ninth. Some composers' symphonies seem inaccessible to me; I listen and drift off, lose concentration, don't get the focus of the piece, but with Mahler I'm there every note, every minute, and it all comes together as near perfectly as Mozart (Which was Mahler's last word, by the way, my Internet factoid for the day!)

I was introduced to the last movement of this symphony the best way: by performance. I was a freshman in college band, still in awe of the vast difference between the sound of a high school band and a college "symphonic wind ensemble". The "Sturmisch Bewegt", recently transcribed and edited as a stand-alone wind performance piece, was to be the coup de grace of our winter tour. I was somewhere in the second row of flutes. The long rehearsals were more intense than I had ever known, but it was the first time I had become intimately involved in such a great musical endeavor. I played my part, but I became a part of what everyone else was playing. That's the beauty of an orchestra: Many players becoming one through the music. One entity, larger than the sum of its parts. I miss that level of involvement in music. But as I listen, I still feel the notes running through my instrument, I breathe where I always breathed, I hold my breath during the quiet moments. And at the very end, I still see the look of utter triumph and delight on the conductor's face at the end of our last--and best--performance.

Swans and kestrels

I saw swans on the Kettle River yesterday. They were far enough away, and I was driving fast enough, that at first I thought maybe they were just chunks of ice. But I was curious enough to turn around--which took about two miles on that stretch of road--and there they were, with a few ducks and geese. Spring is definitely arriving. I've also seen two kestrels, and maybe a merlin, which is a bit bigger and lighter. But I'm still seeing great gray owls--maybe they'll stay here?

I heard a pack of wolves or coyotes last night, VERY close. What a wild, haunting sound.

Went to the ballet today!

Yes, me, homesteading brushape woman from the fringes of civilization, Pine County, MN, went to a cultural event. My neighbors Dick and Patty, whom I am begining to love dearly, invited me and my daughter to a performance of Prokofiev's "Cinderella" in Duluth. Although I have at times been a classical musician and attended a few orchestral concerts, this was probably the first full length ballet I have seen. Part of me was wishing I was down there in the orchestra pit, playing first flute. Yes, and another part of me was wishing I was half as agile and strong as those dancers! Wow!

Duluth is such a cool city. For having a population under 100,000, it has a thriving cultural scene. And it is always so nice to drive 50 miles and see water to the edge of the horizon. I love oceans, but for someone living in the middle of the country as far away as I can get from either coast, Lake Superior is a suitable substitute.

I saw a female goshawk this morning. I was still in bed, from which I have a good view on two sides of our yard and surrounding woods. While I was watching redpolls at the bird feeder, suddenly I saw something huge swoop by. At first I thought great gray owl, but as I saw it light in a birch branch, I knew it was a hawk. It then flew up into a white pine, high enough to catch the light of the rising sun, and I wished I had film in my good camera. What a perfect picture that would have been! The goshawk I saw the other day was a male; maybe they're a pair. Bad news for the ruffed grouse and rabbits around here!

Tomorrow is my 38th birthday. What a wonderful life!

I'm feeling squishy now

I guess it was inevitable; with all the cuddling and coughing in the house, my husband and I now have this icky cold. I was going to stay home, but I thought I'd just get caught up in cleaning the house (I should have known better than to try and organize all the small toys; that didn't last long!) and not get any rest anyway. I get some peace and quiet at work and I can be a recluse if I want there.

Ugh. I want to write, but this cold's got my mind all foggy. Maybe more later.

Sick day

Not me, I'm feeling fine, but since yesterday my 7 year old son has been sick with laryngitis, cough, and occasional fever. He says he feels "squishy" sometimes; that would describe it pretty well! Having no pressing work obligations, and having accumulated over two weeks' sick leave for the first time in years, I volunteered to stay home with him. I may have seemed a bit eager about it too, because, well, I was. I'm not happy that he's sick, but there's something about taking a day off, extra cuddling, that just feels worth it.

We made Jello and let it set in the snow. I put together a glockenspiel kit that wasn't put together right the first time, and he read music and played "Row row row your boat". I organized a random mixture of Lincoln logs, Thomas the Tank Engine trains, Matchbox cars, and toy dinosaurs into separate containers. I helped my 3 year old son build a track for the engines. I cut up half gallon juice cartons into planting containers and made the tops into engine sheds for Thomas et al. I went through my seed collection and decided to plant greens and lettuce indoors so we would have our own fresh salad mix in May. I played my octave mandolin and decided I have a special relationship with it. I read Wendell Berry poems as my 3 year old drifted off to sleep in a much-needed nap.

What a day!

Thursday evening

Well, after the previous post, as I was on my way home not too far from where I had the owl encounter, I saw a dead great gray in the middle of the road. Damn! I pulled over to pick it up, and it was still warm, freshly hit. Probably one of the owls I've been seeing every day in that area. I brought it to the wildlife office, which was on my way home anyway, and luckily someone was still there so I could put it in the freezer.

As I drove up the driveway into our clearing, I became aware of a large bird sitting in an elm tree next to the swamp. This bird was definitely not a great gray owl. I got out my binoculars, and got my best view ever of a northern goshawk. It stayed, perched in the same spot, for at least 45 minutes after I got home. What a beautiful bird.

I had a wonderful visit with our neighbors, Dick and Patty, last night. I brought Nina over there after dinner to pick up a unique object for Show and Tell: the bones of an orangutan hand! They had gotten the hand, strung together with wire, from an anthropologist friend. I only meant to stay for a few minutes, but we ended up visiting for over an hour, discussing owls, neighbors, gardens, greenhouses, and Sally the turkey. Sally is a semi-wild turkey who divides her time between our houses.

Almost hit one today

A great gray owl, that is. I was on my way from work to Vincent and Nina's school music program. It had snowed this morning and there was still a bit of slush on the road, enough to make things a bit treacherous. I had seen five great gray owls in a short stretch of the same road earlier in the morning, so I wasn't surprised to see this one perched on a fence post on the right side of the road. But then suddenly it took off, heading straight across the road. With the snow and slush, there was no way I could have hit the brakes without ending up in the ditch. I didn't have time to think anyway. Luckily the owl had gained enough height, or it would have been hit by the bumper. Instead, although it came within six inches of the windshield the owl made it safely across by the width of a feather. I would have been devastated had I killed it. I've killed birds before with the car, and I remember just about every one.

The way Jesus meant me to live

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be a Christian, and whether in fact I am one. While I have no answers, I feel my life is being drawn in a certain direction. And that direction is, simply, to live the way Jesus commanded me to live. To love my neighbor as myself, and my enemy as well. To be concerned with how I treat the downtrodden, for "as you do unto the least of them, so have you done unto me". (Sorry, no Bible scholar here, don't have the Scripture reference in my brain.) So my husband has been buying hay and consequently having good conversations with a pastor/farmer in the area. They believe in starting a farm for those who find themselves homeless, in desperation, to teach them a new life. To produce organically grown, locally grown products, and at the same time teach people that there is an alternative to this spiritless way of life we've been taught to live. Sounds good to me, God give me the strengh to do Your will.

An elegant deduction

I read somewhere today that the great gray owl and northern hawk owl, who normally inhabit areas hear the Arctic circle, are diurnal because, for several months out of the year, THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE!!! There is 24 hour sunlight. So they adapt to hunting during daylight hours, or at least the crepuscular hours (before and after sunrise and sunset) because that is the conditions under which they live. Makes perfect sense to me, and it's one of those moments where"jeeze why didn't I think of that!"

Baboon suits

Wouldn't it be fun to make a set of baboon suits for the entire family? I mean, with the blue and white faces and really, really red butts. And we could wear them to the next family gathering, or to Wal Mart...now THAT would be hilarious!!!

My son, the visionary

He is seven years old and already nearly as tall as my shoulders. In second grade, he excels at math. He loves to draw plans and make inventions. He has dreamy brown eyes with long, full eyelashes that I would die for.

Yesterday his class had rehearsal in the school auditorium for their upcoming music program. He informed me that there are 195 seats in the auditorium, this fact determined by counting the number of rows and the number of seats per row.

This morning he pointed out the pattern of rectangles on the bedroom ceiling; there is a row of 8x4 birch panels, then another row approximately 4x4. He said we should paint one of the shorter panels blue with white stars, then paint red and white stripes on two longer panels and one shorter one, then it would look like a United States flag. It reminded me of how I, as a child, would see patterns and pictures in wallpaper, ceiling tiles, stuff like that. Patterns and pictures that were not intentionally part of the design. I remember some of these patterns and pictures vividly when I think of the places or events surrounding them.

The other day, while driving to school and work, I was talking about how the road seemed a lot bumpier than it was before. He immediately said "It's probably because of the big thaw yesterday." A-HA! Thawing and freezing wreak havoc on country asphalt roads.

And, while watching a video that included circus scenes he told me, "There's something about circuses I just don't like". I have held that same feeling since I was a child, but have rarely if ever vocalized it to the kids. He went on to say "Clowns just creep me out!" Yikes! We think too much alike!

Saga of the spruce

The great spruce was part of a grove of towering spruce, white pine and balsam fir that was an important part of our initial attraction to this forty acres of land. The trees were most likely around at the end of the 19th century, a remnant of the great pine forests that once covered this area. The young trees stood next to a small bog, between the main line of the St. Croix Logging Railroad and a small siding. This railroad, used to transport logs to the St. Croix River, where they were floated downstream to mills in Stillwater, was only used for a few years in the 1890's. The grades of these railroads are still visible today and we keep the siding cleared as a trail.

A 1939 aerial photo shows these trees surrounded by open pasture land. Towards the road, a sand and gravel pit is visible, mining the riverine soils deposited by a glacial outwash stream at the end of the last Ice Age. This stream was probably the precursor to Sand Creek. Today one of the best of a limited number of brook trout streams in the area, Sand Creek was ditched and straightened in 1918 or 1919, possibly in an effort to drain swamps for agricultural use.

The great spruce was spared the ravages of the 1894 Hinckley fire, which burned out several miles to the south and west, and the 1918 Moose Lake fire, which reached its limit to the north.

The great spruce was showing signs of aging when we first saw it. Lichens covered much of the trunk and branches. Many of the lower branches were already dead; these were cut close to the trunk to clear space next to the cabin we were building. The remaining knobs, up to a foot or so in length, continue to serve as footholds for adventurous tree climbers.

The fate of the spruce was sealed in 2001 when a strong burst of wind during a thunderstorm knocked the top off about 25 feet up. At this point the trunk was still about 20 inches in diameter; fortunately it did not fall on the cabin. The spruce gradually succumbed to the loss of its main energy-collecting branches.

We were in no hurry to remove the remains of the giant spruce. Branches were cleared, the fallen upper trunk was rolled to the edge of the woods where it remains now, but we marvel as the great spruce in its death continues to give life. Wood boring insects audibly gnaw the layer just below the bark, providing food for woodpeckers. I saw my first ever black backed woodpecker foraging on the spruce; this species is uncommon around here, being a boreal forest native. The canopy of branches, devoid of needles, still provides perches for chickadees, redpolls, pine grosbeaks, goldfinches, and others as they visit our bird feeder just below. And to a six month old kitten, the spruce provides a jungle gym of entertainment. I watched, laughing, the other day as the apparently fearless feline climbed up 25 feet to where the upper trunk broke off. It ventured out to the edges of branches 2 inches in diameter. Finally it crawled back to the main trunk where my son "rescued" it. Back inside, the kitten smelled wonderful. I breathed in its fur the scent of old wood, dried resin, and bark, the gifts to a new generation of life in the endless circle.

A beautiful day

Yesterday (Sunday) the temperature got up to 50 degrees here, and it was clear and sunny all day. The first thing I heard when I went outside in the morning was a cardinal singing! Although bird feeders have helped them to expand their range further north, cardinals are still pretty rare at this latitude (just above 46 degrees N).

The great gray owls are still around. Even with the commotion of the kids playing outside about 150 feet away, our "house owl" as we call it was perched in an aspen at the edge of the shrub swamp. When we went for a drive, another owl was near the road on the other side of the creek. Biologists are beginning to speculate that some of them might stay around for the breeding season.

I'm getting the itch to start seeds indoors, although it's a bit early and I don't have any flats or seed starting mix yet. I've been reading Solviva by Anna Edey, and I'm not too far in it but this just might be a life-changing book for me. Three and four year old tomato plants growing indoors with little supplemental heat, producing fruit year round...I could live with that!