Letters From The North

2011-07-04T16:29:00.001-05:00

Rainey's Favorite Fallen Tree

2011-07-03T00:19:00.001-05:00

There's some variety of critter in there.

What's that?

Maybe claw our way in?

Maybe this way...

That's hard, messy work!

Nature Quiz

2010-04-20T19:36:00.016-05:00

So...I took a walk in the park with my new camera phone and was thinking maybe somebody could tell me what some of these are...

Purple stuff I see all over...

Closer view...

Cool...ummm...bush? tree?

Cool white trees...very striking on beautiful Spring mornings...

I'm not sure if these are the same white trees, because the ones above are from a different part of the park, where we were on Saturday. I took these close-ups of other white trees on our walk this evening...

And lest you think life is now all about nature photography, Rainey got to have fun too...she found the ball in the river and swam around pushing it upstream, downstream and across stream for about an hour and a half...the ducks seemed interested in what all the splashing was about, and of course, Rainey was focused on the ball and didn't pay the ducks no never mind, as they say...

I decided to use this one as wallpaper on my fancy new phone...and, just in case you're wondering, yes, the phone is able to center the picture on Rainey for purposes of using it as wallpaper...Gosh, I'm feeling so technologically advanced, it's almost like being a teenager again!

The Fresh Smell Of Waking Up

2009-09-26T09:22:00.003-05:00

Since I decided to try not spending so much money on coffee, I have found the following:

Maxwell House French Roast/Dark Roast = tolerable, but in truth not all that good, nonetheless for the price, it's the one I normally go with now

Melita European Roast = tolerable, not too bad, maybe better than Maxwell House, but more expensive, quality difference not enough to justify price difference for me

Folgers Classic/French Roast/Columbian = marginally tolerable (gets better if you use a lot more than recommended, but your friends might think it's too strong that way), but usually cheaper than Maxwell House, so there's that

Hills Bros Original Blend = crap, awful taste, won't buy it again, glad I only tried one of those small containers

First Real Snowfall Of The Season

2008-11-16T20:14:00.000-06:00

Here in Chicago. I had no idea. Just took Rainey out to go for an evening walk, and there was a light snowfall! Of course, it always seems special and pleasant and new when its the first time of the season--though as we all know, I'll feel differently about it come April. But oh well. I still enjoy it just the same every Fall. Rainey and I enjoyed a walk in our local park for about an hour in the new snow. Not much on the ground, just enough to make a light, slightly slushy covering that will no doubt melt soon. The walk was only marred by a man out with a girl I presumed to be his daughter, and their dog. Perhaps needless to say, they didn't feel the need to have the dog on a leash. Seems like there are more and more people like that these days. Which is fine--if you have a well-trained dog you can control. Which these people didn't. However, I managed to hold my patience until the third time their dog came running over and getting Rainey worked up in the process. It was then that I observed to them that they really should have their dog on a leash. But did the man do anything about it? Of course not. Then, the dog came running over a fourth time--at which point I was inclined to make the observation that perhaps the man should set an example in responsibility for the girl. But the dog went running right back, so I waited to see what would happen, and that time the man put a leash on the dog. So I held my tongue and went about my way thinking, yup, just another case of what a friend of mine would call obviously The Most Important Person In The City Of Chicago.

I Think I'll Start My Bucket List

2008-11-14T20:57:00.001-06:00

1. See Austin City Limits live...you know, in Austin...although, according to the website, they are going to have a new home in 2010, so doesn't look very much like I'll get to see the "famed sound stage"...so who knows, maybe I'll scratch this one...

2. Go to British Columbia.

3.

Rainey's Favorite Forest Preserve

2008-11-13T21:48:00.000-06:00

Rainey's New Second Favorite Forest Preserve

2008-11-13T21:44:00.000-06:00

I Feel Old And Weak And Lazy

2008-11-09T19:28:00.002-06:00

It was not so long ago that, on days like the one pictured above, and nights too, I'd say, hmmm, nice day, put on a coat, get some gloves, and take the dog for a walk. Today, however, we're having our first day of the season that you could call actually cold, and it's dark out, and I really don't want to take poor Rainey out, and I doubt that I will. I finally turned on the radiators, and it's pretty nice in here--whereas it is dark and cold outside. So, I filled Rainey's super duper tough kong with peanut butter, assured her she is the best dog ever, and am trying not to feel too guilty about it. Tomorrow, Rainey, tomorrow! I promise!

Clarice

2008-04-22T12:44:00.000-05:00

A little over a week ago one of our sons came for a week-end visit. He brought with him his new female, golden retriever puppy. Her name is Clarice. She is about two months old. She is very small. Our son said her vet was even a little worried about her because of her size. I don't think there's anything to worry about. For one thing, she has doubled her weight from five pounds to ten pounds in the short time they've had her. Also, she seems very energetic and feisty. To know her is to love her. She is adorable. Our two dogs, Bear and Sadie, weren't immediately taken in. Bear didn't know what to make of her. She tried to ignore her. She would rather have played with our son like old times. But Clarice is hard to ignore. We were very proud of our Bear. She's pretty feisty and rough herself, but once she decided that this little stinker wasn't going to let her alone until they had some fun, she was very good with Clarice. She batted at her and head butted her, but always just gently enough. Even when Clarice was hanging onto Bear's ears with her teeth, Bear tolerated it. Not so with Sadie. Here's what Sadie thought: "I do not like Clarice. I do not like her at all." Unfortunately Clarice understandably saw big old shaggy Sadie as a mother figure. At one point, when Sadie plopped down against a cupboard, Clarice hopped up on her back for a nice nap. Sadie growled and snapped at her over and over. We all went for a walk on the sunny April Sunday afternoon in our north woods. Our son was showing us some big red maples we hadn't noticed. He thought that we could tap them for sap as we had done on our property in southern Minnesota. While we were looking at maples, Sadie and Clarice disappeared. I was plenty worried. I think our son was too. But just as our stomachs began to rise to our throats, here they came through the trees. Sadie was in the lead, coming not too fast so that Clarice could keep up at her heels. She gave me one of her long, sad baleful looks. I could read her mind again: " I tried to get rid of her. I don't know why she likes me so much. But see, I brought her back."

Would It Surprise You To Hear?

2008-03-26T11:39:00.000-05:00

There is more than one blog under the sun named Letters From The North.

Cutting wood

2008-03-25T11:43:00.000-05:00

All is gray and white today. We had a heavy wet spring snow during the night. It has covered our old rotten snow and is balanced precariously on every branch. Suddenly I see a patch of blue and a spot of orange across the pond. When it moves I see it is my husband's blue jacket and orange chain saw. That little patch of pink is his lovely face. The chain saw roars to life and down goes another of our little birches. We bought six cords of tamarack in the fall, but it's been a long, cold winter. There are only about six pieces left. For two weeks we have been debating. Should we let the fire go out for the season and drain the boiler? Rely on our electric heat? Our house is cozier when the wood boiler is going. Our hot water is hotter. But we have to keep the fire going. If the lines freeze underground there can be no circulation to the house. If water freezes in the boiler it would be damaged. Our son Marty told us once, "You're slaves to that thing." There are huge farm fields and Lake of the Woods and Canada to our north. There is nothing but woods for fifty miles to our south. Only a mile or so down our road there's a patch where loggers have been working. The logs are stacked in a neat pile. There's a small mountain of tree tops nearby that will probably be burned and hunks of small wood scattered over the ground. My husband stopped and asked if he could pick some up for our boiler. The loggers said that he needed a permit from the Department of Natural Resources. The DNR said that they can't give one because the County has put on spring road restrictions. They don't want the thawing gravel roads all rutted up by wood hauling. It all proves my husband's contention that if you want to get something done, don't ask too many questions. The day after he queried the DNR, I drove into town. Coming toward me on a restricted road I saw two pick-ups heaped with wood. One was pulling a large, flat trailer with eight big logs on it. No questions asked, I guess. Oh well, we have lots of little birches. We thinned them once before and never missed what was taken. We have birch stumps with four or five new little birches sprouted from them. At our church picnic this summer a friend was watching my husband pitch a softball game. "He's in better shape than most of the young guys at Marvin's," she said. [Employees of Marvin Window's and Doors] I attribute that to all the wood cutting and hauling and heaving that he does. Maybe if we go to an easier kind of heat he'll just go to seed.

Happy Easter

2008-03-23T18:34:00.000-05:00

My husband had me come and look out our front windows when I first got up this morning. There under the bird feeders was the Easter bunny, munching on spilled sunflower seeds. He's still all white; no patches of brown yet. We observed Lent almost entirely this year. We only missed one mid-week service, on a night when it was already way below zero at 6:15 p.m. when we were due to leave. We went to church Maundy Thursday evening and Good Friday noon also. Yet still, we both remarked several times that it just hasn't seemed like Easter time. Truth to tell, I think it never seems like Easter since my husband retired. We were so in the center of the preparations then. It's too easy now. The last few services we didn't even bother with supper, just had a little toast or something when we got home. In days of yore my husband had to make up extra batches of sermons. I had to [or thought I had to] make supper, do dishes, and get five children relatively neat and clean. One year on Good Friday, our oldest son was invited to go roller skating at a rink and out to eat with a friend from down the street. He was eight or nine years old. I could see nothing wrong with it, but I must have had an inkling that my husband wouldn't agree. I called him at the church. Absolutely not! Nick was going to church. Our parsonage kitchen was small when all the kids were little. To make more room, my husband fashioned us a kitchen table of sorts from a beautiful old oak altar top. It was no longer in use and had been stuck in storage at the church. He cut a half moon on one side in the center of it. Our high chair sat against the kitchen wall. The altar/table was placed in front of it at the half moon point. Baby Peter sat in the high chair and looked out into the room. The rest of us sat on long benches and looked at either baby Peter or the kitchen wall. In those days I tried to save money on milk by mixing it with some that I made out of powdered milk. I kept the mix in a big glass pitcher. On one Lenten Wednesday morning our second youngest son, who was two, was standing on one of the long benches. He reached for that big glass pitcher. I stood up to keep him from it. He got that devilish look in his eyes that I remember so well. In order to keep away from me, he stepped off the end of the bench with that big pitcher in his hand. The milk spilled. The pitcher broke. Matthew stood up holding just the handle with one very sharp shard of glass still attached. Blood was pouring down the side of his face, soaking his pajamas and mixing with the milk on the floor. I called my husband at the church again. He rushed home. If anyone reading this knows Matt, look along,I think it is the right side of his face. You'll see the long scar there still. He came home from the clinic a little feverish, his face swollen and red and bluish with a long row of right-out-in-the-open stitches. There was no bandage. Do you know where Matthew and I and his sister and his brothers were at seven that evening? At the Lenten service, of course. How did I do that? Why did I do that? I can still see him lying there on my lap, asleep with his poor Frankenstein face pointing up. I don't know where my baby was. Probably his sister had him. She was a good little substitute mother. One of the church members told me later that she could hardly bear to look at Matt that night. It really grossed her out. But I was young and eager and foolish and my husband was no better. Somehow we all got through it. And we get through our quiet Easters too. We have peace now instead of excitement.

For the lurkers

2008-03-21T15:21:00.000-05:00

Let's get this out in the open right away: I'm getting lazier and lazier. Whole days go by when I don't do much but read, and eat, and look out the window. That is, no doubt, the main reason that nothing has been posted here for a long time. I have had reason to suspect, though, that a few persons have been offended by things they read on this poor innocuous little blog. That has bothered me. I forgot to comfort myself, as I did when I was a nerdy high schooler, with words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, i.e. "To be great is to be misunderstood." I had about decided to let Letters From The North slip off into the wide world web or whatever it is that w.w.w. stands for. But then I heard a radio program about blogging. Since personal computing is all the rage these days, [I heard last night that you can confess your sins on-line now] someone has done research on blogs. This person has discovered that for everyone who reads a post and writes a comment on it there are several hundred, perhaps as many as a thousand people who read it and say nothing. These people have been designated 'lurkers'. Wow! Who knew? I realize that the researcher was probably dealing with famous blogs, but still.... Let's say that you had three regular readers who commented. [It doesn't matter at all if one is your husband and the other two are your sons.] And in addition to each of them, you had maybe ten lurkers. Well, that's a nice little group of people listening to what you have to say. A blogger is not so alone in the world as she thought she was. So this one's for you, my dear lurkers. Lurk on.

Heard on the CBC

2007-10-12T15:00:00.000-05:00

I love the Canadian sense of humor. They just crack me up. It seems to me that it's a mixture of self-deprecation and jaunty pride. They often speak of us, their neighbor to the South, as you would a really bossy older sister. Monday as we were celebrating Columbus Day they were having Thanksgiving. Since it was a holiday the CBC didn't have regular programming. While I was listening they were playing recordings of Canadian comedians. Here is my favorite joke from that day. "I went shopping the other day and got my friend a pair of artificial legs for Christmas. They make great stocking stuffers."

Matt's Songs

2007-10-12T14:24:00.000-05:00

Matt's latest post here has me wondering--does he remember the game we used to play, Matt and I and his brother, Peter. It was right after we had moved to a new town back when they were in high school. Members of my husband's former congregation had all put money with a card and given it to us at a gathering celebrating our leaving. My husband always hated that, so maybe that was why he decided that the four of us should go shopping and blow the whole amount. We got a new brass bed that I had always wanted and a new refrigerator. I got new curtains for the new parsonage kitchen and new shoes for myself. Matt and Pete got what they wanted most in all the world, a sleek black stereo in a glass-fronted cart. Their older brothers had left home and taken their stereos with them and we had been without. We got home rather late on a school night, but no one went to bed until it had been properly assembled. I can still remember the three of them and all of the components all over the living room floor while I watched from a chair. I remember those days as kind of lonely, but a sweet time. My husband was busy with the new church. I was suddenly unemployed after having worked in a library job that I loved for seven years. Matt and Pete were starting a new school where they knew few people right in the middle of their high school years. Every afternoon they would come home from school, sit on the living room floor again, me on the chair again, and start playing tapes for me. [It was tapes in those days.] It became a game with two variations. Sometimes Matt would play a tape and we would listen, then Pete would play one. I was to choose which one I liked best. I almost one hundred per cent of the time liked the one Matt had played best. The variation of the game was when they played two tapes and I had to guess which was Pete's choice and which was Matt's. This was an easy guess for me --the one I liked best was bound to be Matt's. I was a soft-hearted mother and my heart ached for my youngest chick so sometimes I tried to cheat. I never got away with it. They knew I was lying. The reason Peter's songs were never chosen was because he was avant-garde--way out ahead of the pack of ordinary folks. How do I know that he was avant-garde? He told me so.

September Location Quiz

2007-09-20T17:51:00.000-05:00

The Balm Of Elgin?

2007-08-08T21:25:00.000-05:00

Ever since reading about the various flowers and plants that are supposed to attract hummingbirds, I've become obsessed with the thought that if only I could get some bee balm, I'd have hummingbirds swarming all over my yard. I finally found some down at the Home Depot, but I didn't buy any, because I can't think of a good place to plant them.

Ah, well. Perhaps another year.

Emily and me

2007-08-04T15:42:00.000-05:00

I was thinking about that post about my dream. I mentioned the I35W bridge collapse so briefly--no thoughts on how awful it was, no prayers, no condolences--even though it was right here in Minnesota. That got me to thinking about my old heroine and soul mate, Emily Dickinson. She was born in December of 1830. She died in May of 1886. She would have been in her thirties during the long and bloody American Civil War. But in all of her letters and poems she never mentioned it.

Emily's letters

2007-08-04T15:29:00.000-05:00

One day, long ago, the editor of this blog was a student at the U of MN. It must have been summer. He was living at home, but had an interview at the University. He invited me to ride along to Minneapolis. Off we went and most likely drove across that I35W bridge over the Mississippi. Knowing what a library person I am, he dropped me at the University library while he had his interview. When he came to collect me, I was very excited. I had in my hands a copy of the very expensive two volume complete collection of Emily Dickinson's letters. I had never been able to find it anywhere else. Our kindly editor hated to take them from me so soon. He took his university card and checked them out for me. I was shocked to see how long the check-out period was. I think I had those books at home for at least three months. I always felt guilty about that. Suppose some very shy English major had been trying to write an important paper on Emily D. Imagine her going back to the library over and over looking for those books and never finding them. On the other hand, at her age she should have been trying to overcome her shyness. If she had just spoken up, I'm sure I would have given them back.

Laura and me

2007-08-04T11:10:00.000-05:00

About two weeks ago we had a heat wave. I'm thinking maybe it was the worst heat we've had while living here. I couldn't sleep. I laid on the couch with fans blowing on me and listened to the radio all night long. Every so often I'd wipe myself down with a cold wash cloth. I wrote another little trilogy of posts about it one morning before heading out to the air-conditioned library. Apparently my faithful editor had been thinking of redesigning this blog. As a result there are two places where I can click on 'new post'. I clicked on the wrong one, so that trilogy of posts is out there by itself on a fragment of new blog. While it was so hot, our dog, Sadie, stayed quietly stretched out on the floor, only moving occasionally to a new cool spot. Bear the Border Collie was not so smart. She kept right on jumping up and wanting to cuddle with all her hot black fur while she panted slobber all over the place. I kept rather forcefully thrusting her away from me. This week we've had beautiful summer weather. The temperatures dropped from the nineties back into the eighties. Better yet, the dew point dropped from the seventies into the forties. It gets almost cold in the house at night. I've been making up for all the sleep I lost. Last night I sat down on the couch to watch the news on t.v. before going to bed. Bear hopped right up beside me as usual. But she was more tentative with her cuddling, not sure if she would be rudely pushed away, I suppose. Instead of forcefully shoving her head under my chin, causing me to worry about my expensive dental work as she usually does, she laid her head very gently on my shoulder and slowly wiggled her nose under my chin. Laura Bush came to Minnesota yesterday. So we watched her on t.v., comforting the rescue workers of the bridge disaster in her practical, kindly way. Then I went to bed. I woke up about six a.m. and thought about getting up. But instead I fell back to sleep and had a very vivid dream. It seemed that instead of watching Laura on t.v., I was there in Minneapolis in the crowd of people. Laura kept looking at me, almost as if she knew me. When she was finished speaking, she came up to me and talked to me as if we were old friends. I've been reading Jane Smilely's latest novel. In it the characters are staying for a few days in a new, large mansion. The manager of the mansion encourages them to feel free to look into any of the rooms. In my dream, that's what Laura and I did. We went from room to room in a large building, Laura talking all the way. Eventually we came to a room with bunk beds. My legs were tired, so we laid down on the bottom bunk. Laura put her head very gently on my shoulder and then shifted it under my chin just has Bear had done the night before. I kept thinking two things: I couldn't wait to tell my husband about this, and I had to think of something clever and friendly to say to Laura. But frankly, I couldn't get a word in edgewise. She kept talking and talking. I never got a chance to tell her what I think about how things are going here in America under her husband's leadership. Oh well, that probably would have been the end of my dreamy new friendship.

Butterflies endure, prevail

2007-07-23T21:21:00.000-05:00

This is a story I have told before. Readers related to me may have already heard it. It made a big impression on me. On May 15th, the first spring we lived here, I looked out our front window and saw a hummingbird looking back at me. I found myself a cup hook, a hammer and a pliers and went outside to try my hand at getting the cup hook into the overhang in front of the window so that I could hang my hummingbird feeder there. My preparations proved unneccessary. A hook was in place already--exactly where I would have put it. I hung my feeder and have faithfully tended it, May to September, for twelve years now. Sometime in the first half of May when the fruit trees, wild and tame, begin to bloom, the little birds come back. If I don't have the feeder ready yet, they come near the window and look in as one did that first year. I figure if they know a feeder is supposed to be there, they must be returnees, which is impressive. So tiny, but they travel more often and farther than I do. [Of course, I stay here all winter and that's impressive too.] In late summer, wasps often start to hang around the feeder. It had three feeding ports, but the hummingbirds don't even feed with each other, let alone with a bunch of wasps. So there is much circling around, hummingbirds charging at wasps and vice versa, each trying to drive the others away. One afternoon I looked up from reading in my chair by the window and saw a newcomer sitting on one of the feeding ports--a large butterfly. Soon the wasps came buzzing around it and then a hummingbird came and feinted back and forth. Through it all the butterfly just sat there seemingly oblivious to all the commotion, slowly opening and closing its wings, patient and brave, and finally the only one left at the feeder.

Butterflies and gravel roads

2007-07-23T20:50:00.000-05:00

Wanting desperately to live in a place like this was, I think, the last great passion of my life. When we were considering buying this house my mind was all awhirl with thoughts of the woods, the pond, the gardens and the garden shed, the chicken coop and the little barn, all the rustic little touches in the house and the precious privacy. No need for curtains here. I came on gravel roads and from the mailboxes back a half mile on a sand road, but they made no impression on me. It was a shock that first March to come home from a trip after a big thaw and wonder how we were ever going to get back to our little house in the woods. There are four possible ways to get from the highway to our house. That spring, and for several springs to come, all four ways were bad during breakup. Marijuana Lane was the name given by locals to the east/west road that goes past our mail box. It was apparently named for former residents and possibly their 'gardens'. A neighbor once told me that when she first came, several years before we did, it was really just a logging road through a shady tunnel of trees. When the frost came out of the ground it usually had two washouts. The one to the east of us was the worst. We once saw a car that had tried to cross hanging over the edge of the ditch We drove through the western washout a few times, but I never liked it much. Of the two north/south roads to the highway,one is called a Minimum Maintenance Road--enough said. The other one had two especially deep muddy morasses, one at each end. In spite of this, it was usually our best option. Get up some speed and gun 'er through. We always made it. After several years, a man stopped by and said he was running for a county office. He said our roads were a disgrace and if we voted for him he would do something about it. We did and I guess our neighbors did too. Marijuana Lane has been taken away from the township and renamed County 141. It's been widened. It gets some new gravel every summer. It's graded on a regular basis. In the winter the snow plows come several days sooner than they once did. A neighbor told us that it's even on a list to be paved, though it has been for six years. But always there is a price for progress. Several times each summer the ditches are mowed. They never were before. In late August and early September, as you drove along, you would suddenly notice drifts of something intensely blue among the grasses--clumps of fringed gentians. Now we need the Minimum Maintenance Road to see them. The other north/south road was also washed out one June when we had a flood, so bad that no one could use it. They came with big equipment on trailers from Thief River Falls and worked on it all summer and into the fall. But the muddy mess on the south end they couldn't seem to fix, though they put a culvert under it. If it rains awhile there's still fifteen feet of mud to drive through. Butterflies seem to just love mud. The other day when Bear and Sadie and I drove through we were suddenly surrounded by a cloud of butterflies. "Isn't it pretty?", I asked them. I have no idea if they think anything is 'pretty', but it was nice to have someone to mention it to.

Butterflies and milkweed

2007-07-23T20:31:00.000-05:00

When my husband and I were married, his oldest brother was in the Air Force and out of the country. When first I met him, he said two things that made a very negative impression on me. 1. He asked how if one baby took up all of my time, could more babies take up any more. 2. He looked at the weedy little garden my husband had planted and turned to me and said, "Dianne, you must weed that." I had a three year old, a two year old and was great with child. Many years later all is forgiven. His wife's five babies and my five babies are all grown. He's turned most of his yard into a garden and I have gardens all over the place. We're kind of garden buddies, you might say. If he discovers a plant he really likes, he often saves seeds and sends them to me. Several years ago when we visited I noticed a lovely plant along his white picket fence. My sister-in-law told me it was a tame variety of common milkweed. It was lovely with rosy stems, soft blue-gray leaves and a unique pink and white flower, almost orchid- like. I had to have some. I was happy to find that it was hardy to zone 3. I planted my seeds and bided my time. My brother-in-law counselled patience. Milkweed comes up late in the spring and takes awhile to become established. Finally, during its third year, it grew almost as tall as my brother-in-law's and began to flower. And then--devastation. On one of our walks around the yard we noticed big fat green and yellow and black monarch butterfly caterpillars munching on the leaves. As I write this, only stems are left. Along the Minimum Maintenance Road and on the Beltrami State Forest Roads wild milkweed grows with abandon, unmunched. I get a little smug, though, when I read lengthy magazine articles on how to attract butterflies. My yard has always been full of them--many colors and sizes.

Oh Canada

2007-07-23T20:28:00.000-05:00

I heard recently on the CBC that the mark of a true Canadian is the ability to make love in a canoe. I guess I'll stay on this side of the border. I usually get a little nervous just stepping into a canoe.

White-throated Sparrows

2007-05-01T12:05:00.000-05:00

I noticed that they were back for the first time yesterday and was very happy to see them. They looked like friendly companions hopping around under the feeders, scratching the ground together. But this morning I was startled out of my reading by the loud thud of one hitting the window. It was lying stunned on its back. One of its 'companions' came, jumped up on its stomach and began pecking wildly at its head from side to side. A few seconds later a third white-throated sparrow dive bombed them. For a split second all three of them were on their feet in a tight little circle, including the formerly stunned one. Then they all flew quickly into the woods. Now what was that little drama taking place right before my voyeuristic eyes all about? A love triangle maybe?

Raven

2007-05-01T11:49:00.000-05:00

I was looking out of our upstairs windows while watering my little new geraniums lined up on the sills when I saw the raven flying low across our front lawn. I'm used to seeing them high over our trees, but not swooping low over the ground. Our chickens are penned up late spring and summer to protect the gardens. In winter they travel set paths because of snow. But early spring and fall they wander far and wide. Every once in a while one of the hens has to hurry back to wherever they've established one of their nests to lay her egg. When she's finished, she comes out onto the lawn and cackles loud and long. I don't know if it's because she's so proud of the wonder she's once again accomplished. It may be that she's calling to the others in an effort to find them and rejoin the flock. Sometimes neither my husband or I know where the latest nests are. We listen for the cackling for ideas on where to look. Turns out we aren't the only ones who do that. My husband was leaving the eggs hoping one of the hens would sit on them. The smallest one we call 'the little red hen' likes to do that. (My husband has always loved having babies.) But watching and waiting was the raven. One by one it stole the eggs from the nest in the old fish house and from the nest in the hay stored behind the garage. I saw it over the trees late Sunday afternoon and this time I could see the last of the eggs in its beak.

Junco

2007-05-01T11:30:00.000-05:00

I've always thought that the juncos just migrate through this area, spring and fall. Big flocks of them come to the feeders for a few weeks and then they're gone. But that may not be true. As many as fifteen or twenty blue jays at a time are at our feeders fall and winter. Only a few come in spring. We see them in the woods all summer, but not in our yard. Maybe at least some of the juncos stay for the summer too, finding food they like better than what I'm putting out. I watched a little junco one morning last week marching along a landscape timber outside my window. It was picking up thin strands of dry grass that had grown long so near the timber out of the reach of the lawn mower. Three times I saw it fill up its beak until finally it had to open too wide to accommodate just one more strand. At that point all strands fell back to the ground. This didn't seem to upset the little junco in the least. It calmly started over again with the same predictable result. Was it building a nest? Or just kind of practicing nest building? Or not much thinking about what it was doing at all? Unlike me. I was thinking about it.

Roscoe Street

2007-04-14T10:43:00.001-05:00

I can't get over buying remainder books. I'm starting to have quite a stack that I never should have bought in the first place, even if they did cost $3.95 or less. But when the mail comes, if there is a flyer from the cheap books people, it's the first thing I look at--comfortable armchair shopping, not much money ventured, titles that intrigue me. Thus it happens that I am now reading a book of essays entitled "On nature". This didn't seem like a risky title for me. Nature's my big thing and many of the authors of the essays are people whose writing I've admired. But as I read along, it's been getting weirder and weirder. One essay, "Killing wolves", is indeed about killing wolves in Alaska with graphic descriptions on how they're skinned. Then comes Joyce Carol Oates' contribution. Well, she always has been a little odd. Her essay starts with her lying flat on her back on a path in the park, looking up at the sky. She is having an episode of tachycardia that started while she was out jogging. Perhaps that explains why her thinking seems a bit hard to follow. The gist of it seems to be, 'nature writing sucks and nature's not much better". The next essay is by a young lady who says she's scared of nature. She feels much safer in a city. Here's a sample: "They say you'll see everybody you know if you stand long enough at the corner of State and Madison. I see Louis, that is all that matters. I am talking about a building. I am talking about Carson Pirie Scott designed by Louis Sullivan. The green and rust filigree ironwork. The design is inspired by organic shapes, the same energy of nature that animated Whitman. This ersatz vegetation fills my heart, the way that Sullivan's first view of a suspension bridge shook him up as a boy. An exhilaration. The same feeling I get from walking down a certain street in my neighborhood, Roscoe--the pedestrian scale of the two-flats and three-flats, the undulation of the brick fronts, the Italianate eyebrows on the windows, decorative carvings on graystones--the way someone must react to the undulations of corn, cloud, furrows." Hey--Roscoe Steet! That's where one of my sons used to live. Maybe one day, when he was out walking with his dog, Morgan, he passed Miss Sandi Wisenberg walking down Roscoe, safe and happy as a clam. (He, however, once got mugged on Roscoe.)

April Fool

2007-04-04T11:18:00.000-05:00

I heard on TV that 79,000 new blogs are created each day. I wonder how many are slowly dying. It seemed such a long, dull winter--like something that would happen in Moscow. Skiing and snowshoeing were not possible for me because one of my knees went bad on December 28th. My husband tried valiantly to keep me walking at least a little most days. He developed a short trail in the woods between us and one of out neighbors so we wouldn't have to put the dogs on leashes. He likes to get Brown, the goat, out of his little winter pen for some exercise every day too, so we had to take him along. I found it hard to be patient with him while picking my way across crusty snow with sore legs. We had lots of fights. I was vey touched by how quickly Sadie would come running to defend me during these encounters. Of course, this meant that I had to be dodging both of them on the narrow icy trail, but it's the thought that counts. We called this walk "going to see the porcupine". There was a big fat one curled in a ball on the branches of various pine trees for many, many days. We never saw it on the ground, but it was usually in a different tree each day. The poor trees were virtually stripped of bark at their upper levels. I wonder if any of them will die. His diet of bark didn't seem to be making the porky heavy. One day he was way out at the end of a branch, but it wasn't bending down even a little bit. One had the feeling that he was always watching us, but we couldn't see his eyes or face. We took field glasses along and viewed him from various angles, but all we saw was a ball of quills. At the end of March he was suddenly gone....Another feature of this long winter was our frozen septic system. We had very little snow, so when the way below zero temperatures came--down, down, down went the frost in the ground. Those of us who hadn't covered our back yards with straw found ourselves in big trouble. No doubt you've heard that old saying, "You never appreciate getting rid of water (and other stuff) till the pipes back up." First the pumping man comes, then the plumbers, then your husband futzes with it until Spring arrives. And it did! Warm winds from the west came. All the snow melted. We were outside in just sweaters poking a hose and hot water up our drainage field pipe. The ice melted. All systems were go. I was planning to start raking the yard this week. Everything was wonderful. April 1st. Rain changed to snow. Temperatures began dropping. Ten degrees this morning. Do I despair? Heck no. Northwoods women are tough. Spring birds are coming. Juncos and purple finches and goldfinches are already here.

Prepare the Royal Highway

2007-01-03T10:23:00.000-06:00

For two or three days this week we were living in a magical kingdom around here. It started from adverse circumstances. Late one afternoon my husband came in the house and said that it was misting. After supper it got worse. It rained so hard that I could hear it pounding on the roof--in winter, Up North, for heaven's sake, with the temperature hovering around thirty degrees. When my husband went out one more time to put wood in the outside wood furnace, he found every step an icy challenge. While we slept, the rain changed to snow. In the morning, every single outside thing was coated with ice, topped with fluffy, clean snow and the sun was brightly shining. Branches of trees and bushes and all the plants and grasses were bending toward the ground under their loads in graceful arcs. I had been house bound for several days with a knee that hurt bad if I tryed to straighten it out or put weight on it. This was my left knee, which is supposed to be my 'better' knee. My other 'worse' knee wasn't up to the challenge of carrying all of me around, so it was hurting too. I couldn't manage our usual late afternoon walk through the woods on our trail full of snow and icy rubble. In the Lutheran hymn book there is an Advent hymn, "Prepare the Royal Highway." That is what my husband decided to do. The tractor was in the garden shed and kindly agreed to start. So off they went, my husband, with Bear for company, barking and nipping the tractor tires. Sadie hung back reluctantly. She is ambivalent about tractor excursions for some reason. On two different days they carefully graded the logging road which makes up a good two thirds of our trail through the state land east of us. They were anxious for me to try it out. Finally, my leg loosened up enough for me to attempt it. We started down the driveway at four thirty just as the sun was starting to go down. Picture this. All the bottom branches of trees, both evergreen and deciduous, were covered with cool, clean snow. The icy top branches were shining with the sun's golden orange light. We crossed over the sand ridge, went through the little meadow, and there it was, the Royal Highway. Colder temperatures had frozen it down solid. It was as fine a place for a winter afternoon's walk as you could have wished for. As we came out into the cut over woods, the light was fading fast. The upper part of the sky was blue. The horizon was pink and lined with snow covered evergreens. Above us was a nearly full moon. As if this wasn't enough, off to our side, flying low into the big woods, was an eagle. The light of the moon on its white head and tail made it certain. If a Royal Highway is prepared just for you in a magical kingdom, what does that make you? A queen?

New Year's reflections

2007-01-01T13:08:00.000-06:00

I am reading a book entitled Blue Peninsula by Madge McKeithen. She has a son with a mysterious,nameless disease that is causing both his physical and mental deterioration. It is a book formed around poetry--about how poetry speaks to us and for us and about us, the closest expression of what we feel. Many diverse poems have lifted and held her....I might as well admit that among my first reactions to the book was jealousy. I'm always a little jealous when I meet a mind that's bigger than my own, when I have to stretch a little to follow where I'm led. A second reaction was to start copying down some of the poems that this author has found so that I could read them again when the book is back on the library shelf. But I think not. I think I'll buy this book and keep it....All my sons and my daughter, too, seem strong and healthy and are building lives that I'm proud to see. My husband and I are living the life that I longed for back when we were in the thick of things. Here in this beautiful North Country there is time--time to be quiet, to smell the roses, to be together. But when you leave the thick of things, you leave purpose behind too. Busyness disguised the fact that large chunks of life had broken off and are floating away like an ice shelf from Ellsmere Island. Christmas letters are now fearful to open. Houses full of memories have been sold and traded for easier apartments. Illnesses have developed. Spouses have died. Suddenly it seems much is in the past and there's only a little future. "How long?", is a haunting shadow. A coward dies a thousand deaths. That's me.

Oenophile

2006-12-07T15:40:00.000-06:00

Previous | Next | Back to Messages Call or Instant Message

I’d been doing a little online Christmas shopping and also googling some pesky crossword clues when I decided to stop by this blog. I knew darn well I hadn’t posted for a long, long time, so I was surprised to see that some comments had been made anyhow. It was heartwarming. One heartwarming comment in particular has inspired me to consider taking up blogging again. The editor of this blog said that I had served a “nice” Riesling for Thanksgiving dinner. I believe that this is the first time that anyone has ever complimented me on a wine choice. The best comment I’d ever gotten before was, “Well, it’s not too bad.” Ironically, I did not buy this particular Riesling for Thanksgiving. Actually, I had never planned to serve it by itself at all. Early last summer my son and daughter-in-law from International Falls were planning to come for a week-end. I tried to think of a nice drink treat that I could make for my daughter-in-law. This was a challenge. She’s been one of my harshest wine choice critics. At her house she serves and drinks wine with obvious relish. At my house, she takes one little sip and doesn’t finish the rest. I decided on this occasion to try to fool her by making her some May wine strawberry slush. Back in the days when my husband was a pastor, we always knew what we would be doing in the afternoon of Confirmation Sunday. We would have been invited to the homes of most of the confirmands. We’d have dinner at the home of the people who had invited us first, and then go on to snack at the homes of the others. You had to pace yourself with your eating. That is how we happened to stop by the home of a young confirmand whose parents were originally from Michigan . I was offered a little cup of May Wine strawberry slush that had been made with a bottle of May Wine which had been purchased in Frankenmuth , Michigan . My grandparents had lived in Frankenmuth for many years and I had gone there several times a year all the while I was growing up. I, of course, made much of this coincidence. My hostess offered me several refills and I accepted them all eagerly. As a result, the next time she went home to Michigan she bought a bottle of Frankenmuth May Wine for me. It had the recipe for the slush right on the bottle. That was years ago. Well, to make a long story a little bit shorter, my daughter-in-law had to work that week-end this summer and my son came by himself. I figured that neither he nor my husband were the strawberry slush type, so the Riesling was not called upon as a stand in for the Frankenmuth May Wine. Fast forward to Thanksgiving, 2006. First I thought that I had forgotten to buy some wine. Then I thought, “Oh, well. I never have any luck with wine anyhow.” Then I remembered the Riesling that I had down in the cupboard. Imagine my amazement when a son of mine thanked God for a wine that I had chosen in the Thanksgiving Day prayer and later called it “nice” right here on the Internet for anyone in the world to read! I may have learned a lesson here. It doesn’t pay to be cheap with wine. This was no ten dollar bottle of wine. I moved all the way up to fifteen dollars.

From The Editor

2006-08-23T09:21:00.000-05:00

Due to the technical difficulties mentioned in my comment to Mom's latest post, I installed this new template until I can get around to fixing up something else.

Semantics

2006-08-19T13:14:00.000-05:00

This morning as I was drinking my second cup of tea, my husband came and stood beside my chair with his hands behind his back and a little grin on his face. I asked him what he had behind his back. He wouldn't answer. Finally I said, "Is it the little metal hammer?" The grin got wide and big. He held out his hands and there it was. I saw immediately what our problem had been. He calls it his little metal hammer. The catalog from which I ordered it calls it a Japanese punch. I ordered two of them one year at Christmas time and gave the other to one of our sons. It does look like a little hammer. The six inch handle gradually tapers to a rather large rounded point. The one and a half inch top cross piece has a quarter inch square at one end. The other end tapers to a point like the handle does, only it's a much smaller point. On the handle below where the two pieces cross are some Japanese figures, kanjis I think they're called. So all is well. Although I'm not as sharp as I once was, my memory is not failing precipitately. My husband is not confusing his dreams with reality. And last, but not least, I'm pretty sure that there is no other gifting woman.

Baking day

2006-08-18T21:43:00.000-05:00

When my son Peter visits me, he goes through the refrigerator and shows me all the things that have passed their expiration dates. Last time, after he left, I cleaned the refrigerator and threw out all the old stuff. Then I did the same to the medicine cabinet and invested some money in new cough syrup and Pepto Bismo. (Later I read that expiration dates on medicine bottles are mostly another money-making ploy of the drug companies. The article said that most drugs are stable for several years.) One place that I didn't check was my kitchen cupboards. I was poking around in there this week looking for an idea to make a sweet treat for my husband and me. I found a white cake mix with a recipe on the back. With strawberry yogurt and some strawberry jam I could make it into a beautiful, refreshing summery delight. So I set to work. When I got to the part where you open the box, there it was in bold print right on the top--Best if used by June 2003. Well, I can't say that it raised up real high, but it tastes pretty good. Peter, they have a new kind of Crisco now. It's a little more expensive than regular, but 0 trans fat. It comes in one cup sticks, so you don't even have to scoop and measure.

The little metal hammer

2006-08-18T21:26:00.000-05:00

This morning, as I was drinking my first cup of tea, my husband suddenly asked me, "Do you know what ever happened to that little metal hammer that you gave me?" I had no idea what he was talking about and I told him so. "I don't remember ever giving you a little hammer." He said that he thought it had been a birthday present one year. I asked him what color it was. "It was metal", he said. "It was all metal." I wondered just how little it was. "Oh, about six inches by two inches, I think", he replied. I had not even the slightest glimmer of a memory of ever giving him a little metal hammer. "Maybe it was some other woman who gave it to me", he said. Very funny. We're dealing with one of several possibilities here. Maybe another female admirer DID give it to him one year in the distant past. He forgot it wasn't me and the question about it just popped out. Or maybe my memory, which has been slipping a little, is starting to slip more than a little. My husband has been having a lot of dreams lately. He groans and kicks his feet. Once when I tried to wake him, he clobbered me one, so now I leave him alone. Possibly in a calmer dream I gave him a little metal hammer. I'd hate to think that he's having waking delusions. He looked for it today and wasn't able to find it. If anyone from our family should read this, do you remember a little metal hammer at our house, about six inches by two inches?

Nicholas

2006-07-27T21:00:00.000-05:00

When I last talked to my youngest son on the telephone we decided that it's been eighteen years since he first brought his friend Sei home with him. They were college freshmen and it was Thanksgiving week-end. I remember it well. It was a special time. My eldest son also brought a new friend home, and she later became our first daughter-in-law. My strongest initial impressions of Sei: every game we played, no matter what type, he won it. Also, he made fun of Emily Dickinson a little bit, but I forgave him for that. The time has flown by and now Sei has become the patriarch of his own family. Probably when Christine, Sei's wife, and her relatives gaze at the new baby they see resemblances and characteristics from their family. But because of the eighteen years, when I see pictures of Nicholas I see a tiny replica of Sei. And how adorable is that? When I first heard what his name was to be, it made me happy. Our first born son is named Nicholas too. It seems like a little connection to this new life. And then there is the matter of good taste. I wonder if Christine and Sei had as much trouble coming up with a name they both liked as my husband and I did. I had no idea when I agreed to marry the man that he had such different ideas about what makes a good name. For this wonderful child that I was carrying, I needed a grand name. Everything he suggested sounded so ordinary and old-fashioned to me. (I think old-fashioned names are very popular right now.) Every name I suggested sounded overly dramatic and pretentious to him. And then one day, when time was growing short, he came home from work and asked, "How about 'Nicholas'?" I loved it the minute I heard it, and 'Nick' too. A line in his baby book asked what color was my baby's hair? "Golden", I wrote. " Who is the baby named for?" "The last Czar of Russia," I said. Pretentious? My Nicholas cried a lot between 4:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. I hope that the new Nicholas doesn't do that. I'm working on a little pillow to commerate his birth. I'll try to hurry so it's done before he grows up. They do that so quickly.

65 Years Old

2006-07-20T14:20:00.000-05:00

It's true. I had my birthday on Saturday. I'm now a card carrying member of the medicare system. I've always been a little smug about having my birthday exactly in the middle of summer. Some people have their birthdays in such ugly months. Actually, July can be pretty ugly too. This year the weatherman said that the temperature could have hit 100 degrees on the 15th. It didn't, but it was hot all week. We started celebrating on Wednesday already. We went to the Main St. Bar and Grill in Warroad for supper and then went shopping for a present for me. We found a stained glass dragonfly atop a metal rod for me to put beside a rose bush that's new to the garden this year. We also bought me a cream-colored fairy who is holding a white glass ball that glows in the garden after dark. Last summer, on another hot day, we had gone to an auction. I had seen a white stone angel for the garden that I liked. We waited quite awhile for it to come up for bidding. It was a thirsty wait, so we finally went to the Williams Bar and Grill for a little relief. When we got back to the auction, the angel was gone. My new birthday garden fairy can pass for an angel if you don't look at her little pointy toed boots. We were very disappointed in her for a few days though and thought we would have to return her. Though she sat in the sun all day, her ball didn't glow at night. Fortunately, by the time my birthday rolled around, my husband had figured out that she has a little switch hidden away that you must turn on. On the Friday before my birthday we took a long ride through the state forest south of us. We thought that Bear and Sadie could go for a swim in a gravel pit we knew was there. We have had little rain this summer and our pond has totally dried up. It's a very shallow gravel pit. The sun was beating down and the water was warm. Sadie waded gingerly out and retrieved a few sticks my husband had thrown out for her, but Bear was worried about the fact that I was standing in the shade near the car. We had taken her and Sadie to a kennel and driven off and left them there for a few days earlier this month. I think she was concerned that I was hanging back because I was planning to drive off and abandon them all in the wilderness. When I left the shade and joined them at the edge of the water, she nervously swam out for a few sticks, but her heart wasn't in it. We had planned to stop You-Know-Where when we popped out of the woods at Williams to have a shrimp basket. But it occured to us that Sadie and Bear couldn't wait for us in the car in the heat. So we took them home and then had the shrimp basket at the Nitehawk in downtown Roosevelt instead. Finally, after all the preliminary activities, my birthday dawned, bright and blistering hot. I started by opening the presents from my sister. My sister is known for her big generous boxes of gifts. She had sent me two denim dresses, a basket of books with a little can of book darts to mark the pages, a cream colored tea kettle with apples on it, a little electric hot plate to keep a cup of tea nice and hot, a set of colored carpenter pencils, some knee pads for kneeling in the garden, and a stained glass angel sun catcher. Then I read in my night gown in front of the fan for quite awhile. On my birthday and ONLY on my birthday, I am allowed two Hershey bars, instead of only one. So I had one right away with my first cup of tea. What do you do on Friday nights when you live in Wisconsin? You go out for a fish fry, of course. Once, when we were sitting on a stool You-Know-Where, we mentioned the Wisconsin fish fries to a Minnesota friend. He told us about a really good Minnesota fish fry at a resort on the Rainy River. One Sunday afternoon last summer we set out to find that resort. We couldn't remember its name, but we both thought it had the word'river' in it. We stopped at the River View Resort for a sandwich. The waitress told us that no, they didn't have a famous fish fry. It was the River Bend Resort. So we journeyed on down the road and sure enough, at a big bend in the river.... On my birthday evening (a Saturday night instead of the Wisconsin Friday night preference) we returned to the River Bend for the famous fish fry. What makes it famous and maybe more expensive than your average Wisconsin fish fry are the big tasty walleye pike filets. Like an ordinary fish fry it has cole slaw, baked beans and a roll. But it also has a baked potato, fried onions and thick sliced bacon. The fish are being breaded and fried and the stainless steel containers of everything else are being replenished outdoors. Picnic tables are stretched out all along River Bend's share of the shore. As you sit and eat, you look out across the river at our good neighbor, Canada. They have no resorts on their shore, just lovely Up North fir trees. A gentle breeze always seems to be stirring and you often see someone you know. As you probably know, it is rude, crude and politically incorrect to attempt to take home food from an all you can eat fish fry. What if everybody did that? The problem was, we had Bear and Sadie waiting at home and we had promised them a birthday treat. I didn't feel too bad about it. With our senior citizen appetites we hadn't piled our plates nearly as high as the young people around us. So it was that my husband went back for a second plate. We each surreptitiously snuck one filet, one piece of bacon and a spoonful of beans into our empty paper cups. We tried not to look around and see if anyone was watching and we hoped that the nice young lady whose duty it was to see that everyone had plenty to drink didn't show up to peek into our cups. Then we casually left with our cups and had a pleasant drive home to the waiting pups. And that, my patient reader, is the history of my 65th birthday. May I have many, many more.

New Template

2006-06-10T11:45:00.000-05:00

In my searching around for ideas for my own blog template, I came across this look that I thought would be just right for Mom. So, I hope she likes it--if she ever gets back to this blog! Haha...

I thought it was maybe a bit nicer than my homemade look for her. Although I did rather like that picture of the bench in the sunset...

As I was explaining to Mom, though, not much I can do as far as altering this template. For the most part, it is what it is. But then, those following the Midlothian changes may think that's a good thing.

P.S. Mom--if you want to get to the Blogger page from your blog (you might have noticed, that Blogger bar at the top isn't there anymore), go to the lower right of the sidebar (the bookmark) where there is a link for "Blogger" and click on that.

P.P.S. This is really Matt. I signed in as Mom to do the template changes.

2006-05-11T13:05:00.000-05:00

It seems appropriate that I return to the blogging fold on this day, the birthday of the editor of Letters from the North. He seems a little distressed at the pace of the blogging. And he has been kind enough to update our picture with a welcoming garden chair better suited to the new season. Maybe I should explain how it is that Matthew came to be. After having three babies in four years, I decided that I needed a break. My smallest baby was quite a momma's boy, so for four years we just enjoyed each other. My grandmother came to visit once when Marty was nine months old. She got quite a kick out of how hard he would struggle to follow me every time I left the room. It got easier after he learned to walk and when I sat down he would usually climb up and sit on my lap. My husband started making noises about how he was too big a boy to be always sitting on Mommy's lap, but we mostly just ignored that. However, about this time I took a trip on the train to visit my mother and my sister. My sister was newly pregnant and brimming with excitement about it. I came home jealous. If Nancy was having a baby, I wanted a new baby too. My husband probably thought it was a good way to get Marty out of the nest, so he agreed to take part in the project. It didn't take long. Nancy's Jennifer was born in March and our Matthew was born in May. All of our other babies were several weeks overdue. Marty was the worst--due on July 30th, born on August 21st. Dear little Matthew was born one day before his due date. I worried a little on the way to the hospital. I knew that a fellow pastor's wife was on duty on the OB ward. I wasn't thrilled with the idea of having someone from my social life observing me during labor and delivery. She was there all right, but soon left at eleven p.m. Matthew was born at 1:22 a.m. on the day of Wisconsin's trout fishing opener. Both his father and his doctor were a little annoyed about that. Three days later we were on our way home. We lived twenty miles from the hospital. In a little town about half way there was a nice little cafe. My mother-in-law, who had come to help us out, suggested that we stop there and have some lunch. The waitress stood in front of the big front window and watched in amazement as we all climbed out of our little red VW bug: my husband, his mother, our daughter Claire, Marty, Matthew and me. She told us that she couldn't believe that we all fit in that tiny car. Two months later we moved from Wisconsin to New York with four children in that little car. It occurs to me now that you couldn't do that today, but then we just packed everybody in without any baby car seats. Our daughter Claire was always up for a new baby. She had a lot of the mother hen in her. But the brothers were not so pleased. When first grader Nick came home from school on Matthew's first day home he wouldn't even look at the new baby. His birthday was on May 12th and had been lost in the shuffle. Marty's Sunday school teacher stopped by several days later with a gift for the new baby. She laughed and said that she thought Marty had aged about ten years since she had last seen him. Matthew was fated to soon share this experience. One evening a few weeks later he was having a babysitter for the first time. My husband and I were going out. As we drove along, I remarked that Matt seemed a little tacked on to the family, not quite a part of the Nick, Claire, Marty group. Perhaps we should have another baby as a companion for him. I wasn't at all serious, but I had tempted the new baby fates. When Matthew was sixteen months old, I again left home, stayed away several days and returned with a new baby. Matthew was absolutely furious with me. He would not look at me or allow me to touch him. Only Daddy could take care of him. Unfortunately for Matt, Daddy was scheduled to go out of town for a conference. He hired a babysitter to come in the late afternoon and evening to help me get the children to bed. Matt had a choice to make. I'm happy to say that he chose me over the babysitter. We have a picture of Matt squatting on his haunches and peering at the newborn Peter in his Infant Seat on the floor. Matt looks like a scientist appraising an unpleasant speciman. However, when Matt decided to leave home a year later, he only took three things with him--his red wagon, two cans of Campbell's soup and his brother Peter.

Ashes to ashes

2006-03-21T14:35:00.000-06:00

Marvin Windows and Doors must be really busy. They have called up their temporary workers in the spring--something they haven't done for several years. So my husband is heading off to work again on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons. He was working ten hour shifts in the fall. He's cut those down to eight hours and I'm happy about that. When you don't get home until nearly 3 a.m., it's almost morning by the time you get to sleep. I take over some of his chores when he's working, with Sadie and Bear's assistance. We feed and water the goat and the chickens in the morning, and we shut them up in the evening. And we try to keep a fire going in the old wood boiler. My husband and I have differences of opinion on how to tend the boiler. I have the instruction manual on my side. It says, plain as day, "Rake the ashes forward each day and shovel them out frequently." My husband's version--rake the ashes forward and shovel them out if you can no longer squeeze any wood in. Once a year is probably enough. He told me recently that he takes a little out each day. Hah--a teaspoon maybe. I shovelled in a cloud dust quite awhile this morning. There were even chunks of unburned logs buried in those ashes. I was very worried that my fire would go out completely whilst I was doing this. [It's so humiliating to have to confess that it went out on your watch, especially if you've been self righteous about methods and especially if you can't get it going again by yourself.] When I smuggly announced that I had done the shovelling out this morning, I saw a very sly little grin. My husband probably won't have to do it at all this year.

Retirement

2006-03-21T14:10:00.000-06:00

The day after I posted those last few blogs, I got busy and cleaned up the house. I don't want to live like a pig after all. I'm thinking that I'm actually lucky that I have some work left to do. My sister called me recently and told me that her husband's retirement, which had been scheduled for this summer, suddenly happened NOW. They had looked for a house in Aiken, South Carolina and immediately found one that they really liked. Then they had a chance to sell their current home quickly, and suddenly it was all done. She's really excited about it all. She mentioned that she had read some of my blogs and that, "It sounds like you two have so much fun up there." The thought that quickly crossed my mind was, "Gee, I hope I didn't mislead her." My husband and I do have a lot of fun up here and I think we have become closer than we have ever been during this last decade. And yet,... I had a group of friends in the town where we formerly lived. We went to Bible class and Altar Guild together and almost every month went out to eat to celebrate each other's birthdays. One of the friends worked in her husband's office. When they both retired, she carried on so about it that the rest of us got thoroughly fed up with her. Now I think I understand better. I didn't actually retire from anything, but sharing my husband's retirement was a much more difficult transition than I had expected. For a long time it seemed to me that all the people in Northwest Minnesota were busy living their lives except for the two of us. We were just standing by and watching. Once, after a concert we had attended, a woman came up to us and said, "I don't think I've seen you before. I don't know who you are." My husband replied, "That's all right. We don't really know who we are anymore either." We had lost our identity and didn't know how or where to find a new one. It's often an empty feeling, a purposeless seeming process. On other days, I feel so unbelievably lucky to be living exactly the life I've wanted to. The purpose is to start winding down, I guess. Ambiguity.

Cooking

2006-03-17T12:46:00.000-06:00

I ordered a little bulletin entitled "Cooking with potatoes" along with some of this years seeds from my Pinetree Garden Seeds catalog. I read through it this morning. I had a strong impression that the woman who wrote it is a natural cook. She mixes beets and chard and mushrooms, onions and leeks and garlic, tomatoes and cheeses and hazelnut oils, and all kinds of herbs into her potatoes with a light-hearted flip. She speaks of stirring and chopping with a wooden spoon and you can picture her doing it with one hand on her hip while chatting with guests. I think of myself as a cook. I had five children and a husband and made them all something to eat every day for many years. But not light-heartedly. I must walk back and forth to the counter to check the recipe and agonize over the decisions involved. For a few minutes while reading the bulletin I wished I were a natural cook. Now I just wish I HAD such a cook. Yes, if I could have just one servant it would be a cook.

Housecleaning

2006-03-17T12:32:00.000-06:00

After almost fifty years, I'm sick of it. More and more I'm letting it slide. I resent all the days I've thought of doing something creative and ended up dusting or scrubbing instead. My time is limited, since it seems that I must spend much of the morning reading and observing nature through my front windows. We are never unique or alone. I came across a little haiku written by Issa who lived in Japan two hundred years ago. "Spider/do not worry/I keep house casually." According to a biography found by Google, "Issa's poems have given consolation to generations of readers."

Greetings via Google

2006-03-17T12:24:00.000-06:00

Yesterday morning I decided to start working on the Sunday morning New York Times crossword puzzle. After I had made my initial run-through, I circled all the clues I thought Google could help me with and came to my trusty computer. At the very top of the first web site that I clicked on were these words, "Welcome to all of you who are looking for 'political pundit Myers!'" It turned out to be the wrong web site to find DeeDee's name, but I had had a friendly, unexpected greeting from strangers. When I told my husband about it, he had the answer I needed. He's an expert on political pundits. I should have asked him in the first place.

Tenuous connections

2006-03-15T10:54:00.000-06:00

Speaking of reading on the beach. Have you ever checked out a library book and found sand between its pages or trapped along its edge by its plastic library jacket? For some reason I love it when stuff like that happens. Who was this person? What beach? Did they read or maybe just let the book lie in the sand? I wonder, but I don't really want to know. Knowing would break the spell. I like bookmarks. I have several little piles of them in my house. But they rarely seem to be in the right place at the right time. Other people must have the same problem. Library books often have pictures, grocery lists, match book covers, receipts, even personal letters in them. Once I even found a long dark hair carefully placed mid book. This triangle of author, and me, and the person who had the book before me always fascinates. Sometimes a church bulletin will ask the question, "Do you want to be a part or apart?" For me this is a weighty question, not easily answered. I once went through a long, strong Emily Dickinson/Virginia Woolf period. I became enchanted with the idea that we were three soul mates who just missed each other on this planet earth. Emily Dickinson died in May 1886. Virginia Woolf was only four years old then. She died in March of 1941. I wasn't born until the following July. If they had known me, would they have seen me as a dolt who barely grasped what they were trying to say? Well now, we'll never know, will we? Apart is definitely safer.

Reading on the beach

2006-03-15T10:32:00.000-06:00

Our snow had started to melt. Temperatures were in the thirties. Huge chunks of snow-covered ice slid off our metal roof. The sound of it is always startling. Several new snowfalls have been heavy, wet, spring snows. But this week we've fallen back towards winter again. Our nights are below zero and our days can't quite make it to twenty degrees. Yesterday we had several snow showers. The big flakes drifted down dry and light like winter snow. And yet I know that winter will have to give up soon. The sun is higher and much stronger. The light is different and lasts longer. The icicles drip and grow longer and longer even on the cold days. I've been reading a book about Shakespeare while I'm sitting here in front of our big windows waiting for spring. Yesterday I came to a chapter about "The Merchant of Venice." Twenty five years ago, I took a University of Wisconsin course by mail on Shakespeare's plays. "The Merchant of Venice" came up as an assignment just as our family was ready to leave for vacation. We had a favorite campsite at a small lake in northern Wisconsin. We weren't a family who went camping just for its own sake. Usually we were on our way to somewhere, camping in a new place each night. But this particular campsite must have had happy memories attached to it. I remember seeking it out, returning to it several years in a row. I've read so many books in my sixty five years. I'm lucky if I can remember the plot and the characters. Seldom do I know where I did the reading. But any thought of "The Merchant of Venice" brings back the short, shady walk to the beach, the warm sand, the sun on my shoulders, my children near-by.

The brand new, coral sage, reclining loveseat

2006-01-16T13:42:00.000-06:00

I hate buying furniture. I'm not good at it. It's expensive and mistakes have been made. Most of our successful purchases have been selected by my husband. Our thirty year old couch was chosen by him. I've never seen a different one that I like as well. When it's red cushions began to look matted and dirty, I unzipped their covers and peeled them from the foam and washed them in the washing machine. When that no longer perked up my beloved couch, we took it to a shop to be recovered. I had my heart set on a dark green cottony material with little fleurs de lis running through it. I had seen it on a wing back chair. The woman at the shop and my husband gently dissuaded me. It wasn't right for the style and size of our couch. A soft moss green, plushier material with larger silver and peach leaves scattered through it is much more fitting. It was my husband's idea, too, to buy our old solid oak pedestal table. It was stained very dark and looked awkward in the small kitchen of the little ranch style house we lived in at the time. But we soon left that house. My husband stripped away the dark stain and rubbed it with a concoction that he made himself. It was tobacco soaked in something. Was it turpentine? Anyhow, I wouldn't sell my table now for any price. And who found the four old wooden chairs that go so perfectly with it at an auction down the street? My husband, of course. I know recliners aren't fashionable; they are a joke, really, among the trendy. But we have become quite addicted to them. We spend so much time in our recliner that its life span only seems to be a few years. Last time we needed a new one, my husband was working long hours and sent me off to make a purchase without him. Luckily, my son, Matt, was here and he went with me. While I wandered bewildered among all the contenders, Matt found one that wasn't too big for our small living room, that was neat looking with colors that blended with our couch. It came home with us, wedged in the car in two pieces and took its place as the choice seat in the house. But for some time it has been apparent that its day has come and gone. Bear chewed on its wooden base and its foot rest back when she was a baby. A looped wire in its back came loose from something, wore a hole in the fabric and permanently poked through. It became too much a recliner; it was impossible to sit upright in it. My husband has been talking for several years about getting a loveseat recliner. This pleased me no end. I chose to think that he was having a romantic notion. [At his age!] It may be more true that his conscience has been bothering him. Who do you think has first dibs on both the recliner and the remote? As an insomniac, my turn at the recliner has come mostly in the wee hours of the morning when Sadie and I look out the window and listen to the radio. But that has caused another little problem. When my husband arises at five a.m. all ready to recline and watch Imus in the Morning, there I am , having dozed off in his seat of choice. Our living room is too small for the couch and two recliners. Would it be big enough for the couch and a love seat? We weren't sure. We dithered and procrastinated and grew accustomed to reclining at full tilt. A Christmas visit from sons Matthew and Peter got us going. With them and their brother Marty in tow, we visited two furniture stores in International Falls. Nothing there moved us. It was in our neighboring town of Baudette that my husband found it--a soft, plain sage green one. When I mentioned that our couch was moss green, the lady there tried to steer us to a coffee and cream, brown version. But we liked the green one. I worried all the way home that it would be too big, that the two greens would clash. I was so relieved when it was delivered and I saw that it fit in its allotted space. The colors blended, to our eyes at least. Before we left the store, the lady had urged us to "sit in it," "try sitting in it." We did--for a few seconds. I was too busy judging a book by its cover. The first night that we had it, we felt like two little soldiers sitting up so straight on such a high stiff thing. It wasn't anything like our old friend that had been sadly hauled away by the delivery truck. My husband began sitting more on the couch. When I questioned him about it, he said, "You know how I am about new things. My pants might be dirty." Or he was drinking his coffee or having a cookie. Finally he asked me if I thought we had made a mistake. But I think the story is going to have a happy ending. After all, maybe a lady and a gentleman are meant to sit nicely in their parlor, not sprawled out as if someone had just belted them one. Bear has been told so sternly that the new love seat is not for her that she hasn't tried it, but Sadie, who's a good judge of comfort, sneaks up there whenever she thinks we won't notice. Yesterday we sat together and watched the Panthers beat the Bears and held hands a little. This morning at 3 a.m., I heated up my three flannel bags of rice in the microwave, tucked one against each hip and one behind my head and reclined a little. While the BBC was getting me up to speed on financial conditions in Africa, I dozed off and didn't wake up for two and a half hours. When it was time for Imus, my husband came and reclined beside me without even waking me. And the two apple green cashmere throws that we got for Christmas look just great draped across the back of the new, coral sage, reclining loveseat.

CBC calendars

2006-01-13T13:07:00.000-06:00

You could get a free calendar from the CBC this morning. All you had to do was call in and tell the radio hostess a little story on the calendar theme. The calendars were about wilderness, the Farmer's Almanac, turkeys and tractors. I think the best story was about wilderness. A lady called in and said that a relative of hers was caught in a snow storm on a frozen lake. He couldn't tell where the shore was, but he started out walking, hoping to find it. Eventually he became aware of two wolves, one on each side of him, trotting along. He went with them and they led him to shore. The worst story, in my opinion, came from Barry in Minnedossa. [I'm not sure that is spelled right.] He wanted the Farmer's Almanac calendar. When she asked for a story about farming, he replied, "Well, I've farmed all my life." End of story. She's a sweet radio lady. She gave him a calendar. She probably shouldn't have.

Sibling rivalry

2005-12-01T12:39:00.000-06:00

Having more than one dog is a lot like having more than one child, I'm finding. They are together, you are the other; in one case the parent, in the other pack leader, in both cases the authority figure. In our little family Sadie is like a bossy big sister; Bear the pesky little sister. It's been a revelation to me just how much I've come to love Bear in spite of her pestering. She has a way of cocking her head and looking at you with her bright black eyes. In the past it was mostly a look of "What's up?" or "What should we do now?" It has broken our hearts sometimes now, that after a showdown with Sadie, it's a look of pure bafflement or even fear. On the other hand, Sadie often has a very sad look in her amber eyes. It's like she knows some ancient secret and it ain't good. She's trying mightily to fit in here and not sure that she's succeeding. They went with us on Thanksgiving to our son's house some 90 miles away. They couldn't be in the brand new addition to his house with seventeen people and it was very cold outside. We put them in their crates in my son's workshop in the garage and he heated it up for them. I think it may have seemed to Sadie that she was back in an animal shelter. When it was time to go home, Bear was running around in the snow, but Sadie jumped immediately into the driver's seat of our truck. I had to pull her out. [She doesn't know how to drive.] But she was boosted into the back seat, and even though she doesn't have much room back there because crazy Bear has to be in her crate, Sadie was relieved to be going home. She has never played much with toys at our house. It has seemed to me part of her effort to fit in that she occasionally takes a stab at it without seeming to enjoy it much. But on Thanksgiving night, when we came into our house, she grabbed the red and yellow lobster that squeaks and tossed it in the air over and over and jumped around the living room. It did my heart good to see her so happy. Since that night the lobster has been her toy. She carries it around and brings it to show me and sometimes puts it on the couch beside her when she takes a nap. Bear watches all this with interest, but not jealousy. She's never liked the lobster, my one and only purchase at Warroad's new dollar store. But last night there was trouble, and it all started with the lobster. I was watching T.V. after supper. Sadie brought me the lobster. We squeaked it and bonked it on her nose a few times and she went to her favorite spot on the couch. Bear immediately came over to me with one of the soup bones. I pulled it away from her and bonked her on the nose and she grabbed it back. We were having a merry old time, but apparently Sadie was seething over there on the couch. She jumped down and grabbed Bear by the neck with much snarling and growling. I scolded her severely. This encouraged Bear to take a stand. It was her turn to growl and snap her teeth. Sadie went slinking off to a spot far away from us. With children or with dogs, when the parent or pack leader intervenes, things get more complicated. If possible, intervention is best avoided. I so love it when they are in accord with one another; when I see them running across the sand ridge together with some goal that I can't know. Or, when after a good run, they stand nose to nose drinking from a clear puddle in the woods. So often, in an effort to be more a part of it, I have to say a few words and break the spell.

Billy Collins

2005-11-25T12:33:00.000-06:00

I read a review quite a while ago that called Billy Collins accessible. I looked up his book, Sailing alone around the room, on Amazon.com and almost clicked on Purchase. But I'm too tight to buy a book of poems sight unseen. I copied down a poem by Robert Bly once that means a lot to me, but others by him that I have read just don't resonate with me. (You can read, "She doesn't understand them" there if you want to.) Even when I saw a copy of Nine Horses by Billy Collins in one of my catalogs for only $3.98, I hesitated. But I ordered it, and I'm so glad that I did. After I've read a few, it feels like every thing that happens to me in a day is a little poem that I ought to be able to write. But I can't, darn it. Vivid and mischievous, lonely and sad, friendly and funny--the poems make you feel not so alone in the world. Here is an example: "Ink strokes on rice paper--/a wooden bridge/curved over a river,/mountains in the distance, and in the foreground/a wind-blown tree. /I rotate the book on the table/so the tree/is leaning toward your village." Now, wasn't that fun?

Poets

2005-11-25T12:27:00.000-06:00

I don't read poetry enough. I really love it, but it's more work. Therefore a key word for me in a poetry review is "accessible". I don't think I'm a stupid woman, but probably not an overly clever one either. Simplicity is a concept I'm always chasing. What good, really, is a jumble of words that mostly just sound good? How clever are you if you haven't made what you felt and experienced clear to me?

Pet peeve

2005-11-25T12:21:00.000-06:00

Is it because I am an older person that I miss so much dialogue in movies and television because of the throbbing, soaring LOUD music that is playing over it? It used to be called "background" music. Or do younger people with better ears hear mostly music too? Are we meant to catch just a word or two and surmise the rest, using our imaginations rather than the writer's? I am a language lover, a word person. I don't like it.

Postscript

2005-11-25T12:18:00.000-06:00

The little yellow butterfly is lying flat and still this morning on the baseboard heater under the windows.

The little yellow butterfly

2005-11-19T09:13:00.000-06:00

I don't know how it came in. It seems unlikely that it flew in the door with us. I take most of my houseplants outside somewhere in the summer and bring them in again in the fall. Maybe it was hiding among the leaves of one of them, waiting for winter to bring the end of its life. Or maybe it was in a cocoon wrapped around one of the branches. When it came into my nice warm house it thought spring was here already. Maybe it was on one of the days when my husband had gotten chilled outside and cranked the heat until I got all sweaty. However it happened, we have a little yellow butterfly living in our house. It mostly sits on the wood frame of our big front windows and looks out. I don't know what to do for it. It doesn't seem like much of a life for a butterfly. Do butterflies eat and drink? This one doesn't. But there wouldn't seem to be much future for a little yellow butterfly out in the snow. So I just watch it. Sometimes, when I'm sitting in my chair in front of the windows, I think, "Where is the little yellow butterfly? Oh, there it is." Last night I couldn't see it. Then Bear bumped into the window frame and suddenly there it was, gliding across the room.

Mosses

2005-10-31T10:48:00.000-06:00

The dogs and I walked in the rain again this morning. It had rained most of the night. I heard it on the roof and there are many puddles. It's a gentle rain, no wind, temp. 40 degrees. We are burning tamarack in our outside wood furnace. When I first went out, I thought the good piney smell was coming from the wood smoke. But I kept smelling it all through the walk. It must have been all the soaking wet pine needles around me and underfoot. There is a kind of dry, crunchy, light gray moss on the sand ridge where we go into the woods. I heard someone call it reindeer moss once. Bear likes to roll in it. I think it scratches her back. Today she only tried it once. I noticed that it looked bigger and softer and bent down to touch it. The rounded clumps looked like the tops of old men's heads. Sure enough, they felt soft like wet, gray hair. When everything in the forest is as sopping wet as it is today, it accentuates all of the mosses and lichens and mushrooms. Some of the bushes and little trees looked like they had been flocked for Christmas decorations. One old rotting stump was about completely covered with many shades of gray and gold and green. We walk past it every day and I never noticed it before. It would make a beautiful photograph. The gold and orange mosses especially are much more vivid when wet against the black branches and twigs. I seem to remember reading or hearing that if you are lost in the woods you should check which side of tree trunks have moss growing on them. This will point you North. It's bogus information from my observations. Trees around here have moss all around. If one side seems dominant, it's just as likely to be east or west or south. My advice--carry a compass.

Holiday family fun

2005-10-30T15:15:00.000-06:00

All halloween items at the Ben Franklin store in Warroad, Minnesota are now fifty per cent off. Two young men in work clothes were taking advantage of that Friday afternoon. One said to the other, "You gonna dress your kid up like a clown? I thought you hated clowns." The other replied, "I do. It'll give me an excuse to beat the crap out of him."

Hunting in the rain

2005-10-21T12:59:00.000-05:00

When Matthew and Peter were here last month, they took four dogs for a walk first thing every morning. Matt may have skipped a time or two, but Pete went every day. On the day they left for home, he asked me if I was going to continue the tradition. We all laughed. It wasn't very likely. I read and drink tea in the mornings, walk dogs late in the afternoon. But I had promised myself that if we took on the responsibility of another dog I would put forth more effort. [My husband asked me to also promise him that I wouldn't complain about doggy inconveniences.] Yet, for a number of reasons, I'm proud to report that I have been walking the dogs most mornings and most afternoons as well. The weather has been great. Fall is a wonderful time to walk in the woods. My husband has been working until two in the morning at Marvin Windows. When he's doing that, I take over the job of keeping our outside wood furnace going. I'm outside at the wood pile each morning. The dogs are with me, of course. It's so easy to make two fellow creatures happy just by heading on down the driveway. On a more selfish note, two walks a day, plus a short one down the driveway at bedtime and those dogs are perfect angels when they're in the house with me in the evening--even antsy little Bear. Besides that, it seems it's good for me. My husband said he has noticed that my gait has improved. I have noticed that my knees and hips ache less on morning walks. And for the dogs, I think the walks are their daily jobs. We patrol our territory. I wonder what the deer hunters who hunt the state woods east of us would think if they knew how thoroughly we fan out and chase all the game away twice each day. Bear is a "oh what the heck" kind of hunter. If she sees something run, she chases it a little. But for Sadie, hunting is a serious affair. She usually flushes out two or three grouse on each of our walks. They're really hard to catch if your human companion won't carry a gun, but she seems to think that the effort should be made anyhow. Bear thought it was a new game at first. The bird goes whirring through the trees. Sadie dashes after it. Bear goes bounding after Sadie, jumps on her back and then Sadie pins her to the ground with much serious growling and snapping. Bear's no dummy. She leaves the birds to Sadie now. She sticks to pouncing on the mice in the tall grass. This week we had rain. One afternoon when I went out to check the boiler, I noticed that Bear and Sadie were both muddy, especially Bear who gets wet and then curls up in the sand under the deck. It was raining hard and I had half way decided to skip the afternoon walk. The only trouble was, I had a couple of movies picked out to watch on T.V. I wouldn't enjoy them much with two restless, dirty dogs tussling around. So we set out in the rain and it was on that dark and dripping afternoon that Sadie finally had some luck with her hunting. To be honest, we didn't make the kill. Some other creature, maybe the one whose hairy scat we'd been seeing on the trail all week, had killed a rabbit and eaten most of it. All that was left was a little paw, a strip of fur and a leg bone with a little meat still on it. Sadie found it, carried it and dropped behind to crunch up the bone. Bear put on a great show of being totally uninterested in Sadie and her puny little rabbit foot. But when Sadie dropped it and stepped off the trail for a little look around, Bear immediately grabbed it and took off through the brush. Sadie gave chase. There was much noise. By the time they came back to me, the rabbit foot was lost. There hadn't been much left of it anyhow. When we arrived home we were all soaking wet. After we were towelled off, Sadie and Bear were soft and clean. We shared a can of Campbell's Chunky. One scoop over Sadie's dog food, one scoop over Bear's and two scoops for me. They sacked out early and I watched my movies in peace.

2005-10-17T19:56:00.000-05:00

WILL there really be a morning?
Is there such a thing as day?
Could I see it from the mountains
If I were as tall as they?

Has it feet like water-lilies?
Has it feathers like a bird?
Is it brought from famous countries
Of which I have never heard?

Oh, some scholar! Oh, some sailor!
Oh, some wise man from the skies!
Please to tell a little pilgrim
Where the place called morning lies!

2005-10-17T19:53:00.000-05:00

I MEASURE every grief I meet
With analytic eyes;
I wonder if it weighs like mine,
Or has an easier size.

I wonder if they bore it long,
Or did it just begin?
I could not tell the date of mine,
It feels so old a pain.

I wonder if it hurts to live,
And if they have to try,
And whether, could they choose between,
They would not rather die.

I wonder if when years have piled—
Some thousands—on the cause
Of early hurt, if such a lapse
Could give them any pause;

Or would they go on aching still
Through centuries above,
Enlightened to a larger pain
By contrast with the love.

The grieved are many, I am told;
The reason deeper lies,—
Death is but one and comes but once,
And only nails the eyes.

There ’s grief of want, and grief of cold,—
A sort they call “despair”;
There ’s banishment from native eyes,
In sight of native air.

And though I may not guess the kind
Correctly, yet to me
A piercing comfort it affords
In passing Calvary,

To note the fashions of the cross,
Of those that stand alone,
Still fascinated to presume
That some are like my own.

Emily Bonus

2005-10-16T11:15:00.000-05:00

I like this one:

A door just opened on a street–
I, lost, was passing by–
An instant's width of warmth disclosed,
And wealth, and company.
The door as sudden shut, and I,
I, lost, was passing by–
Lost doubly, but by contrast most,
Enlightening misery.

This one sounds like a Mom kind of poem (?):

I haven't told my garden yet,
Lest that should conquer me;
I haven't quite the strength now
To break it to the bee.
I will not name it in the street,
For shops would stare at me–
That one so shy, so ignorant–
Should have the face to die.
The hillsides must not know it,
Where I have rambled so,
Nor tell the loving forests
The day that I shall go–
Nor lisp it at the table–
Nor heedless by the way
Hint that within the riddle
One will walk today!

Autumn bonus

2005-10-16T10:41:00.000-05:00

May and June were mainly cold and rainy. July and August were mostly hot and humid. But we've been having a wonderful autumn. We've had some frosts; one really hard one at 23 degrees. But we're also having many long stretches of bright blue skies and sunshine, temps in the sixties. I think we had more color in our changing leaves than usual--more red and orange. Most have fallen now and are shuffling underfoot. But up here where we live we have an added autumn bonus. The tamarack trees are turning. They are conifers but not evergreens. Their needles turn golden in the fall. Seeing the golden tamaracks mixed in among their dark green conifer cousins and the white birches is a beautiful sight. Bear and Sadie and I have been walking in the woods twice a day because it is so neat. We know it can not last much longer. Usually our walks are solitary affairs, but one morning last week we ran into two of our neighbors and a bird hunter with his golden lab all on the same morning. The dogs looked good, but I was dressed in a turquoise nightgown, gray flannel pajama bottoms and an orange jacket. Oh, well.

Emma is thriving

2005-10-16T10:31:00.000-05:00

Emma came to church today with her Mom and brother. She has really been growing and rounding out these last two months. She's a very pretty little girl. Her brother Christopher, who is two, is going to be a man of few words, I think. Subject and verb. Some time ago he started asking his mother occasionally "Daddy doing?" When his mother was in the hospital having the baby, he came to church with his Grandmother. He asked her very plaintively several times during church, "Mommy doing?" Maybe because Emma is so little, today he shortened it even more. "Baby do?"

More computer help

2005-10-16T10:24:00.000-05:00

I lost my template and was temporarily out of commission. The consultants had to work on my blog for me. I was once told that I am a high maintenance chick. [I liked that . It makes me sound young and modern and worth maintaining.] But now I am back on the air again and I am happy to report, so is the CBC. Their labor disruption is over and a contract has been signed that should last until 2009.

To blog or not to blog

2005-10-12T12:12:00.000-05:00

I have been absent from my own blog for a long, long time. So long that I have thought several times that I should just let it go. I suspect when I hear about the millions of blogs that have started that I wouldn't be the first to abandon one. And yet, something in me wants to continue. It is a way to express myself after all. I need to make myself a computer habit. I am a creature of habit pretty much and that would do it. I think while I've been gone I've had a virtual visit from one of my computer consultants again. Wasn't the Emily poem a different one? "I heard a fly buzz when I died" has many happy memories of times past connected to it. Teen age sons found my fondness for it very, very funny. Also, didn't the side print on my blog used to be red? One of the computer consultants wasn't sure he liked it red. The computer consultants actually made a house call several weeks ago. My home page has been personalized with a gold background and falling leaves motif. Chirping bird songs greet me each time I log on. I have an antique teapot as my background. Should be easy to develop a computer habit with all that going on, right? One of the consultants feels that my e-mail problems could stem from an unconscious habit of dragging my hand across the "a" key and the control key at the same time. If you do that, everything is highlighted and the next thing you type erases everything. Who knew? How do people without visiting consultants find these things out?

Emma's baptism

2005-08-27T11:29:00.000-05:00

Emma, our pastor's newborn daughter, was baptized last night at 6 p.m. Another pastor was one of her sponsers. He was there with his wife and they are newlyweds. How could it help but take me back--young pastors, new wives and Emma at the very beginning of her life? I felt strongly compelled to tell our pastor's wife about the similarities between my life and hers. We had both given birth to firstborn sons in May. We had both gone with our husband to tiny towns to live while they began a ministry at two small churches. And our second children, daughters, were both born on August 20th. She made the remark that it was almost scary....Scary for me to realize that life has moved right along. That the time for making a young man happy and for being the center of a child's life is gone forever. Scary for her to wonder, is this what all my struggles will come to, an old woman sitting at the back of the room? I'm on page 400 of the book. It has a quote from Emerson. "But when you have chosen your part, abide by it and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world."

Cleaning up the library list

2005-08-25T11:36:00.000-05:00

I have found myself fighting a feeling of mild depression lately and wondering what's causing it. The weather has cooled down. We've had some rain to relieve the dryness. The gardens are looking lovely. The crops are coming in. We have a Labor Day week-end trip planned to relieve the monotony. Just what is my problem? Finally I think I've figured it out. It has to do with my current read. I usually read a couple of hours in the morning and a couple of hours in the evening. If I take a break in the afternoon, I might read a little then too. There are the newspapers and the magazines and the stuff that comes in the mail. But the main things to be read are the books from the library list. Right now the list has 121 titles on it with 18 crossed out. When 40 to 50 have been crossed out and it gets looking frayed and messy, I'll sit down and copy the whole thing over, leaving off the crossed off titles which have been read. The books at the top of the list are four to five years old. This works out good for me because librarys at points south of here are reluctant to send their brand new books up into the hinterland. Usually they'll send their five year old books right away instead of making me wait for months. A good book is still good five years later. If I find that no library in Minnesota has the five year old book I want, Amazon.com will sell it to me, sometimes for only a penny [plus shipping and handling, of course]. Most of the books on my list have been reviewed in the Sunday paper. I keep a cardboard box of the clipped out reviews in my workroom. If I'm getting bad vibes from a title I can go to the box and find and re-read the review and decide whether to order it. But for some psychological reason it just kills me to take a title off the list unread. The book I'm reading now has been number one on the list it seems like forever. A year ago the Ford dealer in Thief River Falls advertised a fall special. You could get your oil changed, all of your belts, filters and fluids checked and your tires rotated for forty bucks. That seemed like a good deal to me. A downside would be the 180 mile round trip, but I could stop at the Thief River Falls Library to make it more worthwhile. It was t here, on that day, that I first held the book that I'm currently reading in my hands. I could have checked it out then, but I didn't and I've been avoiding it ever since. Why? Because it's 780 pages long. It's an effort just to hold it. I kept reading over the review and trying to make myself cross it off the list. But I had to face facts. It sounded like a worthwhile book. A couple of weeks ago I bit the bullet and requested it. Thief River Falls sent it post haste. I couldn't believe the speed. I ordered it on a Sunday night and the Warroad Library called Tuesday noon and asked me to come pick it up. The Minnesota Northwest Regional Library System has been eagerly waiting for someone to read that book. And I'm doing it. And I'm depressed. It is The Royal Family by William T. Vollmann. It is well-written. It is divided into 36 "books". Each begins with a quote, many from the Bible. The "books" are divided into little vignettes. There are 593 of them in all. It was a skillful thing todo with such a long book, I think. Like when I divide my gardens into little squares. I can weed one square at a time, feel like I've accomplished something, and the job doesn't seem so over-whelming. I'm not depressed because the book is so long. I'm depressed because I'm dwelling vicariously in the Tenderloin and Mission districts of San Francisco. The royal family is a family of whores. The young lady who cuts my hair has been trying to convince me that I shouldn't wash my hair every day. I do sometimes think about all the gallons of water I use and feel guilty about it. I'm trying to wash my hair and take a bath only every other day. I just wash up a little on the off day. Can you imagine having sex off and on all day and never taking a bath? William Vollmann keeps telling me over and over how these women smell and about all the stains on their clothes. I'm reading about how bad it hurts when they need their drugs, the abcesses on their legs, their abortions, the fights they get into, etc. etc. I'm on page 323 and living in a different world. I'm going to finish. Amazon.com has sent me three other books from the top of the library list and those books are waiting for me. I'm hoping that when I cross number one off the list my mood will lift.

Emily D. muses about death

2005-08-17T20:36:00.000-05:00

"It is to us the Nile" "The time to live is frugal, and good as is a better earth, it will not quite be this." "[Death] invalidates the balm of that religion that doubts as fervantly as it believes." "Heaven hunts around for those that find itself below, and then it snatches." "A finite life is that peculiar garment that were it optional with us we might decline to wear." "Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it." "That bareheaded life under the grass worries one like a wasp." "Dying is a wild night and a new road." "I would go, to know!" She went May 15, 1886.

More vegtables for breakfast

2005-08-17T20:10:00.000-05:00

Shortly after my oldest son was married, he and his wife moved to Tokyo. This brought about a great adventure for me, the kind of adventure I had never expected to have. I had grown up believing that only rich people and missionaries travelled overseas. But now I found myself first visiting Tokyo and then travelling with my husband, two of my sons and my new daughter-in-law in the north of Japan. We had all decided that we would try to be good guests. My daughter-in-law had found that a travel agent was reluctant to book us at a small rural inn. The innkeeper had never had American guests and was afraid that we would be dissatisfied, especially with the food that she served. We were determined to be undemanding and to enjoy the meals. And for the most part we did. What they brought us we ate, and with chopsticks too. It seemed to us that no one at the inn spoke English. We had read that it was the duty of the lowest ranking female of the family to serve at family style meals. My daughter-in-law was the last to come down for breakfast one morning. We all mock scolded her for shirking her duty of serving us. A very distinguished looking, middle-aged Japanese man sitting at the table with us was taking all this in. A little while later his wife came down. He made a point of serving her with a sly grin on his face. I think that he knew a little English. It was by watching him that we learned what we were supposed to do with the raw egg that we had been served that morning. He broke it into the small bowl that it had come in, beat it with his chopsticks, added some thin brown sauce that was on the table and then added it to a bowl of rice. It was ready to serve--to his wife first, of course. Except for that egg, I didn't notice that the breakfasts in Japan had foods that were different from lunches and dinners, as they are here. Usually there were sea creatures and seaweed, vegtables and soups and rice three times a day. After a few days we left the little inn and travelled on. The next morning, in the large dining room of a fancy hotel, a waiter asked if we wanted a Japanese or an American breakfast. The men in our party stuck with the plan. "When in Rome...." But the women couldn't resist a chance for a little break. We ordered the American. Sure enough, we were soon served orange juice and toast and scrambled eggs AND a great big tossed salad. Surely Americans must eat some kind of vegtables for breakfast.

Peas for breakfast

2005-08-05T11:23:00.000-05:00

My mother-in-law hated leftovers. When the family gathered at her house for a meal she urged everyone to keep eating as Grandmas often do. At the very end of the meal, she'd pass each bowl and say "Everyone take one spoonful and then it's gone." Her middle son would say, diplomatically, as middle sons do, "I'll eat it a little later." And Mother S. always replied, " I know you. Later never comes." My husband is the youngest son of that family. If there's a little food left over that might get thrown out, his variation on the theme is, "Save it. I'll eat it for breakfast." After a good night's sleep the piece of fish or the two little potatoes are completely forgotten and remain in their little jar in the refrigerator. Yesterday we harvested vegtables from the garden: a head of broccoli, some lettuce and spinach, three zucchinis, lots of green and yellow and purple beans and about a fourth cup of peas. I added the peas to the half cup we had picked a few days ago. The peas are definitely petering out. I worked on my poor perennial bed in the afternoon. It's been completely neglected so far this year. My husband brought home a pizza to spare us the cooking and then helped me edge that perennial bed. In the middle of eating the pizza I remembered those peas that we should have had for supper. "I'll eat them for breadfast," my husband said. "I know you. You never eat any of that stuff for breakfast," I said. This morning, as I sat with my first cup of tea, he brought me a little bowl of buttered peas and a piece of toast and that's what I had for breakfast.

The madness of a seduced woman

2005-07-25T20:43:00.000-05:00

About 25 years ago now, I read a book with that cheesy title. It was a great big book, about 600 pages I think, and I became obsessed with it. At the time I had five children and the largest house I've ever lived in to care for, plus a 25 hour a week job at the W.J. Niederkorn Library. Yet I found myself constantly sneaking off to read a little more in that book. I can remember quite a bit about the story. A young woman left home to work in a textile factory in Massachusetts in the late eighteen hundreds. A handsome but callow young man seduced her. There was a pregnancy and a very unpleasant back-street abortion. The young man then began to gradually make himself scarce. Ironically, the one thing I can't remember is what the heroine did in her "madness." Did she kill him? I just can't recall. What does this have to do with us and our blog? I feel like a seduced woman and I got mad. Seduced into believing how wonderful these Internet connections are, how easy to harness for my purposes. Perhaps I should mention at this point that I have no patience at all with machines. Our Mantis tiller has an edging attachment that does an excellent job. I rarely use it because I don't want to coax the nasty little thing to start. A few weeks ago my sister sent me nine beautifully wrapped birthday presents--all things that she knows I really like. In my excitement after opening them all I turned to my trusty computer to type a thank you e-mail. It takes a while to say thank you for nine presents. I was only about half done when the screen turned blue, my e-mail words turned white, the damn thing winked at me and just that quick my thank you effort disappeared. Three days later I tried again and IT happened again. One of my computer advisers, whose name is Matt, tells me to think of my computer as a file cabinet. Apparently a file cabinet that swallows my info, files it who knows where and refuses to return it. If you are reading this, it means that Mr. Computer File Cabinet has realized that the madness of a seduced woman is nothing to trifle with. I have cooled down, but this is most likely its last chance to behave itself.

Full fledged pack member at last

2005-07-05T09:35:00.000-05:00

It was a cold January morning with a bright blue sky and sunshine when we went to pick up our puppy. She lived on a lane, off a gravel road, off a service road, off the highway so it wasn't so easy to find her. I started thinking it was a sign that we should wait till spring to get a new dog as sensible people would. But suddenly, up ahead, we saw a young woman batting tennis balls in the snow for her border collie to fetch. Trailing behind them were three fat little half foot long puppies with their tails straight up in the air. We brought a squirming Bear on home. We played with her and laughed at her antics and took her for a half dozen short walks. Then it was bedtime. We made her a little bed and confined her to the laundry room. I didn't expect her to be happy about being suddenly alone and she wasn't. We went up to bed though, figuring that she might as well get used to it. When we came down in the morning everything that someone so short could possibly reach and tear apart had been. The laundry room was trashed. We cleaned up the mess and my husband left for his workshop to make a little wood and wire cage. That little cage was where Bear spent her nights and her "time outs" for several months to come. When it began to get a little snug, I went shopping and bought her a kennel. Since then she has spent every night in her kennel for over a year. She never grew to love it and go there on her own as the books would have you believe. On the other hand, once there she was always quiet and seemingly content. But for the last few months we've noticed that when she sees people brushing their teeth and putting on pajamas, she sneaks off to our dark spare room and tries to become invisible. When she hears that it's bedtime, she rolls over on her back and puts her feet in the air. When she's finally persuaded to head for her laundry room bed/kennel she lets out a groan, and when the kennel door slams shut she barks one sharp protest. I began to think about how our former dog, Molly, had moved around on summer nights and stretched out on various new cool spots. I took pity on poor Bear who is growing up to be a somewhat calmer, more mature little Bear and perhaps deserved a chance to sleep where she chose. Two nights ago I went upstairs and left her to her own devices. About an hour later I heard her tiptoeing up the steps and settling down on the rug on my husband's side of the bed. She went from one bedside rug to the other during the night. About four a.m., when it was getting light, she put her feet up on the bed and laid her head on my chest and tried to kiss me. She was one proud and happy Bear, finally really, truly part of the family--day and night. However, four a.m. seems to be her wake up time. She woke me up then again this morning. I told her it was still bedtime and she should lie back down. She did and then went downstairs with my husband at five a.m. [His wake up time.] She seems to like it best when we're all together, so she came to check if I was awake yet two more times between five and seven.

The Dad and Zima poste

2005-06-29T20:40:00.000-05:00

After Sei asked in a comment so nicely with a please for a Dad and Zima post, until now I haven't responded. This has been because there really is very little to tell. I have no idea why Peter and his co-workers found the incident so amusing. Back when I was in high school I had an English teacher who would come into the class room and write a phrase on the blackboard. I remember once it was 'a half inch of rain'. We students were then supposed to write an essay or a story on that subject. I don't like to brag, but I used to be pretty good at it. Maybe I can spin a tale about Dad and the Zima. Dad is a retired pastor who was also the son of a pastor. This, of course, means that the poor guy had a Lutheran pastor's wife for both his mother and his wife. It so happens the one thing Dad really likes to do is sit around and have a few drinks with someone. Back when he was a teenager and all his friends were out partying, his mother really frowned on this. He wasn't allowed to go along. Years later, when he was in his forties and visiting his mother in his home town of Plainview, Minnesota, his mother STILL didn't want him to go downtown and have a beer in a bar with a friend. Everyone in Plainview knew he was a pastor. How would it look? Now, I didn't set out to be a pastor's wife. I kind of got drawn into it by my husband's charm. But I have to admit, sometimes when he was set on partying I asked myself, "How's it going to look?" And there's another reason why I haven't been the best drinking buddy for him. I've had worsening digestion for over forty years. I don't know whether we can blame that on the ministry or not. At any rate, by now there are many things that I can partake of only sparingly. Alcohol is one of them. I'm not sure that my husband believes this. Doesn't it say in the Bible, "Take a little wine for thy stomach's sake"? So I think when he's out shopping at the liquor store he looks for something to please me and entice me. That's kind of sweet, isn't it? If he's also looking for a drink to offer one of his children, I think he looks for something modern, maybe a little more expensive than what we usually buy. Now that we've gotten older and moved into the woods, our children seem very worldly and sophisticated to us. One day last month when Peter was here visiting, he and I went to Doug's Supermarket to buy some things for supper after one of our exciting afternoon activities. Dad went to the liquor store for the beverages. He came back with some Zima and proudly told us that the shopkeeper had assured him that it was a malt beverage. He opened one and handed it to Peter. Peter said that it was a kind of sweet drink usually preferred by the ladies. He handed it to me. I took a little sip and put it down on the counter and left it there. I don't like to drink when I'm trying to cook. It gets me confused. [If you want me to drink with you, take me out for supper.] Well, waste not, want not. Poor Pastor Schoewe had to drink all six Zima's by himself even though he didn't like them either. Now what's so funny about that?

In the interest of accuracy

2005-06-29T20:29:00.000-05:00

Actually it was just the Old Exchange Building in Charleston where the wedding reception was held, not the Old Securities and Exchange Building. Also, my daughter said that her dress was a cream color so I said it was too. Actually, it was pretty white. My daughter-in-law wore white also. Both asked me and discussed with each other whether the old rule about not wearing white to a wedding still applies. So many of those old rules about what you can wear when and to what have been thrown overboard. At one time you didn't wear white so as not to compete with the bride. I suppose you are especially suspected of wanting to compete with the bride if you are the mother of the groom. Giving a child you've been so close to into marriage is not such an easy thing. Don't wear white. Don't wear black. Is it still a rule?

Back to blogging

2005-06-25T20:35:00.000-05:00

I haven't been posting because I've been gone. A week ago today I was in Charleston, South Carolina. In the morning I went for breakfast at the Holiday Inn where my son-in-law is the new Director of Food and Beverages. (I'm sure he's doing a good job, but last Saturday he was out of cranberry juice.) I spent the afternoon at a water park with three of my granddaughters. (I went down a big slide.) Then we went back to our cabin and all dressed in our finest for the wedding of our oldest grandson. I have gone from being the mother of the groom to being the grandmother of the groom in just three short years. There isn't too much difference except that you stay seated in the church after the ceremony and wait until your picture is taken. Apparently the wedding planner thinks that you might be too old to traipse up and down the aisle more than once. There were four grandmothers at this wedding which is unusual, I think. Both of us grandmothers of the groom are relatively young. We married at nineteen or so and our children did also. We were in better shape than the other two. Our youngest granddaughter, Amanda, was one of the two flower girls and she was beautiful in white and blue with a wreath of flowers on her head. Our oldest granddaughter, Jenny, was a bridesmaid. She was a more sophisticated beauty in a vivid medium blue strapless gown with her blond hair swept up high on her head. Our grandson, Jeff, who is usually quite a storyteller and a charming jokester, was deadly serious and I think quite emotional as he said his vows. Our favorite grandfather of the groom was the crossbearer and got to march in first, before the priest even. Wedding parties in the South are larger than Midwestern ones, I guess. There were thirty-two in this one. They represented almost a third of the wedding attendees someone said. The ceremony was held in the oldest Catholic church in Charleston or South Carolina or the South or something like that. The reception was at the old Securities and Exchange Building. It has a dungeon in the basement where the British held prisoners before the Revolution. Charleston is a beautiful city, rich in history. Since my daughter and son-in-law are moving there, I may get a chance to visit it again. This time we visited Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. I was surprised at how small it is. The island it is on was formed by dumping gravel from New England on a sand bar over a period of eleven years. It is only two and a half acres in all. We also spent a lazy afternoon at Magnolia Plantation on the Ashly River. On an earlier visit we had walked with our daughter among the elegant old mansions of the city and along the battery at the waterfront facing Fort Sumter....What impressed me most at the wedding of our grandson was the mother of the bride, my daughter. She had been under some pressure from several sources to wear a "mother-of-the-bride" type dress because it was a somewhat formal, evening wedding. She didn't want to--it's just not her style. She chose instead a very simple cream sheath and wore it with a string of pearls. She was easily the lovliest, most elegant woman there, in my unbiased opinion. One woman came up to me and said that she could have picked me out of a crowd as Claire's mother because we resemble each other. Claire always hates to hear that , and though I was flattered, I can't really see it myself. Claire has big eyes and mine are rather too small. She has full lips that are a deep red color without lipstick like her father's are. She doesn't eat much and does her Pilates. She is almost too slender, and me, well.... But sometimes people say that we have similar gestures and a way of speaking. I can see that. And as I watched her and smiled at her across the crowded room, I kind of sadly felt another similarity. Claire and I are both lonely in a crowd and really just want to go home.

Ambrosia

2005-06-07T22:40:00.000-05:00

On Memorial Day my husband and I stopped at an Appleby's for brunch about eleven a.m. I had raspberry lemonade, but what Appleby's has that I really want to try sometime is a Chocolate Martini. It's made with Bailey's Irish Cream, Creme de Cocoa and vodka. Now doesn't that sound like a heavenly drink?

Planting season gone awry

2005-06-07T22:27:00.000-05:00

It's raining and raining and raining. Many days last week and then all night Saturday and all day Sunday without ceasing. Saturday afternoon we planted the tomatoes in the mud. I told my husband, "You're always supposed to puddle plants in. Should we water them?" He didn't think so and for once I took his advice, thank goodness. We had a hard thunderstorm this morning and more are due tonight. We're under a flood watch. But I've been soldiering on. All vegetables are in except zucchini. Most recently I've been sitting on a foam pad on the railroad ties around my herb garden and pulling out many bucketfuls of weeds. Once I get marjoram and thyme and basil and parsley planted, I'll move on to the flower beds. Can I get the flowers planted between showers and floods before it's time to leave for my grandson's wedding? Stay tuned.

Jesus wants George

2005-06-07T22:21:00.000-05:00

This morning on CSpan someone called in on the Republican line and said that it really doesn't matter if there was computer fraud in the last election. Our lord, Jesus Christ, wants George Bush to be president because George is doing his will. A few minutes later a lady called in on the Democratic line. She said that God sometimes uses the devil to work out his plan. Guess which particular devil she thinks is being used right now.

Two different worlds

2005-06-03T11:25:00.000-05:00

It is as Sei said in his comment awhile ago. Things have really changed here in Roosevelt during the last few months. When we come back to the house late in the afternoon after ice fishing or skiing, I often think about summer. The winter world is almost totally white and black. The only other colors--the blue, the gold, the lavender, the rose--come from the sky. There are paths in the yard to the places we need to go. Otherwise, much of our space is never stepped on. The blanketed gardens look small and inconsequential. The quiet as the light fades on a winter day is profound. I look around and can't really remember or imagine exactly what summer will be. We had a very nice April this year and for awhile the change was coming fast. The leaves came out on things growing low in the woods and they were delicate looking and a pale shade of green that usually only lasts for a few days. Then the wild fruits of the forest (juneberry, pin cherry, plum, choke cherry, American high bush cranberry) all began to bloom in layers among the green. The tamarack, though they are conifers, loose their needles in the fall. In the spring, the new needles cover every branch with chartreuse lace. The tall trees had swollen buds. Those of the red maples are a soft orangy rose. The bird count at the feeders went way up as summer birds returned and migrators passed through. Fading days were filled with bird song. This year, May came along in a bad mood. It got cold and blustery and there were a few snow flakes in the air. But it had one unintended happy result. That usually very fleeting, beautiful time was held still and lasted for a few weeks instead of a few days. Spring and summer are so very lush compared with winter. There are many things I haven't even mentioned. The purple violets blooming through the dry, grey reindeer moss on the sand ridge. The bright yellow marsh marigolds in wet spots. The sand hill cranes. The hummingbirds. The bright orange and black orioles. Pale pink tiny bell shaped blossoms on all the blueberry bushes. Croaking frogs. Every day something new. We slept with our doors open for the first time last night. I looked out at three a. m. and our side yard was full of blinking fireflies. Now when I walk down the driveway and see our ice house parked in the weeds, I wonder if ice fishing really happened. Sixty-three years now and all this still fascinates me.

Planting season?

2005-06-01T10:51:00.000-05:00

Matt, of the Midlothian Campaign, heaps coals of fire on my head when he makes an excuse for me for neglecting my blogging. It is planting season. Surely I must be busy planting. Actually, until recently the only thing that I had planted Outside was peas. Of course, for the last three months I have been planting and transplanting Inside a steady dribble of seeds into recycled foil pans, plastic mushroom boxes, milk cartons, yougurt cups, etc. They have needed to be watered and turned and shifted from house to greenhouse. But this is not the intense busyness that happens when it all gets planted Outside; when my husband and I attempt to turn much of our yard into gardens. I have noted before a strong tendency in myself to procrastinate. This is oddly especially true if the activity is one I supposedly intensely enjoy. Maybe I'm afraid of disappointment. Or maybe I resent the way it becomes an obsession and takes over my life. Then there's the marriage thing. My husband is a more restless, impatient person than I am. I often feel that he's pushing me. When he says, "Are you going to plant today? You have to get that stuff in the ground", there is a little devil deep inside me who's saying, "I do not have to." Last, but not least this year, is the weather. Should an older woman with arthritis be out fooling around in cold mud, her hair hanging in limp tendrils around her damp cheeks? I think not. Yesterday, though, it was a beautiful, breezy, sunny day with temps in the seventies. I planted the twelve snapdragon plants that I had bought at the nursery. They were big plants in tiny containers. I had stuck them at the base of my big potted bay tree and every time I looked at them they were wilted and near death. They are in the ground now and well watered and have revived. I planted three red celosia in a rocky nook in one of my flower beds. I love that rocky nook. I planted a big red geranium in each corner of our 20 foot by 30 foot railroad tie vegtable garden. And then, I weeded and planted that whole garden: a row each of Brussels sprouts, broccoli and cabbage, a wide band of onion plants, and four rows of bush beans: green, yellow, lima and a trial packed from Jung Seed Co. Called Tri-color Beans. In that garden there is some lettuce and spinach I planted late last summer that survived under the snow. When I add some more, the planting of that garden will be finished. And so it begins, my beloved garden season. But if I have any readers left, I pledge to do better with my blogging too.

2005-05-23T11:02:00.000-05:00

I’ll have a new post in a couple of days.

Of turtles and popes

2005-04-20T11:51:00.000-05:00

One day while browsing through a garden catalog, I saw a cement a cement turtle about a foot long that cost thirty dollars. Immediately I wanted that turtle. Because it was very heavy, it had a hefty shipping charge in addition to the thirty dollars. I didn't think my husband would want the turtle the way that I did, and I was right. "Couldn't we make something like that?", he said. A typical response. A few months later I had an opportunity to attend the Chicago Garden Show at Navy Pier. Was that ever the place for me! I was in heaven to begin with, and then, right in front of me was that exact turtle--thirty dollars, but no shipping charge. Boldly I bought it. I had to haul that thing from way at the far end of Navy Pier back to my son's apartment. By the time I could finally put it down, the shipping charge seemed like it would have been a reasonable expense. Since then I have acquired several other garden turtles. I was given an even bigger flat, black stepping stone turtle. I have one little turtle who hangs on to the rim of a flower pot by one foot as if he's trying to crawl over and in. Cement and resin, metal and plastic and plaster; I guess I'm starting a turtle collection. One day last summer my husband came home in the car and said, "I think I've got something here you're really going to like." He opened the trunk and there was a large real live turtle. It had been trying to cross Highway 11. We put it on the sand at the edge of our pond and went in the house. We never saw it again....Yesterday morning I was lying in bed listening to the radio. Christopher Hitchens came on all in a huff over the fuss the media is making over popes. I had to agree. Pope, pope, pope every day. Although I, myself, had gotten up in the middle of the night to watch Princess Diana's funeral, I couldn't see why my husband did the same for the Pope. As Christopher Hitchens said, "The whole world isn't Catholic." So, I was slightly annoyed when I came downstairs and found another session beginning on the T.V. Was the smoke white? No, it's getting darker. Everyone's jumping and clapping. It's getting white again. But no bells. Where are the bells? At the exact moment that the bells finally began to ring, I looked out the window and saw, at the edge of our pond, our real live turtle, basking in the sun.

Big sister Bear

2005-04-12T12:34:00.000-05:00

There is an ad in our paper this week for border collie puppies. The ad was put in by the people who had Bear last year. I can't believe I seriously thought of buying another one. Bear almost drove me crazy when she was a baby. It was terrible. We still have bad fights now that she's always muddy again. I came home from shopping last week in a light blue and white outfit that I'd worn a couple of hours. After Bear's joyous greeting, the whole thing had to go in the wash basket. It's just lucky we have my husband to mediate for us. But wouldn't it be great--out walking with two border collies? Wouldn't Bear love it? She adores other dogs. But wouldn't it be so expensive at the Vet's office and the Boarding Kennel? There is a web site for viewing the puppies. My computer skills aren't good enough to get there and my husband couldn't find them either. If you would like to take a peek at Bear's siblings the address is: www.geocities/dwhollrah.

Springtime

2005-04-12T12:02:00.000-05:00

It came fast this year. Three weeks ago a foot and a half of snow covered everything. It's all gone now and has been for a week or so. The red polls and pine grosbeaks are gone. Juncos and purple finches are back. One day two robins were on the lawn, today a sparrow. The rabbits are neither white nor brown, but a blotchy tan. In winter I see them mostly in the middle of the night, just a flicker of shadow, white movement on white snow. Now they chase each other on the edges of the woods until Bear notices them. Our one last hen is venturing into the woods edge also and I fear for her. Our nearest neighbor has turkeys and chickens. Bear has been finding turkey feet and other unrecognizeable turkey parts on our walks through the woods. We have also seen pecked open brown eggs on our road and the woods trail. I think the ravens we've seen circling so often are after those eggs, not the goat corpse in our woods. We hear our neighbor shooting at them sometimes. Brown, the goat, is getting more and more friendly and companionable since the snow is gone and he can get around the yard better. I used to talk to my golden retriever, Molly, all day long. She was a wonderful listener. I can't talk to Bear that way. She's much too busy. If someone keeps running off when you start to speak, it seems like you're boring them. But luckily I've found that Brown is a good confidant. He ambles along behind me and even bleats in agreement occasionally. Break-up, also known as mud season, was relatively brief this year. (Unless it's back. We've had a good rain.) We had one very bad mud wallow on our road. Now that we have a reliable four-wheel drive vehicle, we don't have as much trouble as we once did. Three of our neighbors cars were parked out beyond the wallow. They had to walk back and forth to their houses. During break-up, the UPS man keeps in touch with his cell phone. If your road is bad he leaves your package at the grocery store in town. If your road is good, but your driveway is bad he leaves it on the hood of your car. Your car is parked at the far end of your driveway because you can't drive on it either. Our nights have been in the forties this week. I have four long south facing windows with deep sills upstairs in our house. They are full of geraniums: red, pink, and scented. It's tempting to carry them all down into my little greenhouse now. I could use the window sills for all the little plants I'm starting inside. But surely we'll have nights in the twenties again. I don't want to spend too much money heating the greenhouse. I usually only start using it in May. And if our nights don't dip below freezing again? Uh oh. Early mosquitoes.

The large new left wing conspiracy

2005-04-11T10:58:00.000-05:00

Last night I watched another hour long TV program on the blogging phenomenom. Brian Lamb interviewed the founder of the Daily Kos ont the new CSpan program, Q&A. The 'Kos' from his blog title comes from his name, Markos. He told his friends not to call him Mark. They started calling him 'Kos' instead, and it stuck. He is thirty-three years old. His parents were immigrants. His father was Greek. His mother was from El Salvador. When he found himself supporting hawkish positions in the eighties, he enlisted in the Army. He felt he should be willing to support his beliefs with his actions. He said that he went to law school to "kill three years of his life." He didn't feel ready to launch a career after graduating from college. Law school seemed like a dignified alternative. The one hundred thousand dollar debt he incurred was the main drawback. (Does any of this sound familiar? To whom it may concern: I think he said he has gotten out of debt through his very popular blog. What we poverty stricken bloggers need to do is get ourselves some advertisers. We can also offer ad-free subscriptions to our readers who don't like ads.) The passion of this young man for things liberal and Democratic makes me ashamed. Perhaps the mild chastisement I received recently on the Midlothian Campaign for skipping over things political was well deserved. Four and a half years ago, I was one of those who questioned the outcome of the election and crossed the Supreme Court off my list of people to admire. I thought then that all we could do was grit our teeth and bear it, hoping that things could be patched up again after the 2004 election. I was stunned when things turned out as they did. And then I gave up. I don't really enjoy the rough and tumble. Like Shakespeare, I think I'll just sit back and watch the antics of my fellow citizens and smile. It's a very difficult thing to respect the intelligence of those with whom you strongly disagree. Common folk have common sense and one vote each. There really is a vast right wing conspiracy that was thirty years in the making according to the Daily Kos. Now it's time to form the large new left wing conspiracy. It seems exciting and promising that it could come grass roots, through the blogs. That news could be shaped by the people and only served by editors and reporters. I'll be watching.

Marriage quote

2005-04-04T22:34:00.000-05:00

I have read and enjoyed several books by Kathleen Norris, but when her last one came out it got a terrible review in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. I decided not to put it on my library list. Then, a few months ago, I was looking through a sales brochure of Edward R. Hamilton, Bookseller and there it was--The Virgin of Bennington by Kathleen Norris, only $2.95. Edward R. Hamilton only charges $3.50 for shipping and handling per order, so I figured I might as well add The Virgin of Bennington in with the other titles that I wanted. Sometimes the critics are wrong. Well, not this time. The book bogs down in the middle and just doesn't work. But there was one quote that I kind of like. Elizabeth Kray, who was Kathleen Norris's mentor, "believed that people needed relationships that forced them to look outside themselves and connect with others, and thought that one of the best vehicles for this was to settle into what she termed 'the rock-bottom stability of marriage.' Shortly before my wedding, she wrote me: 'If we were trees we'd have rings of more intense color to show for the effects of marriage.'"

More quotes

2005-04-04T22:27:00.000-05:00

Have you had it happen to you? You buy a bright red Hummer thinking they're really unique and suddenly the highways are full of bright red Hummers. I'm thinking off and on all day long about aging and lately whatever I read echoes my thoughts. Here are two quotes that I've copied out of something I was reading. I have no idea what book or books I found them in. "It was as if, like old lovers, they had both realized they were short of time." and "...they had been softened by the weakness of age, its fearful need of company."

Ladybug postscript

2005-03-28T12:30:00.000-06:00

Just in case I have an entomologist reader who was interested and maybe even excited by my ladybug observations, I have decided to update that post. Four days ago it happened that I had not plucked any ladybugs from my four big south-facing windows. [Sometimes I just get bored with it. Other times I get too busy.] I was sitting in my chair three feet in front of the windows about noon, the sun was pouring in and the bugs were all crawling around as usual. I got very hot and cranked open the window on the east side about 3 inches. I later went about my business and forgot that I had opened the window. About sundown I became cold, remembered about the window and closed it. Only six ladybugs remained. Had the others--A. crawled out the window to the great outdoors? or B. felt a draft and crawled into the cracks around the windows? When they had not returned for two days, I favored explanation A. The third day was Easter and I was gone for the day. Today at least thirty, maybe forty bugs are back. [They're hard to count from the chair without plucking them because they move around so much.] Because they are back again I am now favoring explanation B., although they could have come back in from outside I suppose.

Classy pencils

2005-03-25T13:05:00.000-06:00

I get a garden supply catalog that I just love from Lee Valley. They have good things at good prices. Lately they have been sending me their woodworking catatlog too. I am really a klutzy woodworker, so I am sadly unable to buy any of their beautiful tools. But I like to look at them anyhow. A few weeks ago an entry in the woodworking catalog caught my eye. It asked if I had noticed that the quality of pencils has been going downhill. Yes, I have! I get most of my pencils from my dentist who has a cup of new ones on his receptionist's desk for patients to take. [He means the school kids, probably, but what the heck. He charges enough.] I am very fond of pencils. I need them for crossword puzzles of course and I just generally like to write with them. For a long time it seemed that the dentist's pencils were superior to Ben Franklins'. But lately even his cause problems. When I sharpen them the new point is often already broken and falls off. Ben Franklin's pencils are made from some junk wood that gets all peely when you sharpen them. These are exactly the problems that Lee Valley also noted. But they have solved the problem. From them you can buy pencils made of fragrant cedar wood. Their graphite is not soft and gray. It is hard and black. They come in different lead sizes just like pencils always used to in the good old days. "A number 2B writes like a Belgian chocolate tastes." Finally I was able to order from the woodworker's catalog. I selected the sample pack of six pencils of all the different lead sizes and a box of 12 2Bs of course. [I love Belgian chocolate, or any chocolate for that matter.] My pencils have arrived and they are all that I hoped they would be. The ad said nothing about erasers, but the erasers are excellent too. The pencils are a dark pine green color with Lee Valley inscribed in gold. And get this, the classiest touch of all, farther down the pencil, in smaller letters also in gold--made in Great Britain.

Ladybugs

2005-03-25T12:17:00.000-06:00

Even though I know from experience that I never use most of the garden gadgets that I order from my seed catalogs, the gadget section remains one of my favorite parts of my catalogs. It is with great amusement that I read the entries for ladybugs. For only $10.95 you can buy one third cup or 1500 ladybugs to eat other, more harmful bugs in your garden. The catalog offers hints on what you can do to entice your 1500 ladybugs to stay in your yard. No thank you. For the past four years my house has been crawling with ladybugs. Each fall our local papers tell us not to worry. They only want to share the warmth of our homes for a few months. Come summer they will leave of their own accord. This is true, but not the whole truth. They smell bad. They do occassionally bite when they get mad. And they have a high mortality rate. Lots of little beetle corpses lying around lets everyone know its been awhile since you've vacuumed. Like most people who like to read, I have favorite authors--a few whose books I buy sight unseen just because it's them. Annie Dillard is one of mine though I haven't heard anything from her for some time. In one of her early books she wrote about the bugs with whom she was sharing a cabin. She never killed them. She just watched them. For awhile I tried to emulate her, but only for awhile. There are just too many bugs around here. Fascinating as they are, I would rather they stayed outside. I have been observing these ladybugs though. How can I help it? They are always a few feet away on my favorite windows. Last year, as my golden retriever, Molly, lay dying, there were thousands of them. I remember talking to her and trying to cheer her up several times a day while vacuuming them up all around her. This year the invasion is much smaller. We have between forty and fifty on our front windows at any given time. I have been taking a glass cup with about and inch of water in it and plunking them in it about three times a day. They can't seem to get out of water. New ones start crawling out of cracks when the old ones are caught, and eventually there are forty or fifty again. Why is that do you suppose? Do they defend territories? Do you only assume you're always seeing the same bugs when they're actually coming and going in and out of the cracks? Why keep the exposed number at a steady forty to fifty? [Last year there were many more at a time.] I briefly considered going into the ladybug business, but rejected it. People who believe in them probably want live ones. Mine die at an alarming rate. These are Asian ladybugs, imported to help defend crops. I have noticed not having many bug problems in the garden lately, except with Tatsoi and Chinese cabbage. I can't grow them unless I use a floating row cover. Is that a Clue?

Spring

2005-03-25T11:37:00.000-06:00

I have been absent from the blogs for some time trying to catch up on the things I fell behind with during my cabin fever time. As soon as I got busy, what happened? Spring. Early spring is a subtle thing in the north country. Almost every bit of ground is still generously covered with snow. Last week we had night time lows of zero or below. This morning at 5 a.m. our temp was only 2 degrees. But still we know that winter has passed away. For one thing the quality of the snow is very different, It's airy, icy, rotten if snow can be such a thing. Back here in the woods it's still very white and clean, but it's sinking and pulling back from the edges of things. It can't hold on because our days are getting so much longer and the sun is higher and stronger. Even if the temperature stays below 32 degrees, ice melts and comes sliding off our metal roof in big chunks. The pine grosbeaks who only visit our feeders in winter have left. The Warroad Pioneer says that the crows are back, though I haven't seen or heard one yet. A really neat bird, the pileated woodpecker, lives here year round, but we have usually seen them in our yard in spring. One has been coming to our suet feeder everyday this week. If Bears sees it, she chases it away. I thought that might keep it from coming back. They seem to be very wary creatures. But this one must really love suet. They are huge for woodpeckers--sixteen plus inches. Their bodies are black. Their head is a sharp, narrow triangle with wide white stripes. On top they have a brilliant red wedge cap. Ravens are circling our yard more than usual. This may be a macbre sign of spring too. Perhaps the snow has started to melt away from the corpse of poor Black, the goat, which was hauled into the woods behind our house last fall.

Brown, the goat

2005-03-16T12:42:00.000-06:00

When we moved here we had a crude chicken coop already on the property. It seemed a shame to just let it sit there so eventually we got ourselves some chickens. As winter began to threaten, we began to wonder how we would keep them warm in this harsh climate. One evening when we were having coffee after a church gathering we mentioned our problem to a farmer who had lived here many years. He advised us to get some larger animals and put them together with the chickens for the winter. Our property had also come complete with a small barn and a corral. What animals could we get that would be large and warm and cheap? First we found Betsy, the goat, and her son Bucky. Betsy's name was fanciful. Bucky's name was appropriate. We've been in and out having animals ever since. At present we are down to two outside animals. Poor Hen, who is the sole survivor of her flock. (There is a marten lurking in the woods.) And poor Brown, the goat, whose brother, Black, died suddenly for unknown reasons this last Thanksgiving week-end. Black's mother had decided not to feed him when he was born, so the farmer's wife had bottle fed him until he was weaned. This had made him a gregarious, people-loving goat. He always came to the fence and nickered when he saw us in the yard. Brown always held back. We seemed to make him very nervous. Black always got first dibs on all the food. (Maybe that had something to do with his early death.) When we all went for a walk, Black ambled along amiably between my husband and me. Brown followed along warily. Our border collie seemed to sense his subordinate position and pestered him without mercy. Black and Brown were always together, whether eating or napping or having their afternoon headbutting contests. In the back of our minds we wondered if Brown would die too, without his brother for company. He and Hen seem to get along fine together in their winter quarters--an old ice fishing house back by the woodpile. It is closer to the house than the barn and my husband rigged it with electricity. He turns on a heatlamp bulb for them on the coldest nights. But I think Hen is not enough company for him. He has become better friends with our dog Bear. They tussle around together and chase each other. And slowly but surely he has warmed up to us, even me. My husband is extremely patient with animals. I can't say the same. We've been having some beautiful days with bright blue sky and strong sunshine, but winter doesn't want to let go. It's been cold for March. So we've been going skiing the last few afternoons, and Brown sometimes tries to come along. I do not like this. He steps on the back of my skis sometimes and causes me to suddenly stop. He passes me and then stops and won't move. He turns around and tries to engage me in a friendly game of headbutting. My husband says, "You go ahead. I'll make him go home." I know this is not true. My husband is just being patient, with Brown and with me. He'll just try to keep us separated. And so it happens that when we come to the part of the trail where you either pop out on the road and ski on home or turn around and have a longer ski by retracing your route through the woods, I tell them to go on ahead so that I can go back thru the woods alone. I am happy and sad, free, unemcumbered and a little lonely. When I eventually arrive home while pondering these things, who do I see sitting on the trail at the edge of our woods, waiting patiently for me? Little Bear, who endures my impatient outbursts more than anyone, and yet she adores me. We all need each other, husband and wife, goat and dog, and even Hen, I guess.

What holds things up?

2005-03-14T12:02:00.000-06:00

I just read in the paper that after the Department of Defense decided to send U.S. troops more bulletproof vests, it took about 167 days for the troops to begin receiving them. Soldiers who ordered them directly from the Michigan manufacturer got theirs in about 12 days. This mimics my experience when I had a job ordering books for the W.J. Niederkorn Library in Port Washington, Wisconsin. Books ordered from the U.S. Government Printing Office came in dead last. I wonder exactly what it is about government that causes this molasses effect.

The cabin fever-end of winter time blues

2005-03-07T12:22:00.000-06:00

I've been in a bad funk. I don't want to blog or read blogs. I don't want to ski or go for a nice walk. I don't want to sew--upstairs on shirts and pants or downstairs on my quilt. I've had three gallons of paint upstairs for almost a year, but I don't want to paint my bedroom. I hurried to get off my seed orders in plenty of time to plant the early things indoors, but now I don't want to. The empty, washed out milk cartons are waiting for the onions and the plastic mushroom boxes for the pansies and thyme, but I don't plant them. My heavy duty house-cleaning that was started has come to a halt. My houseplants get thirsty and my birdfeeders get way empty before they get filled. I am only interested in a few things--reading, working on crossword puzzles, looking out the window, having a cup of tea and a Hershey bar. If I cook we eat it. If I don't my husband has a braunsweiger sandwich and I have a bowl of cereal. My husband says, "Don't go icefishing. That will only depress you more." Because we have been doing that. We paid $100 so that we could drive out onto the lake on a four lane, always nicely plowed ice road anytime we want to all season. At the end of February when all our licenses expired, we got new ones for husband, wife, and fish house. Our truck is always loaded with gas-powered ice auger, heater, radio, lantern, five-gallon buckets, shovel and poles, etc. So we go. Husband still has faith, I think, but I don't. We drive out to the house, drill open the holes, shovel away the ice chips and then we sit. Hour after hour and not a thing happens. You can turn on the radio, read a book, go through your mail. But right in front of you is that hole, that floating bobber, and nothing happens. One afternoon, a neighbor from the nearest house came over to give us his minnows. He reported that though fishing was admittedly slow he and his friends had caught one nice one and some little ones. Is it because we have been married for almost 45 years, or was it just the perversity of human kind that caused us both to instantly have the same thought? "He's lying, don't you think?", my husband asked me. "Yeah", I said. How to explain then, when you drive up the steep ice bank onto the resort parking lot, what's going on in the fish cleaning building. Young men, their jackets off, sleeves rolled up, filet knives flashing. We slink home, old unskilled worthless fisherman and woman. But I noticed today while looking out the window on this sunny, cold bright blue sky day that the pussy willow bud are swelling and white.

The William's Bar &Grill

2005-02-20T22:40:00.000-06:00

It's a habit of mine to watch two rerun episodes of Cheers most week nights. Sometimes I"m feeling very tired all evening and just waiting until it's late enough to go to bed. But as eleven p.m. draws near, I change my mind. I've heard it said that television shows like these take the place in our lives of our splintered, far flung families. Maybe if you've moved around a lot, these television people substitute for friends. Then why not go to a real bar and make some real friends? It's not as easy as flipping on the T.V. I think what made me most uncomfortable when my husband first started taking me to the William's Bar & Grill was the loggers. These guys are tough. They don't need to fake it. Their flannel shirts and Carhart accessories have three-corner tears and grease stains. Their boots are rugged and scuffed. Their hair is long and wild. Around here the best time to get logs out of the many swampy areas of the woods is when it's very cold. But then there's the darn snow and wind to deal with. And beat up old equipment that likes to break down in the best of times really gets balky when it's way below zero. It's fun to eavesdrop on conversations about these things once you've settled in and faded into the woodwork, but I sure found it hard to march in and claim my bar stool. But claim it I did. Having a great big hamburger or a fish sandwich and a couple of beers sure beats cooking and doing the dishes. Gradually we got to know that the little blond lady behind the bar is Karen and she runs the place. After you've been coming awhile, she'll start drawing you a glass of beer when she sees you walking in. She'll ask if you found any blueberries or caught any fish. She wonders if you've seen the odd antlers on Joe Blow's deer? You actually don't know Joe, but you walk out to the parking lot with her to see the deer with the odd antlers in the back of his pickup. John is a young dark-haired guy who is Karen's most reliable helper. He doesn't talk much, but there is something very calming about his silence. We went once during the holidays on a night when they were treating everyone to Tom & Jerrys. John asked me if I wanted rum or brandy in mine. I said I wanted brandy but didn't know what my husband would want. "Oh, he'll want brandy too. I'm sure of that." John knows his customers. Once in awhile Lena comes in to help. We happened to be there on her very first afternoon behind the bar, and we asked for a Bloody Mary. A Bloody Mary seems to have many different ingredients and in Williams they're kept all over the place. Poor Lena. She alternated between looking for things, hesitantly asking Karen, and then apologizing to us for taking so long. We felt bad for complicating her first day, but have since noticed that Lena is always hesitant, always apologetic, always warm and friendly. It sometimes seems to me that everyone I meet at the Williams Bar & Grill has always lived in Northwest Minnesota. Another figment of my imagination. It turns out that Lena is from Elgin, Illinois and often visits her father there. One afternoon a week or so ago we stopped at noon for a hamburger on our way out to the lake for ice fishing. A young couple came in with their two week old baby, asleep in his car seat. Everyone gathered around to see him. A big, tall logger with curly red hair and beard came and stood beside me. He looked at me and said, "So peaceful. The little guy doesn't know what life is all about yet, does he?" Cheers.

Blog updates

2005-02-16T12:42:00.000-06:00

How nice of Melissa to encourage me! I was thinking the other day that maybe I should strive for shorter posts. I'm talking too much. That got me to wondering why I'm doing that. I remember that when my parents got older and were living alone they were very noticably more talkative when I called them or saw them. My Dad especially. He wanted to do no listening at all. If you said more than a few words he would interrupt, obviously annoyed that he was no longer in control of the dialogue. He told me several times that his best friend had repeatedly called him on this. Then my Dad would laugh indulgently like this was just a little oddity about his friend. How odd that I should admire Emily D. and then talk too much. The thing about her was that she trimmed away every unnecessary word. But a harmless thing, to chatter away on your blog. Isn't it? Ski trail conditions are bad again. Warm dripping weather followed by a return to winter has our whole world covered with ice. Husband goes out much more than I do and falls down sometimes. Even Bear slips around. I borrow my husband's ice shoes to put over my boots and once a day teeter out to feed the birds. If we would get just a few inches of new snow to soften the ice, it might be possible to ski again. I don't know whether to wish for it or not. Yesterday I put in my seed orders. My mind is turning in that direction. I went to Knutson's Store in Roosevelt the other day. The elder Mr. Knutson was there. He and his wife ran the store when we first moved here. Several years ago his son and daughter-in-law moved here from Kansas and took it over so that the parents could retire. So he is not sitting at the desk just beyond the dairy case as often as he once was. But he is sometimes, and he was there the day I last went. He said he might as well go home because he wasn't doing anything but then again he wouldn't be doing anything at home either. He said he likes to feed and watch the birds, but not all day. He doesn't like being retired very much. Then we compared notes on the birds we had coming to our feeders. I respect Mr. Knutson's opinions. He's lived here a long time. He's knows the people, the area, the animals, where to find blueberries, etc. So I think that he is probably right when he tells me that I'm not seeing a sharpshinned hawk patrolling my feeders. He's seeing a merlin and I probably am too. Actually that's more exciting. I think they are a rarer bird. The store has stuffed animals all along its upper walls. My husband tells me everytime I'm going to the store to look at the stuffed marten. We're also trying the identify the animal that's been killing our poultry. We've had a glimpse of it several times. I forgot to look at the stuffed animals in the store just like I always do. Whatever it is, it doesn't have far to go to wipe us out. We're down to one skinny little hen. Sometimes Bear catches her and drags her around the yard by one wing. My husband wonders if she's trying to "help" the chicken in some way. Isn't that sweet? That man is such an optimist.How come this
doesn't publish?

Birthday celebration

2005-02-09T13:04:00.000-06:00

I have a fantasy that people unknown to me are reading my blog. I really think that this isn't true. If I'm lucky maybe Matt and Pete will read it. So it may be of interest to know what we did for the February birthday. Marty and Tawnya took off work on Friday and went shopping in Bemidji. They then came to our house about nine p.m. Friday night. We were rather proud of Bear. She gets so excited when we have company, but she was much better about not jumping all over them. You could see that she really wanted to, but if you pointed at her she stayed down. Maybe she's afraid of Marty like Morgan is. On Saturday morning Dad and Marty went fishing and caught four nice walleyes. Marty deep-fried them for lunch. He and Tawnya took Bear and the goat for a long walk in the afternoon. It was sunny with temps in the forties. Everything was melting and dripping. They seemed to get a kick out of being seen walking with a goat. One solemn note though. One of our neighbors who was out plowing the road told them that his mother had heard that Dad had passed away. Marty and Tawnya said they didn't think so. He was just asleep on the couch. (A Mister Saeland on the road out to Hwy. 11 died a few weeks ago.) Marty had bought four big, thick t-bone steaks and two crunchy loaves of French bread for a birthday present. He barbecued the steaks outside since it was so nice out. I had been waiting for a special occasion to have my Japanese wine, so we got that out. It was really good. I wonder if Peter remembered that I always liked to get a glass of plum wine at Wong's in Rochester. It doesn't seem like he would because he was never along. We could have each had a plum for dessert, but we were too stuffed from the steak. So they are still in the refrigerator in a little wine. Now Dad and I can each have two. Saturday night we played Scrabble and Marty won. Maybe. Once he said he got fifty some points and none of us disputed it. That seems like a lot, doesn't it. Dad had been leading until that point. Tawnya and I had all the iiis and were making words like is and if . On Sunday we went to church in Baudette and Marty and Tawnya went home from there. On Monday, the real birthday, I baked a banana cake with carmel frosting. We had left over steak with it. I gave Dad a new pillow for a birthday present. It was not an exciting gift, but he really needed it. His other one is limp and flat. I was going to give him a new computer, but someone else had already done it. Claire and Nick called. Nick said that Feb. 6 is Tulip's birthday. Dana baked an angel food cake for her party, but she couldn't have any. She had some cheese with her dog food instead.

More about winter birds

2005-02-02T11:59:00.000-06:00

"Free as a bird." That's because a wild bird can do whatever it wants, right? When I lived in southern Minnesota I fed American goldfinches all winter. Here in extreme northern Minnesota I feed them all summer but they leave in the fall. They are one of the birds I am always anxious to see again in the spring. But this year there was one goldfinch that I kept seeing deep into fall, into early December. I didn't know if he had missed the bus or what. Then I didn't see it anymore. Now suddenly for the last few days I have been seeing three or four goldfinches at my thistle seed feeder with the red polls and pine siskins. Did some of the goldfinches stay all winter? Are some coming back already? We almost certainly have at least one and probably two months of winter to go. On the map in my bird book it shows northern Minnesota as their summer range and southern Minnesota as a winter range. According a book I've been reading (Winter world: the ingenuity of animal survival by Bernd Heinrich) bird irruptions to various territories most likely have to do with food supplies. I just heard yesterday that the great gray owl is the provincial bird of Manitoba. This year we have them down here in much greater numbers than usual. Must be a rodent shortage up north. Our son from International Falls called early this winter and told us that he had been seeing them regularly when working in the woods. Then on the Sunday after Christmas we saw one as we were driving east of here. It swooped across the highway in front of us and perched on a stump across the road. Up close it seemed huge. It reminded me of another day when a similar thing happened to us. We were driving to Roseau to talk to Frank at the Radio Shack about our malfunctioning satellite TV. (One of my sons once called me a "pseudo homesteader'). It was a white day. The fields were white. The highway was white. The sky was such a milky light gray that it might as well be called white. All of a sudden a piece of that whiteness lifted up on the right side of the road and flew across in front of our windshield and disappeared into the whiteness on our left. It was a snowy owl. It too was really large and it looked me right in the eyes. There is something about an owl looking right in your eyes that seems important. I noticed that with the little saw-whet owl too. It haunts you. In his blog, my son Matt mentioned seeing a crow in the Chicago area. I was just reading in the book mentioned above that crows have been making their winter communal roosts more and more often in downtown city areas and naturalists have been wondering why. The author watched some crows fly into Burlington, Vermont from surrounding countryside. They flew around and around in the city and finally crowded onto two small trees beside a restaurant. He thinks it may be because the crows greatest enemies are owls. They are big, somewhat clumsy, secretive, nocturnal birds. They aren't much trouble for the crows during the day. It's at night when you're trying to sleep that they come after you. But they stay away from cities. It kind of surprises me that the naturalists who study these things aren't sure of the answers. They can only speculate. The wild things are still mostly mystery. I like that.

Problem solved

2005-01-31T13:44:00.000-06:00

I think having a blog helps me in more ways than just improving my computer skills and giving me a reason to write. It turns out that my husband reads my blog and he's a problem solver. (I'm more of a problem definer.) When he read about my ski trail woes, he suggested a solution. We should snowshoe the trail. I was a little skeptical, but then I remembered that we had developed a new trail for me the year the loggers obliterated it. (I do ski partially on logging roads, so I had to cut them some slack on that one.) Don started out on the wider bear paws. I followed on longer, thinner snowshoes. Bear ran back and forth trying to keep the party together. We really stomped it down at first till we started to tire. It's harder work than skiing. Skiing the trail takes about an hour. We spent two hours stomping it down. But it really helped. Temp was in the upper twenties and it was misting. Not gorgeous conditions, but it softened the snow and then when it got colder at night, froze it up again. The next day when we tried skiing it. it was fine. Now if we don't get a really big snow I won't complain for awhile.