Well, it is that time of year when people try to predict how severe or mild the coming winter will be. Winter is coming, you know!
Our Arikara Indian friend from Twin Buttes, ND likes to use buffaloberries for prediction. Buffaloberries, aka Shepherdia or Bulberries, are a pictured in the header photo. They are tasty, tart, native berries that grow on shrubs that make lovely jam, jelly, and pie. You can order plants for your yard. Deer, elk, and bison love them. Our friend Bruce says the more productive the buffaloberries, the harsher the winter. I haven’t had a chance to ask Bruce what he has observed as yet. I trust his judgment, but it may only be relevant for north central North Dakota.
Woolybears. The caterpillars that develop into Isabella Tiger Moths. Well, if the black stripes on them are near the front end of the caterpillar, winter will be early. The more black stripes, the more snow and the harsher the winter. The more brown stripes, the more mild the winter. I wonder through, what if the woolybears all have different stripe allocations? Which one do you believe?
I think I have a better source of prediction. Saturday we noticed a house down the street that was having a Christmas light service install their lights. I had no idea such services existed. Humbug Christmas Light Services was on the job. We don’t put up Christmas lights, but how nice for people who want lights but who can’t manage ladders. I think the earlier the lights go up, the earlier the first snow.
What do you think we should use as winter prediction? Be creative. Do you put up outdoor Christmas lights?
i don’t know what got into me this weekend, but I fulfilled one of my priorities and did all the ordering for my Christmas baking. It involved ordering:
Glaceed orange peel, glaceed lemon peel, glaceed cherries, and glaceed citron, 4 lbs of pecans from an orchard in Georgia, my yearly purchase of 10 lbs of a really nice chunk of parmesan from Italy (it is cut from a wheel and lasts for a year), eight 2-cup containers of leaf lard from a Pennsylvania butcher shop for pie crusts and lefse, Swedish pearl sugar, sliced almonds, black currants, golden raisins, Danish marzipan, and a gallon tin of Turkish olive oil.
Now I will be set for any baking needs for Christmas and for the year. Then I started to think about other winter preparations. I filled the water softener with salt and changed out the furnace filters. We have two furnaces in our home due to an addition to the house a few years ago. Did you know you can get furnace filters with small batteries that will alert you when the filters need changing? Husband did some yard and flowerbed clean up yesterday. I heard from a foster parent I know from western ND who told me she had to scrape frost off her truck windows Sunday morning. The bison at the park here are getting furry. Winter is coming and I couldn’t be happier.
What winter preparations do you need to complete? How good are you at changing furnacefilters?Watch Game Of Thrones?
Last January I started going to an exercise class for old people (SAIL-Stay Active In Life). It is a well researched exercise program and is sponsored by a very nice county agency that organizes services for seniors. It meets twice a week and involves strengthening most muscle groups, improving balance and flexibility, and encouraging socialization.
There are many upper body and arm exercises which I heartily participated in. We are encouraged to use the hand weights provided by the class for the arm and upper body exercises. I used the two pound weights.
In May I noticed pains in both my upper arms, particularly when I would stretch to get laundry out of the washing machine or try to reach back to secure my brassiere. I am a side sleeper, and any pressure on my upper arms really hurt when I tried to sleep.
I finally went to my doctor in August. I know I have osteoarthritis in my lumbar spine. My doctor ruled put Rheumatoid Arthritis and Lupus, and sent me to an orthopedic surgeon. He took x-rays of my shoulders. There ought to be a pencil width strip of cartilage between the top of the upper arm and shoulder socket in which it rotates. I have none. It is bone on bone in both shoulders. It is mainly due to osteoarthritis. The surgeon was rather astounded that both my shoulders were so bereft of cartilage simultaneously. We figured I was a good candidate for this, and the arm exercises in my SAIL class sealed the deal. I need both my shoulder joints replaced.
I will have my first surgery in January. I will do the left arm first. It involves securing a titanium cap on the arm bone to replace the cartilage. I said I had to wait until after the Christmas baking was done. I need both arms to for that. Boommate and daughter-in-law have offered to help roll lefse.
Ever had joint replacement? When has something considered good turned out to be bad for you? What are your priorities these days?
This week we have encountered two external references to our former region of ND. At church on Sunday we spoke to some fellow parishioners who had just returned from a cattle buying trip to Montana. They stopped in Medora, ND on the way there. Medora is about 40 miles east of where we used to live. It is a small town of about 120 people adjacent to Theodore Roosevelt National Park and home to the newly opened Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library. Daughter’s best friend’s dad owns a ranch there, and she spent a lot of time there as a kid. It is also home to the Medora Musical, an outdoor theatre that has a cast of singers and dancers all summer for shows every night. The various attractions of the place have been promoted by a foundation started by Harold Shaefer, the manufacturer of Mister Bubble.
Our church friends were quite disappointed by the library, due to the pushy crowds and the fact that they saw no books in the library. We thought that perhaps all the books were digitized, but had no other explanation.
The other Medora connection was an article by Rachel Monroe in the August 17 edition of The New Yorker describing what is was like to be there during our current president’s visit on July 4th. It was, of course, a disaster. The musical had to be cancelled because the tech crew couldn’t got the stage ready in time to support heavy protective barriers for presidential security. She had much better experiences at the Mandan Rodeo and the 250th Celebration at the Sisseton Wahpeton pow wow. I encourage you to read the article if you can.
I know there is a special Teddy Roosevelt department at the university in our former town. Maybe they have some books. Who knows?
Ever been to a Rodeo, a pow wow, or a presidential library? What sort of books might Teddy have had?
YA really needed a puppy fix over the weekend, so yesterday we cajoled Jacque into lending McGee to us. We picked him up in the afternoon and had him for about three hours.
There was a short walk up the block (it was pretty hot and he has little short legs) and then hung out a bunch in the back yard. He was very well behaved for a puppy – no romping in my plants, no barking, no chewing on my toes. He did find a good stick:
It was interesting to see him taking in all the new stuff in our city back yard. Here are the things that McGee was momentarily afraid of:
the fire pit
birds flying near the bird feeders
the birdbath
the grill
the wind chime
Here are the things that fascinated him:
planes
the birdseed under the feeders
my neighbor Don who was clearing up after grilling
the boxer who poked it’s head out the car window and barked (friendly bark)
We pulled out the kiddie pool and lifted McGee into it twice, followed by the application of treats. He didn’t actually seem to mind the pool but didn’t want to tarry and wouldn’t jump in on his own. YA thought maybe it was too big a jump for him (until we moved inside and he felt quite at home jumping up on the sofa) but I think maybe the water was too chilly. There was some tug-of-war and he was very willing to chase a toy when YA tossed it but bringing the toy back is not in his toolbox yet! We had YA-chasing and some zoomies as well.
He didn’t stop moving the whole time we had him… Jacque, I assume he slept well last night?
For the holidays, YA gave me a marvelous (albeit completely unnecessary) gift:
Since the discovery that I could get Libby to work through my hearing aids, my reading has been up a bit and I was happy when I had hit 14 by January 31. I was thinking that maybe it might be a banner year.
Another gift that I received this year was also an unnecessary bit of fun. When I visited my friend Susan in Madison last year, one of our conversations was about television and all the shows we liked. I mentioned that I loved a lot of the British shows that I could find and that I wished BritBox wasn’t so expensive; I’m just not willing to pay anymore for tv in our house than I already do. When I opened the envelope from Susan, I expected a gift card; it turned out to be a coupon for two months of BritBox paperclipped to $22 cash. I laughed and laughed.
I launched the two-month gift on February 1st. I took the book counter photo yesterday morning. Not one book added since January 31. That’s because I am flippin’ LIVING on BritBox – part of my psyche says I should get as much seen as possible while I have this two-month gift. Death in Paradise (Season 15), Vera (just a few shows…on the edge of too dark for me), Ludwig (the whole first season – can’t wait for Season 2 later this year), Hamish Macbeth (only a couple of these), Poirot – Death on the Nile. I’ll stop here. So far I haven’t wandered off the murder mystery path, but I’m sure I will eventually.
It’s actually really enjoyable since I’m pretty good at skipping shows I don’t like. Heaven knows there are enough available. I turned off Riot Women 10 minutes in; ABC Murders lasted about that long as well.
Truly the only regret I have about having this two months is the hit it’s taking to my reading. Truly, if it weren’t for cds and Libby when I’m doing errands in the car, I wouldn’t be reading at all!
Do any of your hobbies/past-times fight each other for your attention?
On Thursday I collected the mileage and hours from vehicles and tractors then put it all in my ‘Yearly Mileage’ spreadsheet. Everything was about average. We used the lawn mower 31 hours, put 43 hours on the big tractor, and 127 hours on the other tractor. Drove the 4-wheeler 22 miles, and put 306 miles on the gator using it 48 hours.
Egg count for 2025 was 419 dozen. 5028 eggs. Plus a few dozen that froze or got broken.
On Tuesday daughter and I took a road trip to Potsdam and Meyer’s Seed, then John Deere in Plainview. And got sundaes at DQ and then back to Rochester for a stop at Barnes and Noble. She thanked me for the adventure.
At Meyer’s the oat seed for 2026 is ordered and paid for, and corn and soybean seed has been ordered and financed, at 0% interest with a 4% savings. (6% savings would have given me prime -2%). $11,700. A bag of seed corn now is over $300. I ordered 25 bags. That’s a separate loan from the $43,000 for fertilizer and spraying. I got TWO free seed corn hats!
You know how you’re supposed to save receipts for seven years? I brought up a box from 2002 and sorted through that. Oh my goodness. We’d been married 12 years. Kelly was making $17 / hour. We had 2 kids in daycare, and $36 in our savings account. I’d get a milk check twice a month. It totaled maybe $2200. I owed the vet $1000, the breeder $500, the feed co-op $500, plus there was always other bills and expenses. I got anxious just looking back through this stuff. Once I saved the important stuff, I took the unneeded stuff out in the snow and burned it.
It was a small fire; not much stuff. And I just used my gloved hand to ‘swish’ it around to get all the papers to burn. Evidently the cheap nylon mechanics glove I was wearing have a lower melting point than the flame of even a small fire. I didn’t get hurt or anything, it just melted the sides of the fingers of the glove. Daughter came over to see what I was doing. I pointed out that she shouldn’t use her hand to stir up a fire. She looked at me like I was a complete idiot. And she basically said, “Well duh!”. Oh good. A win on the parenting front! She knows enough not to stick her hand in a fire.
The wedding we attended on New Years Eve was really very nice! The bride was stunning, the groom looked sharp in his black tuxedo. They were both relaxed (or at least looked that way) and the ceremony was low-key and they wrote and read their own vows and had fun. We had a full three course meal, and there was a live band. I got a lot of compliments on the fact I was wearing sleeves. I did have to dig to the back of my closet for this shirt, and one cuff was a slightly different color than the other. Solved that problem by rolling them up a bit.
For Christmas Kelly gave me this hat:
I picked up oil filters and grease tubes at John Deere. I changed the engine oil and filter in the 630. I was looking in the operators manual for the tractor and realized I’ve never checked the oil level for the transmission. On modern tractors there’s the engine oil dipstick, and then a dipstick, or sometimes a site tube, showing transmission and hydraulic oil level. On the 630, there’s a dipstick for the engine oil, and one for the hydraulics and I remember always checking that as a kid. I don’t know what fascinated me about that dipstick, but I checked it often. And then there’s a check “LEVEL” plug for the power take off. And on the side, according to the book, another check “LEVEL” plug for the transmission.
HUH!
Never seen that before.
I had to scrap some dirt off to find this.
You take the plug out and add oil until it starts to run out the plug, then it’s full. I don’t remember Dad checking that. I’m sure he did, I just didn’t know about it. Now the tractor is good to go come spring.
And the 1940’s music station is back on my car radio.
Most of my friends and acquaintances know me well enough to know that New Year’s Eve does not find me out drinking and partying wildly. The only time I’m up at midnight these days is if I need to make a trip down the hall in the middle of the night.
I have only been drunk twice in my life. The first time was when I was living in Northfield during the summer between what would have been my junior and senior year. I was working at Ole Piper Inn and went to a party with my co-workers. I hadn’t really had drunk much prior to that and there was a lot of mixing of different kinds of alcohol. I woke up in my bed but don’t remember how I got there. Keys were in my jacket pocket and the car was in the driveway – luckily nothing amiss. Thank goodness the party was only about 10 blocks from my apartment.
The second time was at a work party at the bakery in Milwaukee. No memory loss this time (I remember the bus ride home from the bakery QUITE clearly) but I felt so awful the next day that I wished for memory loss. It was after this horrible hangover that I decided that overdrinking was just not something I wanted to do.
I’m not a teetotaler but I rarely have more than a glass of wine or one mixed drink. It’s not hard as the taste of alcohol isn’t my favorite anyway. Not imbibing much was a little challenging with clients over the years but nothing too awful. The pressure that many people experience for not drinking in social settings hasn’t happened much to me; I’ve found that if I don’t call attention to my beverage in a party setting, most folks don’t even notice that I’m nursing one glass of wine for an hour or that I’ve switched to a non-alcoholic option.
All this is coming to mind because in addition to the New Year, I finally gave in and let the Medicare/BCBS home wellness visit happen last week. It was easy enough, no invasive stuff and only took about 30 minutes. The nurse practitioner asked me all the same questions that the doctor asks every year at my usual wellness checkup. When he got to the “how often to you drink alcohol” question I hesitated after saying “one or two” and he immediately filled in with “a day?”. I laughed and said “no, probably one or two every two or three months”. I had hesitated because I was trying to decide between two to three months and three to four months. He clearly didn’t believe me. I reported that I had just had a glass of wine the Saturday before at my party but that I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d had any alcohol. Maybe Blevins back in September?
He did write down 2-3 months, although I’m not sure he really thought that was the truth. Oh well.
Did you party last night? What makes for a good celebration in your opinion?
I can’t say I regret the end of 2025. This has been the most disturbing and disruptive year in my memory.
Moving and politics have taken their toll. We are very happy where we are in terms of location. I have hopes the political situation will improve.
Our goals are modest. We want to install raised vegetable beds in the back yard. We want to plant Boyne raspberries. Husband wants to improve his guitar skills. We are not traveling.
We plan to have best friend relocate here in the spring, and get a Cesky sibling for our pup. All these things are potentially exhausting, but change that is in our control is far more manageable than unexpected change.
What are your goals for the new year? Garden and travel plans?
DIL texted me on Sunday to report they had arrived safely in Brookings from Mankato the evening before and were spending the blustery day playing board games and reading books.
She said that 7 year old Grandson was reading his favorite DogMan books in a blanket fort made up of sofa pillows and his infant sister’s bouncy chair. Any fort in a storm!
I loved blanket forts as a child. The sofa cushions made great walls. My farming cousins and I tried to erect forts in trees in the groves, in the granary, anywhere we could find. It sure kept us busy. Perhaps this explains the allure of tents.
I was always so happy when we had snow days from school, as that was the only time my mom made waffles. We still call them Blizzard Waffles. Husband says he has sourdough discard and we can have waffles on New Year’s Day!
What were your favorite ways of making forts? How do you spend stormy days at home?
