One of the highlights of our Columbus weekend was a day at The Columbus Zoo. We got there right at opening and got a nice discount for being Minnesota Zoo members. We did not really have much of a plan for the day – just wanted to see everything.
Not in any particular order…
Saw the tiger feeding and met a staff member who had been part of the Secrets of the Zoo show!
Watched a training session with two gorgeous cheetahs.
Walked through Adventure Cove (glass tube with water on all sides so you can see the various sealife swim above you and below you.
Watched the lion feeding. I had the BEST spot of anyone… I kid you not.
YA walked through the Lorikeet Aviary
Lots of kangaroos in the Kangaroo WalkAbout
Extraordinarily expensive pizza lunch
Spent a LONG LONG time at Stingray Bay. YA is besotted with petting stingrays and little sharks.
Petted some goats at The Barn
Gorgeous polar bears
Visited the manatees and got to see “Stubby”, who can’t be released to a boatstrike injury but has acted as a mom to many young rescue manatees over the years. Even found a cool manatee t-shirt!
I’ve talked about Jack Hanna running the Zoo for many years, basically turning it around and creating the fabulous experience that it is today. Up near the Africa area, there is a great bench/sculpture of Jack and his wife, Suzi. I couldn’t resist the photo op!
We were at the zoo for almost 8 hours and I can truthfully say that I slept like a rock that night!
Yesterday was the anniversary of the day we lost Edith, our LIttle Jail Bird. Here is another of her posts – one of my favorites!
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Jim’s comment “The squirrels around here seem to be unusually pesky” got me thinking about how much I hate squirrels. South Minneapolis squirrels seem to be especially hateable. People who say squirrels are “cute” either are crazy or they haven’t seen the squirrels in my neighborhood.
When I grew vegetables in my yard, it was an endless source of frustration to see tomatoes get almost to the point of perfect ripeness and then find it lying on the driveway with a squirrel bite taken out of it. The thought of eating a tomato that had been handled by one of those rodents deterred me from ever cutting off the bitten part; my compost pile was the only thing that benefitted from the squirrel leavings (and, actually, the compost pile didn’t benefit, either – see below).
I now only grow herbs and fruits and flowers in my yard. Squirrels like to dig in the planter boxes on the front porch or any freshly turned dirt and also do things like eat tulips off stems before they open their blooms. But at least they aren’t eating my food.
One time a squirrel got into my house. I’m not sure how…but you haven’t seen pure craziness until you’ve seen a squirrel dashing around your house at full speed.
We’ve all heard about how squirrels rob bird feeders of the bird food. If you have an open compost pile, to which you add food scraps, in your yard in south Mpls, you are basically operating a free restaurant for squirrels.
But the real reason I hate squirrels? They hate me. Here’s proof. Those of you who also live in the city of Mpls know that the big gray garbage bins the city provides us for our trash are pretty tough. But they’re not tough enough for south Mpls squirrels. Our diabolical neighborhood squirrels chewed a squirrel-sized hole in the lid of my trash bin. They would then go inside the bin and enjoy snacks
(this was before I composted most of my food scraps). Then, I out I came, blissfully unaware of any danger, with a bag of trash to put in the bin. I threw open the lid – and SHAZZZAAAMMM out flew anywhere from one to three squirrels in my face. They ran away, laughing hysterically at my scream, and plotting when they can do that again.
I learned to kick the trash bin several times and then stand back before I lifted the lid. After the squirrels escaped, I gave it another kick, then waited to make sure they were all gone before I carefully lifted the lid and tossed in the bag. But sometimes in my usual spacey way, I would forget to kick – and once again the squirrels would enjoy their dominance over me.
Any “cute” object or animal driving you crazythis week?
We got to Columbus about 9:30 a.m. on a Friday morning and after picking up the rental car, we got to the hotel well before check-in time… in fact we were there before check-out time. We knew this was a possibility so we left my phone number with the front desk and headed out.
Started with lunch at The Rusty Bucket. Veggie burgers, fries and fried pickles. Best fried pickles ever. It was a gorgeous day and we sat near the big open windows so there was a great breeze. Then we headed over for a hike to Indian Falls. We walked quite a bit down of pathway before we realized that the little gurgling “rapids” we had passed earlier were the actual falls. Guess living so close to Minnehaha Falls, I had bigger expectations. But it was pretty and we got to pet a few dogs along the way.
I know I mentioned Anthony Thomas Candies earlier; we found an Anthony Thomas Candy Shoppe outlet between the falls and our motel. Anthony Thomas is a fourth-generation company that started as a Dairy Co-op in 1932 and following a couple of expansions, in 1952 they began making what is now their signature candy – the buckeye – peanut butter filling surrounded by milk chocolate. They make 14 million buckeyes a year and are recognized by Ohio State University for the licensing of the candies. We found a little box of what they call their “oops” – seconds. Neither YA nor I could figure out what was wrong with them. They were delicious – and cheaper!
Quick stop at a grocery store for a few bottles of pop/water for the fridge in our room and then headed back to the motel for our check-in. Showers, lunch leftovers for dinner and we found Banana Ball on ESPN. In a complete reversal of our usual roles, I am a BB fan, YA is not. However she humored me.
Set our alarms to make sure we got up early enough for our adventure on Saturday. Not bad for a travel day, no?
Do you have a candy that you would eat, even if it were an “oops”?
We went to Columbus because I love the television show “Secrets of the Zoo”. It ran for five seasons beginning in 2018 and spawned “Secrets of the Zoo Tampa”, “Secrets of the Zoo North Carolina” and “Secrets of the Zoo Down Under”. Down Under was resurrected a couple of years ago for an additional season and depending on what you’re willing to believe on the internet, there MAY be a Season 8. I was (am?) addicted to these shows – loved seeing the animals and the folks who cared for them. I’ve definitely seen all the episodes of all the show and most of them more than once.
The original Secrets explored the behind the scenes lives of the animals, the zoo keepers and the zoo vets. They also shared each episode with The Wilds, a safari park and conservation area about 90 minutes from Columbus. It looked as fascinating as the zoo.
When Guinevere passed away, YA and I were suddenly free to travel together – something that hadn’t happened for about 5 years. We decided that going to Columbus to see the Zoo and the Wilds would be perfect.
As is my norm, I immediately got a binder out and made tabs for air, hotel, rental car, cat boarding, zoo, Wilds and miscellaneous.
YA used her work “points” for the rental car, spent some On the Fly cards for the air and got a smokin’ hot rate at a hotel using her Iatan status. Turns out we even got Comfort + seating because she’s got a gazillion Delta miles. I asked her for confirming emails for everything so I could print them out – she begrudgingly did this commenting that it wasn’t necessary since she had all the info on her phone. Even the kitty boarding place sent everything via text and email. But not to be outdone, I dragged the binder with us to Columbus.
Because we were leaving at an ungodly hour from Minneapolis, YA set up Lyft transfers (cheaper than the off-site lots at the airport). Once we got to Columbus, she did all the driving because it would have cost extra every day to add a driver. So I let her choose the car. I didn’t even know what hotel we were going to before we drove up. She had handled that as well, including making sure it was a double/double configuration.
Really the only thing I was in charge of was the Zoo and the Wilds. Even those were handling with QR codes (used our MN Zoo membership to get a discount) and getting emails with links and receipts. Just had to flash my phone at the entrance of both.
Suffice it to say, YA was mostly in charge of everything during the trip and I didn’t open my binder one single time. It felt kind of freeing but sigh… the times they are a changin’.
How has travel changed for you over the years? For the good or for the bad?
The previous owners of our home spent a lot of money on landscaping in the backyard. I have never had such a fancy backyard. We added the fence. There is a fire pit:
We also have lots of brick paved areas with rock-filled beds for plants:
Those are some of the largest hostas I have ever seen. We never had hostas before. The rest of the plants are lower maintenance shrubs, Stella d’oro lillies, and succulents. They didn’t even have rhubarb!
I think they went a little over the top with the water feature, however. It is a bubbling brook powered by an electric pump submerged in a deep vat at the bottom of the brook. It is plugged into an electric outlet by the fence. The pump has to be removed every fall so it won’t freeze up over the winter. It is not easy to remove or reinstall.
The birds love the brook. It has to be refilled every other day or so or the pump starts to make groaning noises. I plan to turn over the stones with the words carved in them, as I think those are a silly affectation and they annoy me.
The dogs love to plunge in the brook at the top and slide down to the bottom. I would never put such a thing in a yard, and I absolutely hate all the rocks in the flower beds as they make weeding and replanting a lot more work than they need to be. I plan to put in roses and hydrangeas and spring bulbs next year, but we need to clear a lot of rocks from every side of the house before that happens.
If you had to have a water feature in your yard, what kind would you get? What words would you have carved in flat stones in your yard?
On Saturday, Husband, I, and Boommate met up with our son and his family for a Father’s Day hike at the Pipestone National Monument, aka The Pipestone Indian Shrine. (I don’t think 47 would like to see that name.) It is almost equidistant from both Luverne and Aurora, SD, where son and family live. Here are some park photos.
My mother’s family is from Pipestone. My Uncle Harvey’s old farm abuts the park. It is an odd place, consisting of a quartzite quarry surrounded by prairie with a creek. For hundreds of years, native tribes would come from all over the contnent and get rock for ceremonial pipes. It is a holy place, and there were many cloth prayer bundles tied up in the tree branches. There continue to be native carvers at the visitor center who make pipes. Husband’s is in the header photo. We bought it several years ago. Boommate made the case it rests on. We keep it in its case, as our native friends say it is disrespectful to display it.
On our hike through the park we ran into a graduate school friend of DIL who heads a program at SDSU for disadvantaged students to help them transition to university. The students were with him. He and DIL hadn’t seen each other for some time, and it was nice for them to meet up.
We have a Hidatsa Indian friend from the ND Fort Berthold Reserve who attended the Pipestone Indian School. It closed many years ago. He also worked briefly at the park visitor center as a pipe carver. All the staff at the visitor center are native, and Husband took a chance and asked the older woman at the checkout if she knew our friend, Leo. Well, of course she did, and knew his wife’s name and the name of the band he played bass guitar and drums in. She was so delighted she gave us a bunch of free bumper stickers!
It is a small world, and it was fun to feel connected in so many diverse ways.
When have you felt the world is small? Ever been to Pipestone?
In North Dakota we would see the occasional hummingbird in the fall as they migrated west to their winter quarters. They loved the flowers in our garden, especially the monarda and cone flowers. I was glad they could get some sustenance in our yard before they headed over the Rockies.
I never saw many hummingbirds in Luverne when I was growing up. I was fooled many times by hummingbird moths.
Since moving back we have seen several hummingbirds in our yard, small, emerald green ones. Yesterday Boommate concocted a clear, bird friendly hummingbird solution to put in the feeder outside her window. She plans to lure them with a basket of flowers on a plant hanger. I am excited to have this. The birds are so magical. I am sure her cats will be fascinated as they peer out the window at the birds.
Boommate tells us there used to be, or perhaps still is, a couple in the Cities who had several dozen hummingbird feeders in their yard who would cook up gallons of liquid for the feeders every day. They apparently had hundreds of hummingbirds in their yard. I don’t think we are up to something of that magnitude, but what a sight!
Got Hummers? Been fooled by the moths? Opinions about bird feeding?
The iris is my favorite flower; I have always loved them. It’s probably an inherited trait; I’m pretty sure it was one of my mother’s favorites. To be honest, I don’t know for sure as my mom was never a flower planter. She did like to do yard maintenance but didn’t add shrubs or flowers in any of the homes we lived in. She did however take us kids to the Missouri Botanical Gardens every year, always during the time that the iris gardens there were in full bloom. That can’t be a coincidence.
Alice Hahn Goodman Iris Garden (photo credit: Heather Osborn)
I have iris planted all over my yard, front and back, and in a wide variety of colors. The iris in the header photo is the first to bloom this season – I don’t even know the name of it. It was supposed to be an orange variety but when it came up the following spring it was this startling white. Gertens actually credited me for them so not only are the gorgeous, but they were free. Two of my favorite things.
Of course this year these blooms are bringing my mother to mind so today I am remembering her and thanking her for infecting me with the love of iris!
Any blooms you’re remembering today (literal or metaphorical)?
I think it’s really interesting that aluminum foil in the oven doesn’t get very hot. I can pull it out with my fingers. So I googled it. And learned this:
Extreme Thinness (Low Mass):Standard foil is incredibly thin (about 16 micrometers). Because there is so little metal, there isn’t enough total heat energy to warm up your thick, water-filled skin. The instant you touch it, your cooler fingers absorb the tiny amount of energy, dropping the foil’s temperature immediately.
High Conductivity:Aluminum is an excellent heat conductor. Heat passes through it and dissipates into the cooler room air almost instantly.
Isn’t that interesting!
Wednesday was my first day of half summer vacation. I work half time at the college until June, then I’m off for a couple months. I worked at home ALL DAY Wednesday.
I had my annual performance review at the college the other day. As I prepared for that and looked for a paper copy of last year’s review I found a phone book on my desk. I guess I kinda knew it was there. I haven’t opened it in a while. It was from 2014. I put it in the round file finally.
This is a phone book, kids!
I finished planting soybeans last Saturday.
Sunday I drove over it all with the drag. The fields look great! Smooth and even. Hopefully they get lush and green soon.
It was sprinkling late Sunday evening when I was out with an old hand cranked seeder spreading grass seed on one of my new field boundaries.
This thing has hung in the basement as long as I can remember. Asking my siblings, we all played with it but no one remembers seeing anyone actually use it. I’m thinking dad used it to seed grass around the house after it was built. But I’m sure I’m just making that up.
The directions are on the bottom:
I have a few thoughts. I don’t know what 2.5 MPH is when walking, and a spread of 18 feet?? You gotta really be cranking that thing to get 18 feet! Man, I don’t know how the old guys did it back in the day seeding acres and acres with this thing.
I am planting ‘BLM #4’. It’s a quick growing pasture mix commonly containing ryegrass, tall fescue, and Kentucky bluegrass.
At home Padawan and I got a lot done this week. Cleaned out the seed and power washed the corn planter. Parked it outside for the moment and pulled out the seed wagon. Cleaned that off and parked it away. As we were rounding up flowerpots for Kelly, we got sidetracked by crap in a corner of the old shed and ended up hauling out a gator load of scrap iron and a gator load of garbage.
Tired
I’ve wanted to clean up that corner, just didn’t intend to do it then. It was clean back in 1968 when we were living in the machine shed, then it turned into the tire storage corner. I’m down to about 5 old tires to get rid of, and 3 good spares I store there. And once you start a spare tire corner, it becomes a junk corner real quick. Padawan cut the top off a tote while I was cleaning the planter so we can use a second tote for scrap iron. I forgot about a zoom meeting on Wednesday. Had it on my calender… even knew about it in the morning. Then got a text from someone asking if I was coming to the meeting. I joined from the tractor.
Padawan and I made a fence and got the adolescent chicks out.
We put mulch around the seedling trees and starting making a, sort of, ‘tent-fence’ to keep the deer from eating the tree’s and peeling bark off the tiny little things. Stupid deer! These little tree’s are costing us a lot of money! Water totes, pump, hose, fencing, Mulch was free, then more fencing and more posts… jeepers. And who knows how they’ll survive next winter. I don’t have high hopes.
I need to clean out the grain drill yet.
Oops. Forgot to turn on the drill in time there.
Right up at the end of our driveway there’s this gap in the oats field.
It’s the first thing you see driving in. I’ve seen it coming all spring, I need to get out there and replant that. Course it will always be a month behind. But a bare spot allows weeds to grow. And I have several bushels left in the drill to clean out so I may as well go plant that and fill in a few light spots in another field.
Padawan has gotten a new job. He’ll be working 11:00 AM – 8:00PM Tuesday – Saturday. I’m gonna miss him. He and I have really connected the last few months. I enjoy having him around and he kinda likes having us as his surrogate family. In fact, he listed me as “Family Friend / Dad” on the job application. Awwwww…
In looking for my packing list on my pc last night, I found a Word file titled “From Books I Like”. It’s only a couple of pages long and I would not have remembered that I have this document if I hadn’t stumbled upon it. It has a few quotes from books that I’ve read; one of the quotes is that wonderful metaphor about the town from TheEgg&I by Betty MacDonald that I’ve written about before. Then there are two other quotes from Michael Perry’s OffMainStreet. One is another transfixing metaphor….
“Summer is a seducer. After bundling through another tight-lipped winter, after enduring the mounting frustration of spring’s titillating dance of veils, we gape as summer comes sliding down her blazing ecliptic like a woman down a banister. She laughs with her head thrown far back; she throws her hands high in the air, releasing fistfuls of butterflies. She belly dances through the cornfields until the dust rises like a charmed snake, hanging in fat curls, leaving you cotton-mouthed. She makes the fox pant, she drives the hawk to think air. Weaker creatures curtain themselves away to complain.”
Fairly appropriate as I’m enjoying the beginning of spring/summer this week. My major gardening push is done so now I can enjoy my yard without massive effort. Bird feeders are full, hummingbird feeders are out (although I haven’t seen any hummingbirds yet). YA and I have new Adirondacks in back as one of our old ones gave up the ghost a couple of weeks back. Windows open. No fans down from the attic yet although I have had my overhead fan going a couple of times in my bedroom. Did my twice-a-year laundering of my bedding and allergy covers. Swapped out my spring/summer wardrobe for my winter one. Aaaaahhhhhh.
Of course, unearthing these quotes on the pc makes me wonder if I have other files like this started and squirrelled away. Suppose I’ll have to take a look one of these days!
Trail Baboon 