Category Archives: Nature

Food, gardening, Nature, Poems, Uncategorized

Ode to Gardening

35 Comments

You all knew that you weren’t going to get through the summer without me waxing rhapsodic about my garden at least once. Wait no longer; today is the day.

The flowers are wild in the front… just about any color you can imagine but it’s my straw bales that are bringing me joy right now. Everything is flourishing beyond expectations.  The basil has exploded (pesto, here we come) and all the tomatoes are growing out of their tomato cages, with green tomatoes starting on all five plants.  Even the jalapeño is breaking all records for us.

And thanks to Linda, I have raspberry canes that are starting to pop. Today was the first day I picked enough to carry into the house (the last couple of days, raspberries went straight from cane to mouth).  Looks like there will be plenty of berries in the weeks to come.

As a city girl who never gardened growing up, all this generosity on the part of Mother Nature makes me absurdly happy. Every day I pinch the little flowers off the basil, pull the stray tomato stalks up through the tomato cage, water all the floral baskets, sigh deeply.  And then I think about Nathanial Hawthorne and his thoughts on gardening.

“I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green.”

~Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mosses from an Old Manse

What should I do with all my basil? Extra points if you can do it with a haiku.

Fifty Words, gardening, Nature, Uncategorized, work

Serendipity

34 Comments

Last Friday I got off work at noon and spent the next 4 hours weeding my brains out. We have a 20 X 10 foot garden bed on the north side of the drive way that contains perennials and vegetables like beets, turnips, chard, carrots, and celeriac. The weeds were horrible.  Not long after I finished weeding, the most lovely, gentle rain began, with no wind or hail.  It was perfect.

When have things worked out just right for you?

Family, History, Music, Nature, Uncategorized

The Frog Prince

41 Comments

I have a cousin who I find astonishing. I think he is my second cousin. His mom and my mom were first cousins. Our grandfathers were brothers. We are the same age and graduated from Luverne High School together.  We used to chase each other around the grade school play ground. He always had a fascination with reptiles and amphibians. Baboon Krista knew him from his work with the Minnesota DNR  as well as the Rock Bend Music Festival (Free, Free,  Free). He used to examine frogs to see if they were missing legs.  PJ knows him from their Danish Heritage Society. His  dad was Danish.

His recent Facebook posts reveal that he doesn’t work for the DNR  now, but for some reason  he is travelling around Madelia conducting field surveys trying to find and count Great Plains Toads.  I wonder how you count toads? How do you know you haven’t counted them twice? They jump around!

My cousin is also a luthier, and creates the most beautiful mandolins, Hardanger fiddles, nyckelharpas, and Viola D’ Amores.  What a range of interests. How on earth does this happen?

Who are some of the most astonishing and fascinating people you know?

Fifty Words, gardening, History, Media, Nature, Science, Uncategorized

Bad News Bears

33 Comments

Well, the news from the Supreme court is discouraging.  #45 rallied yesterday in Fargo.  The weeds in my garden are horrendous.  On the other hand, there was a gorgeous, huge moon last night. My cats are charming, and I am a part of several communities that are supportive and comforting.  To cap it all off, in 1820, on this date, the tomato was proven to be non poisonous by a Colonel Robert Gibbon, who ate a tomato on steps of the courthouse in Salem, New Jersey.

How do you keep going in trying times?  How has scientific experimentation (a la Colonel Gibbon) improved your life?

Family, home, Kids, Nature, Uncategorized, Weather

A Storm and a Hero

27 Comments

Today’s post comes from Crystalbay.

Two weeks ago, a windstorm hit Crystal Bay. It was the first straight line wind in 45 years. At  65 mph, these winds are as ferocious as a tornado, only without a funnel. It was pretty exciting for me until I saw my lawn chairs blown from the lakeside yard all of the way back to my garage. The wind’s strength picked up a 100-pound canoe and deposited it in my neighbor’s yard.

This summer, I rented out both sides of my dock because I really need the money and don’t have a boat anyway. I’m likely the only resident of this whole lake who doesn’t have a boat. I digress, but in my divorce settlement 12 years ago, he got the boat with no dock; I got the dock with no boat.

I watched as one of my renter’s boats listing in the water like the Titanic before it went down. The other boat became partially submerged. The force of the waves pulled the iron frame beneath the largest dock section off of the lake bed. And, my neighbor’s tree fell on the roof. This was their second tree to fall on the cottage in two years.

 

As with every high-anxiety situation, I turn to my take-charge, grounded son, Steve. He’s learned how to catch up to my runaway panic and calm me down within five minutes. He not only seems to have all the answers, he often takes over resolving situations with ease and confidence. I doubt I’d be able to continue living here without his occasional interventions.

I made my panic call after the tree came crashing down on the roof.  Within half an hour, Steve was up on the roof with a chain saw in the dark, cutting off the canopy of branches. The next day, he came out with two of his workers, and they devised a plan for taking the largest limbs without a crane. Which is exactly what any tree service would use. The guys used ropes tied around the large logs and eased them down over the roof. Steve laughed and joked with his guys the whole time. Unique challenges have always energized him. After three hours, the job wasn’t only finished, but all of the logs and debris cleaned up.

Before he left, he nailed a rope swing platform securely, unclogged a bathroom drain, screwed in a piece of plywood over a hole in the foundation, clipped a dozen overhanging tree branches, hung a new hammock, replaced a large bulb in the lakeside socket, and calmed the dock renter’s upset about having his boat underwater.

My son is my hero, my rock when things seem to be spinning out of control.  I got a registered letter from the city yesterday notifying me that there was a complaint filed against me for renting my dock. The ordinance says that people cannot have a boat at their dock unless they own it and live on the premises. Within hours, Steve had consulted the city planners, explaining my situation. He figured out a solution that will allow my dock renter to stay. He’s also figured out a way that repairing the storm-damaged roof will get maximum dollars in an insurance claim.

Everyone needs a “Steve” in his/her life whether a good friend, a mate,  a sibling, or an adult child.  Someone who will have your back in a crisis and be a calming voice in the storm.

Who has your back?  Who is your hero?

Family, Food, gardening, History, Nature, Uncategorized

Foraging

48 Comments

Our son told us that last week a friend of his went foraging  in the rural ditches around Brookings, SD,  and came home with 75 pounds of asparagus. My mother loved asparagus, and said they used to find it in the ditches and along the fence lines in Pipestone County when she was a girl. She was saddened when spraying and mowing of ditches eliminated it. I bet she would be really happy to know that, with reduced used of herbicides and ditch mowing, the asparagus is back. She was reduced to buying canned asparagus when I was a child, fresh asparagus an unheard of commodity in the Luverne grocery store.  She lived to be 92.  All her aunts and uncles lived into their 90’s, too. She said it was because of all the dark, homemade bread they ate. I bet they ate asparagus from the Pipestone County ditches, since that is where they lived.

My paternal grandmother was a very picky eater who would only eat pork and sweets. She hated vegetables. She wouldn’t eat asparagus if her life depended on it.  She lived to be 91. My dad didn’t like vegetables, but he loved strong coffee and really spicy food.  He lived to be 93. I guess spice and sweets and pork and asparagus are aids to longevity.

Our Italian landlords in Winnipeg were avid mushroom hunters and found loads of mushrooms to eat in the middle of Winnipeg. We attended a mushroom dinner at the Dante Alighieri Cultural Society to which they belonged, and the food was incredible.  All the mushrooms were foraged from Winnipeg and surrounding environs. One of the members had married a non-Italian University of Manitoba biologist who vetted all the mushrooms for safety. Imagine every pasta and Italian meat dish you can think of filled with mushrooms.

I spent last weekend at our grandson’s baptism with a bunch of our son’s in-laws who are  picky eaters, people who wouldn’t touch asparagus or mushrooms or anything spicy.  They love fast food.  It makes me sad.

How would you define your eating habits?  Do you forage? Know any picky eaters?

Art, Nature, Uncategorized

Kevin’s Lemon into Lemonade

21 Comments

A month ago there appeared on our patio a piece of rusted metal, a found-art sculpture.  But I was onto Kevin. I had seen it beside his truck in the garage. He had found it beside the recycle bin in the winter and kept it to put on our patio in the spring.

It was bare rusty metal, re-rod, gears, metal plate, and barbed wire. But I did not acknowledge its presence. Instead I went out and bought some spray paint, green and red. And yellow. He thought it was a lemon. I tried to turn it into lemonade.

Now he wants it back to take home. We assume a student had done it for a class and trashed it.

Then this morning he called me out. He has permission to come to the window beside my computer and talk to me. He saw five cecropia moths on the south end of the building. He brought one and put it on our patio table.

It hatches, mates, lays its eggs, and dies in only a couple days or so. Thus, rare to see. It is six inches across. Comes from those big fat green worms.  Here is one with a belly full of eggs.

 

After a neighbor had come to see, and Kevin’s wife came too, charming woman, I took my coffee out and watched. Its wing flapping slowly. It rolled on its side, kicked its legs in spasmodic jerks, and lay still. I sighed for it. Then it up and flew off into the woods.

Where have you found beauty, expected and unexpected? How has life surprised you?

 

 

 

 

Food, gardening, home, Nature, Uncategorized

Seasonal Sounds

40 Comments

I picked strawberries last night after work. The task usually falls to husband, but he was still driving back from the reservation and it looked like it might storm before he got home.

It was quite still while I picked, and I could hear the outdoor sounds in the neighborhood quite well. I heard the harsh sounds of distant lawnmowers getting the grass cut before a possible rain. I heard some birds, and the occasional car driving past. I also heard a sound that I thought was a true summer sound-the distinctive, quiet, sucking  snap of a plump strawberry as it is picked from its stem.  What a lovely sound!

What sounds do you associate with the seasons?

 

 

Family, Nature, Science, space

Siblings

105 Comments

It’s been three years since the New Horizons spacecraft whizzed by Pluto, but the non-planet is still in the news. And the latest news is that Pluto has a lot more in common with our own planet than was previously thought.

Pluto has dunes; they’re made of methane ice grains but are sculpted by winds that reach 24 miles per hour. This may not seem like much but since Pluto has less gravity, the wind doesn’t need to be as strong as here at home.  Pluto also has a wide variety of landforms like we do on Earth: plains, trenches and mountain ranges.  Pluto has snow-capped peaks of methane and Pluto may have an icy sea beneath its frozen surface.  Who knew?

If you could choose ANYONE to be your twin, who would it be?

gardening, home, Music, Nature, Uncategorized

Blackbird, Bye Bye

63 Comments

We have some very noisy black birds in the spruce trees in our front yard. I don’t know if they are Blackbirds, Starlings, or Grackles.  I know they aren’t Crows or Ravens. We have Crows in town. They are bigger than the other black birds, and like to harass and chase the local owls. Husband sees Ravens up on the Reservation. They are quite culturally significant for our native friends and are portents of various things.

The black birds in our trees have hatchlings in a nest who make the most terrible harsh noises when they want to be fed. The parents follow us around the yard and scold us and sometimes swoop. I am ready for the black birds to go bye bye!

Tell some bird stories. Talk about Miss Peggy Lee.