Category Archives: Weather

Art, Family, gardening, Nature, Science, Stories, Weather

The Arboretum

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On Nonny’s last full day in Minneapolis, we went out to The Arboretum. I have always thought I absorbed my love of gardening from her. She never asked me to participate, but I remember the work she put into her roses, her flowering trees and her vegetable plot.

It was a perfect day for it – not too hot and not too sunny. We took some advice from Lou and did the tram tour before we did anything else. We took the tour driver’s advice and sat in the very back row for the best view and the best sound quality. Nonny loved all the different trees, especially ones with “character” and I marveled at how much of the arboretum there really is!

One of the special exhibits this summer is Gardens of Kaleidoscopes – 15 fabulous sculptures that combine lovely floral arrangements in movable containers within structures that also hold kaleidoscopes. You look through the kaleidoscopes and then slowly spin the flowers (well, you don’t have to do it slowly a little boy of seven showed us). It was amazing and as always when confronted by art, I wonder how the artist thought of the idea in the first place.

View Through Kaleidoscope

What would YOU like to see through a kaleidoscope?

Kids, Nature, sports, Stories, Weather

1-2-3 Strikes You’re out

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There was:

  • a human bowling game – someone in a huge plastic bubble running toward 6-foot high nerf “pins”
  • an obstacle course for two teams each with a stretcher and a patient. I’m glad both the patients were mannequins
  • a back to front race in which two strangers were tied side-by-side, but one facing forward and one facing backward. The winning team went pretty fast considering
  • a tire race. Let’s face it, the gentlemen took this one by a landslide
  • an eye ball race – two kids, each wearing a huge eyeball costume. The brown eye won.
  • t-shirt launching into the crown
  • tiny tykes racing teeny motorcars – this makes it clear why five-year olds don’t have licenses
  • a drone contest that made it abundant clear that flying these things isn’t as easy as it looks
  • an adorable big wearing a large pin bow

Oh – and then there was a baseball game. Great seats, perfect weather, no one truly obnoxious sitting anywhere near us, a pedi-cab ride all the way back to where the car was parked.  We lost but it was still a wonderful evening!

Do you root for a home team?

 

gardening, Nature, Weather

Waiting for Rain

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We are in a severe drought here. All fireworks are banned, no one can grill using charcoal, and all open fires are prohibited. The city fire works display has been cancelled.  Our town usually resounds with the sound of  fireworks the week before and just after July 4. It is always illegal to shoot off fireworks in town, but the police rarely enforce it.  This year we were told the local constabulary would be “heavy handed” in enforcing the fireworks ban.  No one wants their house or neighborhood to go up in flames, and people are being very careful.

Ranchers are selling their cattle, CPR land has been opened up for emergency grazing, and farmers are pretty depressed. It is really too late for anything but the pastures to recover if we would get some rain.  It isn’t promising.  The high temperatures are predicted to be around 100 this week.  We have sufficient water to keep the gardens going, thanks to an upgraded city water system and the Missouri River.  I scowl, though, when I see people watering lawns, especially when they are watering in high winds and more water goes in the air than on the lawn.

The governor has declared our county and several others to be disaster areas.  This is a slow, painful disaster that will take a long time to see a recovery.  We need a good long stretch of several days of rain, and that never happens out here.

How have you coped with disasters?

Fifty Words, Food, gardening, Nature, Weather

Strawberries!

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I’ve yakked about strawberry picking before, so I’ll save the word and just show this year’s pictures.

What’s a perfect Saturday morning for you?

Music, News, Weather

The Sound of Summer

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Today’s post comes from Bill

Ever since our last presidential election, I’ve been taking the news in small measured doses and I’ve been wary of letting it just wash over me unless I am prepared. Consequently, instead of keeping my car radio tuned by default to the MPR news channel, I have an iPod, loaded with my choice of music and set up to shuffle through the selections whenever I drive anywhere.

Today, Robin and I were running a short errand together. The weather was sunny and warm with a light, fresh breeze. As we drove, the music selection that came up was a samba by Antonio Carlos Jobim, “The Girl From Ipanema” and I remarked to Robin that I have always considered Brazilian sambas the perfect evocation of summer– so warm, so languid. If Jobim doesn’t conjure up a hammock and a cool drink, I don’t know what does.

But maybe you know.

What music perfectly evokes summer for you?

Fifty Words, Weather, Words

A Pocketful of?

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Spring is the time to clean out winter jacket pockets.  Much
accumulates there in a few short months.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in
my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great
epics is past.
— Gilbert Chesterton

What’s in your pockets?  What would you like to find there?

Travel, Weather

Rain, rain, go away

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It was pouring down rain the morning we steamed into Malaga. I had meetings in the morning and had resigned myself to an afternoon stuck on the ship.  Then as we sat in the restaurant having lunch, the sun suddenly broke through and the clouds started drifting away.

Nobody had to ask us twice; we were off the ship in a flash. All up and down the streets of the older part of Malaga is the Andalusian state tree, the beautiful “Jacaranda” with the most amazing purple flowers in abundance.  I had ask a local is it was Ha-caranda (as you would expect in Spain) or Ja-caranda (maybe the word coming into the language from elsewhere).  Ha-caranda it is!

We poked our heads into a pretty little cathedral and on the way out encountered a sweet but spoiled dog as well as some very good street performers playing guitar.

The Picasso Museum was too tempting to miss; he was born in Malaga, so they feel very territorial about him. It was a nice exhibit with some of his very earliest work up through pieces he did near the end of his life.  They also had bookmarks with just the cat from Reclining Nude with a Cat but wouldn’t take a credit card for a purchase under €10 and I didn’t have any more Euros.  So we settled for some Picasso refrigerator magnets from the souvenir shop across from the museum.

We also had to take many photos of the Malaga Ferris Wheel (the Noria de Malaga) as my client collects Ferris wheel photos (no, I don’t know why). It is the largest itinerant Ferris wheel in Europe, as it is technically moveable.

By the time we got back to the ship, the sky was bright blue with just a few wispy white clouds in the distance – a perfect way for a rainy day to end up!

What do you like to do on a rainy day?

 

Poems, Weather

Sweet Spring

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Today’s post comes to us from Barbara in Rivertown

In honor of it finally being April, and spring being so much more believable, I have rediscovered a favorite poem, taken from the Good Reads website:

                                                                   Sweet Spring            E.E. Cummings

sweet spring is your
time is my time is our
time for springtime is lovetime
and viva sweet love

(all the merry little birds are
flying in the floating in the
very spirits singing in
are winging in the blossoming)

lovers go and lovers come
awandering awondering
but any two are perfectly
alone there’s nobody else alive

(such a sky and such a sun
i never knew and neither did you
and everybody never breathed
quite so many kinds of yes)

not a tree can count his leaves
each herself by opening
but shining who by thousands mean
only one amazing thing

(secretly adoring shyly
tiny winging darting floating
merry in the blossoming
always joyful selves are singing)

sweet spring is your
time is my time is our
time for springtime is lovetime
and viva sweet love

Do you have a favorite poem, or a favorite poet?  (Doesn’t have to be well-known.)

 

Stories, Weather

Mud Season

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Everybody I know seems happy that we’ve had a mild winter and that we appear to be having an early thaw. Not me.  I am not happy.  No snow and warming temperatures at this time of year mean just one thing; muddy paws.  It will be at least a month before grass will grow in my backyard — four weeks of mud, muddy paw prints, muddy paw prints all over the floor, muddy paw prints on my bedspread, even muddy paw prints on my shoes if I don’t get out of the way fast enough.  Aarrggghhhh!

What does an early thaw mean to you?

Stories, Weather

Teasing Temps

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It’s really quite a tease, these couple of days of near 60˚weather. Because of this unusually warm winter we’ve been having, I was able to ride my bike on Sunday to our friend Walken’s house. Last warm spell I rode to t’ai chi class at the Friendship (Senior) Center, and to pick up a few items at Midtown Foods. I am also in either walking or biking distance from:

– Paperbacks and Pieces, a book exchange that also sells some new books and other items

– Nia (aerobics class) at the WMCA

– the Winona Public Library and Post Office

– two coffee shops and the Acoustic Café  (plus innumerable fast food or pizza joints)

– Chapter Two Books (more used books)

– Bluff Country Food Co-op, and the downtown Farmers Market (in season)

– Winona State University, incl. theaters and auditoriums

– several large churches that host musical events and ad hoc groups like our Wellspring Singers

– Winona History and Winona Art Centers, which have classes, art show openings, political events, and films

– my chiropractor, dentist, and doctor

– three thrift shops

It- a couple of pubs, and Ed’s No Name Bar (where artsy types gather every Friday eve)

This is the advantage of living in the “inner city”, here on this nice flat piece of land stretched along the Mississippi. I consider “walking or biking distance” to be anything I can get to within ten minutes. Several other things are not prohibitively far – for an outing, we have biked the 4 or 5 miles to my mom’s residence in the west end, and even out the Marine Art Museum.

Where would you like to walk to or bike to, once spring is really here?