A Tip for the Unusually Cold Southerners

We're setting record cold temperatures this winter all over the United States.

I don't know if any folks from the south read this blog but I thought they might need some tips from us northerners on how to keep warm when the air around you isn't.  It must be so hard for people who shiver when it's forty degrees to navigate in snow and ice and to take the chill out of the bones after being outside in 20 degree weather.  I know that they will instinctively pile on the clothing and stay near anything that is giving off heat but here's one little tip that really helps keep the heat in the body.  Sure, it would be nice to keep the temperature set at eighty or more but most of us folks couldn't afford the fuel or electricity costs.  So, here's my tip:  tuck your pants into your socks.  Yep, simple as that.  It makes you look like George Washington but it really works.  Instead of cool air around your ankles, you're nice and snug from hip to toe.

It's Still Snowing!!!

I'm finally signing in again and the cold white stuff is still falling outside.  My meandering path is mostly impassable now so I've faced our treadmill looking out the window so that I can still get some walking exercise while pondering nature.  I use the time on the treadmill to say a lot of prayers but as I pray my meandering mind moves rapidly to other thoughts.  I see the lake from the window.  The lake is frozen solid to a depth of about 26 inches and the blanket of snow is at least that too.  But seeing the lake isn't that easy from our windows because the neighbor's lakefront is full of brush and small saplings.  But, the good thing is, he said we could take out whatever we wanted to.  I love to do this type of work and today I trudged down the hill with our purple sled and logging tools and continued on my quest to make a nice clear view.  Whenever I finish  and come back up the hill to see how it looks, I find some more and know there will be more workdays ahead.  The pictures show the tools, and some of the work.  Everything looks black and white these days - that's why spring and its vibrant greens are so welcome when the season arrives.

Come Walk with Me in the Woods

Winter is despised by lots of folks but I love it.  As a matter of fact, I love each and every season.  This morning we woke to a panorama of winter white.  I snapped some pictures as I walked this morning and come along and enjoy the sights!

Another Way to Preserve

We are loaded with apples and have been giving them away to anyone interested.  We have 8 different trees - 1 Macintosh, 3 Cortland, 2 Honey Crisp 1 Wolf River and 1 Yellow Newton Pippin. .  This was an excellent year for apples and that was nice because last year was the opposite for Wisconsin apples.  I've frozen slices for apple pies and cakes, made sugar free applesauce, canned apple juice and made a few pies and now I'm turning to a time honored method of preservation - dehydration.  We have an electric dehydrator but long ago, people used the sun or wood ovens to dry their fruit or veggies.  It's a clever way to keep the goodness of the food and conserve space.  The dehydrated product has concentrated flavor and nutrition and can be eaten as is or rehydrated with water.  I love the tasty little dried apples and they make a nice portable snack to carry in a small plastic bag............. Parsley from the herb garden is easy to do too and keeps us supplied for the year. ...........In case our planet gets a little too crowded in the future, perhaps our scientists will figure out a way to dehydrate people in a humane and workable way.  The human body is made up of 57 to 65 per cent water.  We'd probably need less food and living space if we were paper doll sized folks and wouldn't it be fun to float from place to place on the wind?!

Looking at the Big Picture

I was reading the National Geographic the other day and was stunned by one of its facts.  I guess they can't be perfectly accurate, but they estimate that since human beings appeared upon the earth there have been 107 billion of us.  That just boggles my mind.  Oh sure, I knew a lot of people preceded we who now tread carefully and not so carefully upon this nature based orb we call home.  But 107 billion is a lot of moms and pops and kids and food to feed us all.  We really are nothing new.  We have benefited so much from all of the advances made by earlier generations and hopefully we will leave this place a little bit better for having been here but if you know someone who thinks the sun rises and sets because of them, just remind them of the bigger picture - the bigger picture with 107 billion people smiling and laughing and crying through the ages.  And thank you, God, for not giving up on us!

Raspberries and Reminiscence

Wow, time really got away on me this summer - it must have been that month long road trip that threw us for a loop.  Here it is "back to school" time already and some of the leaves are turning color, the duck and geese babies are adult size and the part timers on the lake are getting ready to take out their docks.  Due to the erratic and downright cold summer weather, the garden produce is about a month late and that adds to the confusion too.  ( Today it got up to 94 degrees so who knows what is in store for us - unpredictable is a good way to describe our Wisconsin weather.).........I thought I'd tell about one of my favorite crops - the ruby red, fragile, gloriously tasty raspberry.  The bushes we planted about four years ago are producing nicely now and I've been picking a couple of quarts of raspberries every two days for a couple of weeks.  We eat them with cereal, with milk and mostly in the seedless jam that I make.  I love the little red orbs but every picking brings my mind back to years ago when a friend and I would go to the nearby forests and together pick wild raspberries.  Each of us had small children so we'd rise early and get out to the woods before our husbands had to be at work at 7:45.  Then we'd rush home with our bounty and tend to the homemaker/mom things till the next foraging day.  It was fun to pick in the early morning forest air and share stories and friendship on the trips to and fro.  My friend was Karin and an exceptional person in my eyes.  She was kind and brilliant and the mother of four children, three girls and a boy.  Karin came over from her German homeland when she was 19.  She spoke English fluently with a little German accent, also spoke French and of course, German.  She had an incredible knowledge of botany and seemed to know every species of plant and tree and weed.  While she was homemaking, she earned a degree in education and then a job at the local high school as a German and French teacher.  The students loved Frau Karin and she showered them with her special kind of attention and affection.  She rode her bicycle the five mile trip to and from her teaching job and one bright morning, a driver with the rising sun glaring in his eyes, did not see Karin on the highway shoulder and drove right over her as a school bus passed in the accompanying lane.  Karin was killed instantly and some of the children were witnesses. She was in her mid forties and it still hurts to think of the loss.  There have just been a few funerals in my life where I just could not attend because I knew that my sobbing would be impossible to stop, and Karin's was one of them. Raspberries remind me of Karin but they also remind me of the good times we had.

A Pop Up Storm

The weather people have lots of curious terms and one is a "pop up" storm.  Our summer has arrived and we are now enjoying sunny days in the eighties and just enough rain to eliminate the need to water the plants.  The lake water is now a comfortable 78 degrees and I'm back to exercising in it whenever we pontoon over to the state owned land.  I wear my trusty speedo water running belt and it keeps me up while I pedal like a cyclist in the cool clear water.  I love it and usually go for about a half hour, merrily splashing with the loons and herons and the occasional eagle.  Bing prefers to use the time on the water to cast a line or two and often pulls in some walleyes or perch.  Well, the other day, we headed for the swimming hole and it was sunny and warm.  (I should emphasize that Bing is a veteran weather watcher and studies the patterns and radar maps and whatever else the TV and internet offers.)  When we arrived, it started to drizzle, not expected but we figured we could handle it and decided to proceed with our cycling and fishing.  It was so refreshing to be in the water and watch the pretty little raindrops splash on the lake surface.  We both thought that this was a short little cloud passing over and we'd soon be high and dry again.  Then the rain intensity increased gradually to a pour.  The wind began to blow and the rain splashed harder.  I looked to see where Bing was, and a white haze and pouring rain blew the placid lake into a sea of whitecaps.  Soon the raindrops were large and cold and I kept praying that it wouldn't turn to hail - the veggies in the garden were finally shooting up but their tender shoots couldn't take hard hail.  Bing managed to drive the boat back to my area and it was good to see him.  We waited out the storm, me in the water and Bing soaking wet on the boat.  He estimated the winds were 25 to 35 mph. .....So, that's a pop up storm.  Very interesting!   

I didn't have the camera with me but included pix of the lake  anyway.