Category: Nature

It’s about time …

Boyd

Fruits of the growing season

It seems like it has taken forever, but we finally have ripe tomatoes to pick from the garden. We’ve had peppers for a while now, but despite the fact that we have many tomatoes, they simply wouldn’t rippen. Here we have some of the fruits of our labors. Front left is a Cherokee Purple variety that we love for it’s flavor. Front right is an heirloom Hungarian Heart tomato which is new for us this year. We haven’t tasted it yet (tonight for dinner!), so I can’t tell you about it yet. The gorgeous orange/red stripped tomatoes behind and to the left of the Cherokee Purple are an heirloom Italian plum variety called Speckled Roman, a cross between something called an antique Roman and another variety called Banana Legs. We’re gonna eat those tonight too. You can also see some red serano chiles (my serano plant is doing fabulously this year) along with some yellow hot peppers and some sweet bell peppers. What you see in the back of the photo is the evidence of yet another trip to the roadside stand with the Michigan peaches. What can I say?

Oh, and we did buy some really good, freshly dug, russet baking potatoes that had just come from the farm. You can always tell a really fresh potato because they are hard as rocks and very heavy. Wrapped in foil, two of them are tucked in for a long bake in the oven even as I type this. I adore baked potatoes for dinner and tonight will be a treat for both of us.

Ham Lake Forest Fire on the Gunflint Trail

Boyd

Over the Memorial Day weekend, we travelled to the North Shore. On Saturday, we drove up the Gunflint Trail to see the result of the Ham Lake wildfire that burned over 75,000 acres in the U.S. and Canada. Here are some pictures from our day trip.


This is the placid scene you expect to see when you encounter the north woods along the Gunflint Trail.


But turn 90 degrees counter-clockwise and you begin to see what happened.


Walk into the trail less than 50 feet, and the damage is even more stunning.


Nature, however, is already beginning her recovery, with the Bluebeard Lilies breaking ground already, one of several green plants showing themselves.


A beautiful forest waterfall we saw on the road home. Many people were stopping to take pictures. I think we all appreciated it’s beauty even more given the destruction that lay around it.

Spring Beauty

Boyd

It’s taken me forever to get these pictures downloaded from my camera. Most we taken several weeks ago, but they give you some idea of the beautiful flowers we have in our front yard and this is part of what make spring so thoroughly enjoyable.


Our dwarf German iris we planted last year. Isn’t the color spectacular?!


Specie tulips – because the deer don’t like them.


My precious, fragrant, old-fashioned lilacs.


We planted a trillium (trillium grandiflorum) last year and we were thrilled when it bloomed!


White bleeding hearts – I love all white flowers and I’m particularly pleased that this planting from last spring did so well this year. Harald doesn’t like the white as much as the pink, but I love this plant.


Pink honeysuckle – it’s been aggressively trimmed this year after years of neglect, but is bushing out nicely.


Bachelor buttons that were transplanted from the Hall Family homestead in Lutsen last summer. They have really taken off and are doing magnificently well.


A close up of the Bachelor button blossom. Wonderful, isn’t it? (if a bit blurry!)

Snow pictures

Boyd

OK, for all of you in other parts of the world who might be feeling a little bit snow deprived, here are some pictures taken yesterday afternoon showing our snow fall from the storm that just wen through. I think we’ve gotten about 15″-18″ of new snow. I know the snow is up past my knees when I walk in areas that haven’t been shoveled before.

Later that same day ….

Boyd

Here are some pictures you might enjoy of our puppy (we can’t call her “new” anymore, can we?), Beulah Mae. On Sunday afternoon we went for a drive up the North Shore, beyond Grand Marais and past Five Mile Rock to a long beach that is good for walking and agate-hunting.

Beulah and Harald walking on the beach.

Isn’t she growing up into a beautiful dog?

Proof for all those who think I’ve lost weight – clearly it isn’t so! But Beulah loves me just the same.

Happiness is … making jelly!

Boyd

What is one wonderful and delicious way to spend your Labor Day weekend on a relaxing trip to the North Shore? Why, making jelly, of course! After we arrived on Saturday morning, Karin took me on a trip around the land on the Gator and we stopped by one apple tree on the way toward the garden to check out the squash and cabbage and potatoes and ….

Well, one thing led to another and before you know it, Karin had very helpfully driven me around to some particularly good apple and crabapple trees and we headed back to the house with bags of our fresh-picked fruit. A quick conference with Helen and Kaare and we were back on the Gator headed down to a few more crabapple trees to pick even more fruit. And Helen went out later and picked a while bunch of really beautiful pink crabapples from a tree she knew about.

When it was all said and done, we took about 45 pounds of apples (or thereabouts) and with some ingenuity, a little hard work, the help of a cooler, strong stick and a clean pillow case (not to mention a small mountain of sugar), we had turned that fruit into 56 jars of apple-crabapple jelly. We had fun coming up with a name (after all, you don’t expect us NOT to christen it, do you?) and think we will hereafter refer to it as:

Hall’s World-Famous Wild Apple Jelly
Made at Cow Hill Cottage
Hall Hill Road
Lutsen, MN

It was a blast. And a little bittersweet, because it reminded me of making jelly or preserves with my Grandma on summer days. Below are some pictures taken from all the fun we had:

Me cleaning crabapples – for what seemed a very long time!

What a colorful batch of crabapple fruit, huh?

The lovely, rosey-pink crabapples that Helen found and picked.

Helen cleaning and cutting her pink crabapples.

Fruit in the pot, about to get boiled.

Pots of fruit boiling away on the stove to render the needed juice.

The bag of cooked and crushed fruit, draining into a cooler, the only thing we had that was big enough.

The jellymaker and his bag. Dontchaknow a watched bag never drains!

The next day, cooking some juice to make it into jelly.

Jars and lids sterilizing on the stove, jelly cooking in the back.

Adding the sugar to the boiling juice.

Sugar added, the juice bubbling up thick and hot like lava.

Getting the jars out of the boiling water and ready to fill.

The hot, clear crabapple jelly before it gets canned.

Filling the jars with the lucious pink liquid.

Jars that just came out of their hot water bath, cooling and sealing.

The sun shone on the beautiful jars of jelly.

The jellymakers and the delicious product of their labors.

Beulah Mae & Iowa

Boyd

We drove the almost 300 miles to Cedar Rapids on Friday afternoon and were both surprised by how much we loved the scenic rolling hills of eastern Iowa. We must have seen millions of square acres of corn fields – many miles of it as far as the eye could see. I had never been into Iowa further than the Clear Lake exit off of 35 where I head west to a favorite quilt store – and even that trip had been years ago. It was a delightful trip really and we especially liked the rolling hills area between Cedar Falls and Cedar Rapids. We even passed the National Dairy Cattle Congress in Waterloo and the big John Deere tractor factory they have there. When we arrived and checked in, we went for a little walk because five hours of sitting was too much. Of course, it was after 5:00 on a Friday in small town America, so not a thing was open except for bars and restaurants – and there weren’t many of them even! We especially liked see the Veteran’s Memorial building in downtown Cedar Rapids built in 1927. It sat across a long green mall from the county courthouse, built in 1923 in the neo-classic style. In between, a much smaller memorial to Vietnam veterans in red granite. It was a surprisingly moving experience and we wondered allowed at what this town must have been like in the 1920s – a hub of vital agricultural life for the area. Here is a page that has some good photo links to check out. You can see the mall and courthouse from a citycam atop the Veterans Memorial building, now the city hall. There is a large Czech population in Cedar Rapids and we were hoping to get to the Czech neighborhood to eat because we both love eastern European cuisine, but it would have meant more time in the car and we weren’t up for that.

Saturday morning we got up early, ate at the breakfast buffet, and headed the 47 miles northwest to a tiny place called Center Junction. About 10 miles west of Anamosa. Between Anamosa and Cedar Junction, we passed a little, white, one-room schoolhouse that proudly proclaimed itself Grant Wood‘s first school. Do you recall the famous depression era painter known for his somewhat idealized imagery of middle-America farm life, especially the work “American Gothic” for which he is most well known? It wasn’t hard to imagine how someone who was born and raised in that area might, in the face of the severity and hopelessness of the depression, wish to offer a more optimistic vision of American life as he knew it. Both Harald and I seriously talked about making more trips to Iowa to explore more, just to travel into the little towns to see what they are like and what life looks like for the people who haven’t made the push to the big city.

We picked up Beulah Mae and visited with the breeders for a while before leaving. You could tell the three small girls, one especially, was having a hard time with Beulah leaving. Eventually we waved goodbye and took off down the gravel drive and back to the highway for the long ride home. Beulah was only fitful for the first 20 minutes or so. She settled down after that on the pillow on my lap and half-slept for most of the ride home and we were both so pleased with how well she did in the car, especially considering she’s not had much car travel at all in her young life. The six hours home was a little much for her, I’m sure, but we stopped for potty and water breaks along the way and she really bonded with me – she needed to be in contact with a piece of my skin at all times. When you would put her on the grass, she would potty right away – a hopeful sign for sure. And everywhere we stopped, people would ooohhh and awwwwwe over her to no end and tell us stories of bassets they had loved. That was all very good.

Saturday night she wasn’t too loud going into her kennel in the bedroom and she settled quickly for a long sleep, until she woke up at 4:00 half-crying and half-howling to be let out. I took her into the guest bedroom after Harald took her outside to potty and she curled up right next to me and promptly went back to sleep for another few hours. I was gone yesterday afternoon in class but she was calm and seemed even more settled last night when I got home. She most definitely did NOT like going into her kennel last night and I laid there for a while wondering “how long are sane people expected to put up with this racket before caving in and putting her in the bed?” She did settle down after some time and we had the same routine this morning – wake up at 4:00 a.m. to go potty, then back in the guest bedroom to sleep a while longer. Of course, I had to put her in the kennel before I left for work today as Harald was already gone – and I feel a little like the worst human in the world upon hearing her cry as I left for the day. All I can think of is a silent prayer to St. Francis to comfort her and to help her make the transition and learn that it is OK to be alone because we will always come back. But she’s been in a home with constant human companionship and play for the first eight weeks of her life so this is all terribly frightening for her I’m sure. I’ll try not to lose my mind in the process!

The Beauty of a Summer Garden

Boyd

We’ve been furiously working with our front and back gardens the past few weeks – one of the primary reasons you haven’t heard much from me. Sometimes we don’t come in from working until it gets dark after 9:00 and we still haven’t eaten dinner yet. The rewards are paying off, primarily in the form of backhanded compliments from neighbors to “stop making your yard look so nice – you’re making the rest of us look bad!” The neighbors on either side, of course, have fantastic gardens, it’s just the rest of them who don’t spend much time in the yard. Anyway, we have planted so far:

  • Asters (three exotic varieties with funny petals)
  • Penstemon “Prairie Dusk” – brilliant purple color!
  • Oriental Poppies – I dearly love them
  • Foxglove – how can anyone resist it?
  • Hollyhock “Zebrina” = althaea sylvestris, a/k/a Mallow or French Hollyhock – one my very, very faves – pics to come!
  • Smart Dwarf German Iris
  • Siberian Iris
  • Lobelia
  • Evening Primrose – absolutely irresistable gossamer beauty in the palest pink!
  • Stella de Oro lily
  • Ruby Stella lily
  • Asiatic lily in vivid orange
  • Geum ‘Borisii’ – another fantastic orange flower – why have I never heard of this before?
  • “Tahiti Orange” snapdragons
  • Phlox “David” in pure white
  • Campanula, also in white
  • A variety of campanula called “Purple Bellflower” in the darkest purple you’ve ever seen
  • Numerous impatiens in white, coral and magenta
  • Zinnias
  • Numerous varieties of hostas – I can’t even begin to remember them all!
  • Astilbe
  • Wild Indigo
  • Dwarf Chinese Delphinium ‘Blue Butterfly’ (Delphinium grandiflorum) – which I’m anxious to see bloom!
  • Candle Delphinium ‘Galahad’ (Delphinium elatum) in bothg blue and white
  • 2 Potentilla fruticosa “Abbotswood” shrubs for under the bedroom window
  • Pots of red geranium, white gerbera daisies and dracaena
  • A few pots of petunias
  • A hanging basket of bougainvillea spectabilis (the common purple one – I can’t find the red one locally)

And the all-time, hands-down favorite, right now anyways, is my lovely, fragrant heliotrope (Heliotropium arborescens). Oh, how I love that smell in the garden at night as the sun is setting and the breeze is wafting its vanilla fragrance around the yard.

Is that all of it? And, of course, the roses keep blooming, the tomatoes and peppers are loving the warm weather, and the basil and rosemary are gloriously out of control.

Here are some images to feast your eyes upon:


Hollyhock “Zebrina” – althaea sylvestris, Mallow or French Hollyhock


The dark purple bellflower plant


Bougainvillea spectabilis


My precious angel face roses in bloom – I wish you could smell them!


Heliotrope (Heliotropium arborescens) – we need smell-o-vision!


Foxglove – an old fashioned favorite


A brilliant orange Asiatic lily


For those of you who have only seen our house in fall or winter!

Today’s Beautiful Things

Boyd

William Wordsworth said it most eloquently:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.–Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

I’m pretty sure we are not “designed” to accomodate as much horror and strife as is offered to us on a daily basis. I feel so, well, assaulted and nearly overwhelmed on an almost daily basis by so much ugliness in the world that I’ve been searching for ways to counteract my disgust with something that is life-affirming and positive. As part of that effort, I have decided that every day I will find at least one thing that will make me really laugh (old reruns of The Nanny are especially good for this, particularly is Yetta is in a scene) and at least one thing that I find truly beautiful.

When I permit myself the time to slow down enough to truly see, it is in nature where I am most awed and most often moved. I’ve committed to spending at least five minutes in my yard in the morning, if at all possible, to find one of my anodyne images. Here are today’s …

Have you seen these new Sunset echinaceas? They have orange/red/pink flowers and are a surprising twist on the old purple variety.

We’ve had pansies planted in three window boxes and several pots for more than a month now. They will fail soon – they can’t take the kind of heat we’ve been having. But they’ve been a joy for days and before they come to their end, I figured I had better take a picture of some of them. I love the near-riotous color.

Our neighbor Margaret has this splendid burgundy clematis growing on a trellis next to our driveway. Fresh with the drops from an early morning rain, it is lovely isn’t it?!