Last Sunday, the sun was shining. The birds were singing. Doug and I were dipping buckets of water from our tiny pond and hauling them in our Powerwagon (learn about the tool that has turned us into superman and wonderwoman here) to all the places we started new plants this […]
I’ve read that pioneers called their wagons prairie schooners. If they crossed my acre and a half of restored remnant prairie today, they would be sailing over a sea of flowers. I can totally relate to the bees. I am drawn to this blooming bounty and am fueled by it. […]
I’m hosting far-flung family from Seattle, Houston and Albany this week, so I’m going to post a link today to an article I wrote for the July/August issue of The Organic Broadcaster It begins: We’ve all read the headlines trumpeting the destructive potential of global warming, filled with phrases like […]
I first walked my land on Labor Day Weekend 2004. I was responding with a pounding heart to the topographical nuance of a protected hollow where a ravine and another, wider valley meet under a big bowl of sky. I was already bonding to the rows of toddler pine, spruce […]
Half of our 44 acres are filled with rows of strapping, teenage White Spruce and Red Pine planted by the previous owner. These trees grow naturally in Northern Wisconsin, but usually exist only by human intervention in the southern part of the state, where we live. The Red Pines in […]
Cinderella couldn’t miss her glass slipper anymore than I longed for my Yellow Lady Slipper, and I’m glad to report that the Case of the Missing Lady Slipper has a fairy tale ending. Check out my earlier post, The Case of the Missing Lady Slipper. After several seasons of deer […]
If you made your living telling fortunes for evergreen trees, you would not read their palms, you would read the little brown nubs overwintering on the end of each branch. In spring those nubs stretch out to become the tree’s yearly growth. How long they will get is anyone’s guess, […]
I didn’t learn about Conifer sex till it smacked me in the face. Our land has 22 acres of teenage pines and spruces as part of a certified tree farm, so how did I fail to notice what was going on sooner? I have been walking among them, cutting out […]
So, there I was Saturday, crouching in the woods under the oldest oak on our land, squinting hard at the ground so I wouldn’t miss a single tiny white flower cluster, pulling them out by the root, biting off the top half of each plant and eating it on the […]
Digging in the Driftless 