All in Good Time

I never get sick.  And then, I did.

If I remember right, this happened last year about this time, too. I bragged that this Iowa girl was immune to the different strains of bugs found in the UP.  So I didn't get so much as a  head cold all winter long.  Nothing.  Then, right as Spring is trying to start springing and things outside are getting interesting, it hits.  Has to be influenza A, B, D or Z.  That laying in bed for a day or two wishing someone would shoot you to get rid of the nasty body aches, then days of congestion and sneezing and nose blowing and on and off fever and chills and no sense of smell and just all over ick.

So it caught up to me this year as well.

But I am on the mend.  The worst of it, I think, is the lack of energy and just being soooo tired of being sick.  It's depressing to be sick.  So hopefully, today, my first day back to work, is as therapeutic for me as staying home the last couple of days were, watching it snow and snow, but watching Spring come anyway, in the greening up of everything UNDER the snow, and the insistance of the little migrating-through-my-yard birds, who are telling me it's time to get out from underneath the heavy sameness of winter and onto the new exciting stuff, in spite of what the weather outside currently looks like.

All in good time.

Spring comes.

The grass starts to grow

Birds go from their drab winter colors to their flashy "Pick ME!" brights.

even though the in-between stage looks awkward

but it gets better

A couple of times when I took the dogs out yesterday, we were, all three of us, stopped dead in our tracks by the dicotomy of my front yard.  Because there was beautiful, big fluffy flake silently falling snow.

even half snowflakes are beautiful

And, hugely contrasting, the BLAST of  hundreds of birds hiding in the trees, singing their various, I-AM-HERE-NOTICE-ME-WHERE-ARE-YOU-O-LOVE-OF-MY-LIFE-LET'S-GET-ON-WITH-THIS-SPRING-FLING calls and tweets and creaks and screeches and twitters and groans.

American Tree Sparrow, stopping by for refueling before heading to northing Canada

Dapper Chipping Sparrow, dressed to impress

Song Sparrow interrupting his singing to dig a hole through the snow.  

Life is amazing.  It just goes on.

Bless you.  In case you sneeze.  And even if you don't.  Happy Easter!

Puppy Love

When I was 9 years old, I wanted to be a veterinarian.  It was a sure thing.  The way I saw it was, the absolute worst thing I ever would have to do as part of the job description was give animals their shots (mostly because I thought shots were the absolute worst thing anyone would EVER have to endure in their life), and the absolute best thing....playing with animals would BE MY JOB!!!

Looking back, that was funny, because by animals, and my lack of experience with different types of pets and farm animals, I meant that my work would be almost exclusively with dogs (I got bitten by a cat once, and therefore wasn't sure I could ever have a successful relationship with one) and hopefully, mostly with PUPPIES.

Puppy Love.

I grew up on a farm.  Everyone I knew who lived on a farm had a dog or two or three.  When our family went out to visit our neighbors, I probably headed straight for their dogs, ignoring humans--grown-ups and kids alike--and played with their pets until it was time to go home.  Seriously, I loved every one with all my heart.

We usually had a dog on our farm, too, but lived on a busy (relatively...it was the 1960s) highway, which tended to seriously affect our dogs' life expectancies.  I remember my dad crying (once of only about three times ever in my life, I think), as he buried our beloved beagle Missy in an old feed sack in our grove. It's one of my earliest memories, asking my dad if I could see her "one last time" before he put her in the ground.  I remember him breaking down in tears showing me just a glimpse of her stubby tail sticking out from the Purina bag, to spare me the realities of this victim of a hit and run, as it seemed all our farm dogs eventually became.

I think that was probably the reason my parents sort of gave up on having a dog. Too many doggie funerals, the last was for a sweet little wire-haired terrier named Patty that we barely even got to know. Later on, we moved to town, and though we tried once more, with my black mutt, Jenny, we found that she was not happy cooped up in a house in a busy (relatively...it was the 1970s) neighborhood. When she took to running and roaming, we gave her away to a kind farm wife who lived on a relatively un-busy country road.

Fast forward at least 45 years (wow...it's a long time to be puppy-deprived).  For various reasons, the stars have finally aligned and made the time and conditions right for us to have a dog.  So of course, we got TWO. We are crazy.

I know it.  So I've read and read about it.  I know it will be hard...challenging...expensive...worrisome...messy.  It will also be a time full of oodles of mutual love (and puppy kisses).

They are Atlas

and Theia.

Because they are Titans in training.  Soon to outgrow their crates and beds and our couch.

 Big gentle loving puppies who we hope will turn into big gentle loving dogs.  If showering them with our own human love helps, it will be a shoe in.  Maybe many shoes before we get past the chewy stage. Because speaking for myself, I am in love. So much so that I find myself in tears watching them sleep with boneless abandon or twitching puppy paws under my table at work.

Thank You, God, for Cesar Millan, and others like him, who train people to treat their dogs as dogs and for all the good and sometimes conflicting puppy-training advice to be found on the internet.  We are going to do our best to help our new little friends (sorry....I am not into calling pets my babies...I know it's important that they are dogs first and foremost) have happy and fulfilling lives.  I know it will be a good time for Bob and I to communicate (which is my favorite thing to do anyway) about what I think are our differing pet-parenting (I know I said "parent," it's just a convenient word) styles. Bob's past life was full of pets of various species, shapes, and sizes, while I have lived my whole adult life with only cats....no guinea pigs, hamsters, or especially dogs. In addition, I don't think Bob has to try hard to be a pack leader. I have to think about it more.  But I figure that leading two puppies through life can't be much harder than leading packs of middle-schoolers.  Call me naive.  I really have no idea what to expect.

I do, however, expect that in the midst of housetraining failures and nightime-I don't-want-to-go-to-bed whining, and stubborn feisty  I-don't-want-to-listen-to-you-when-there-are-so-many-smells-to-be-discovered moments, and sorry-I-chewed-on-ate-or-destroyed-your-favorite-(fill in the blank), that the rewards will be great.

Of course, you know the best reward of all.

Looks of love, adoration, excitement, whipping tail wags, hilarious behaviors, and tons and tons of sweetest of sweet

Puppy Love.

big paws

puppy yin yang

Epiphany

I just realized how awesome a title this is. God laughs at me and hands me a title for my blog post.

Yesterday, at a very timely time, I had a personal epiphany.  It happens to me sometimes.  God taps me on the head, or the shoulder, or just gives me a little shove.  Funny how it should happen right about the time of THE Epiphany.  Like I said, God laughs at me sometimes.

Yesterday, Bob had decided we needed to drive to Houghton to pick something up.  The weather looked, as the weather often does in my neck of the northwoods, pretty decent at the place we started out, only to become pretty crummy, then a lot crummy, then dangerously crummy, then IMPOSSIBLY, PERHAPS FATALLY crummy within the space of just a few miles.

So I did what I usually do when I am in a semi-panic state and Bob is driving, and I am trying really hard not to notice that we cannot see the road, or the sky, or the trees, or oncoming cars, trucks and snowmobiles. I pull out my iPhone and look for distractions that keep me from looking at the road, and especially from making noises every time the aforementioned landmarks disappear entirely for long moments of blinding, swirling, slippery WHITE.

Bob is Job.  He has the patience of several saints when he is driving me about in the winter.  Because there am I, sighing and gasping and whatever it is I do (I don't want to think about this...I am a crazy woman, I know), while he is keeping the car beautifully under control.

It was bad all the way to Houghton.  Doesn't help that we haven't driven to Houghton a million times, and so don't know by heart all the curves like those around Painesdale and South Range.  Because you couldn't see them.  Even the signs were completely covered with snow, so it was pretty rough knowing what the road was going to do.  Even when we got to the top of the hill to go down into Houghton, you couldn't see either Houghton or Hancock ahead.  Or Walmart.  Etcetera.  I forgot to mention we saw a snowmobile driver miss a possibly fatal crash by a couple of car lengths as he accidentally popped over the top of a snow drift and onto the busy highway.  Bad. Bad.

So.  We got to Houghton. Made the pick up.  We went to get a bite to eat.  I realized halfway through eating that I was glaring at Bob.  I think I was mad or in shock or something. The trip was important, had to be done, and Bob drove fabulously.  But it was a completely surreal moment, having lunch like nothing had just happened.

We got back in the car and started home.  And, thank God, there were moments where it just wasn't quite as bad, followed by a lot of moments where it was just as bad.  But something had happened.

I started looking at the snow.  Jesus....I have never in my life personally seen so much snow. 200+ inches of snowfall makes for a lot of it laying about on the ground. There is a lot of snow in the UP...just saying.

You know last winter was my first winter in the UP.  And you know it was mild. Hence my surprise at seeing a somewhat more normal amount of snow for this area.


And it is so beautiful.  Beyond beautiful.  The sheer depth of it is awesome. How it covers every branch and twig is amazing. How it droops over the edges of rooflines is comical.  I call it the "snowflakes holding hands" how it can stretch out and stick together and not fall.

The epiphany was this.  Suddenly I was not a bit afraid.  Even in the blinding white, because I trusted Bob completely to do his best to keep us safe.  His best is very, very good, by the way.  I was suddenly free to look and enjoy and gasp and sigh not in fear but in awe of this beautiful land that I now call my home.

And I was free to take pictures.  Sometimes of blinding white. But mostly of snow and trees and beauty.

Most the the drive to Houghton...I don't see the road, either.

A little bit better, but where is the road?

The way back home...much better!

Amazing, yes?

I hope it sticks, this feeling, just like the snow sticks on everything around here.  I hope I can continue to feel just the awesome gratitude I feel for the wonders of this particular aspect of God's creation.  I think it was a gift, this little epiphany moment.  I don't know if I deserved it.  But I am grateful.

You should come here sometime in the winter, Iowa folks, and folks from other lands as well.  Maybe you'd be afraid at first, too, like I was.  But stick around, and you will get used to it.  God will give you a shove, if you need it. I guarantee it.

Stay safe and warm, my friends.

A few random pics of today's visitors to my yard....female pheasant

Male Purple Finch

Male pheasant meets deery deers

Best of 2016...Don't Be Scared...Only a Hundred!

I take a lot of pictures.

Bet you didn't notice.

Actually, you probably have no idea.  I could not have existed as a photographer in the days of film cameras.  I have friends who work in film and take lovely artistic shots, beautiful as paintings, just a few at a time.  Me....I have to take a hundred shots to get two or three that I like, sometimes.  And I hoard them. But unlike a hoarder, I do take time to look back at them, because I find little clues, little insights, for instance, on bird behavior, and leaf patterns and cycles of snow and sunsets and moon rises and migration and foliage and plumage. Thrilling to me, maybe not so to everyone.  So I don't, like, pull them out to show when people come over. (I'm only a teeny bit tempted to do so.) All these pictures are stored on my computer, backed up with Carbonite so I don't lose them. The best or most memorable or iconic or amusing or strange I upload to Flickr.

So Flickr has something called "Best of 2016," where you can post what you think is your best shot of the whole year.  Just one.  I looked through my stuff...no way could I pick one.  So I thought to myself that I would pick one best from every month.  No way.  It started with one and then I had to add two more, until instead of 12, the number in my Best of 2016 album is:

165

Crazy picture-taking woman.

So I thought I'd show you and see what you think. And I'll edit (somewhat)  because I would have to upload them one by one here and I may get impatient and this will end up being like the 29 Best or something and because, well, some pictures deserve an explanation, and I am going to try (hard) not to bore you with that. Maybe in some of my pics the beauty or humor or quirkiness or whatever will speak for itself, but there are other pictures the are downright important and you might not see why, until I tell you and then you DO.  So if you are perplexed at why I chose a particular shot, you can ask me what's up with it.  Otherwise, my captions will be short and to the point.

So...

Here...

Lots of pictures to enjoy on a snowy day.

January 2016

I notice that my first pictures of both 2016 and 2017 are bird discovery pictures. Although I am just starting to scratch the surface of the new-to-me birds of the UP, these are some I enjoy and look for now:

Pine Grosbeak

Lovely Pine Grosbeak boy

Bohemian Waxwing

Black-capped Chickadee

Common Redpoll boy

 Something else that is new to me are the pinky pink sunrises and sunsets. So pink that the reflections make the snow turn pink as well

February

It's amazing how many different looks the Big Lake can have.  These pictures were taken about a week apart:

Beautiful, but desolate

Amazing Azure

 And, of course, birds:

American Goldfinch getting a drink

Female Common Redpoll

first of many shots of the glorious Evening Grosbeak in my yard

March

one of many many

In March, Bald Eagles are an every day thing

love the young ones!

But Snowy Owls...they are an extra extra special treat involving many hours on the road.

So very worth it!

April

April Fool's Day snowstorm and my first pic of a posing wolf

followed a few days later by a closer look

even a snowstorm doesn't stop us from trying to impress the girls

Although others of us are, frankly, confused by it

beautiful drive to work....yes, this is April in the UP

May

Finally, some spring green

tasty maple buds and porcupine

Bobolinks

Rare visit from a Northern Cardinal

Rose-breasted Grosbeak

June

Lots of pics, so I will just say...

Flora:

Columbine

Hawkweed and Hover Fly

more hawkweed

Lupines

Sweet Peas

Fauna:

Eastern Bluebird girl

boy

American Goldfinch girl

silly boy

twinsies

Little Blue Eyes

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

Brown Thrasher and yummy worm

House Wren doing what a House Wren does

Ring-necked Pheasant girl

Rare in the UP Dickcissel

my favorite fauna/faun/merman

July

Wood Duck babies

Common Mergansers

Ruffed Grouse

through my window

damselfly

what happens when you eat too many Lucky Charms

wildflowers galore

Wild Rose

Queen Anne's Lace

Great Spangled Frittilary on Swamp Milkweed (with skippers)

Chicory

Birdsfoot Trefoil and skipper (maybe by next year, I will know my skippers)

Purple Finch

August

Clown in chair cloud

Experiment

the day my room turned pink

late fawn

vacuum cleaner

Peg

Pretty doe

curly bird

September

Trumpeter Swan

Where's George?

lichen

fire

Robbins Road

Amanita Muscaria or a sesame seed bun

maple

forest glow

fern and lichen

October

Larch yellow

Ostrich Fern

Rockland Pond

reflections

magic

Pied-billed Grebe

November

Mama Moose!

regenerating aspen

beautiful drive to work

Turkeys in the hay

Snow Bunting

Evening Grosbeaks posing for the cam

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (rare bird in the UP)

Rare bird in my yard!

deserves several shots

7th recorded in Michigan....2nd in the UP

Bullock's Oriole

December

more magic from Rockland Pond (yes, this picture is in color!)

Peg's favorite lookout

under cover

what's left of the sunflower (see July)

snow on alders

Blue Jay in the wind

December's daily horde

pretty boy Ring-necked Pheasant

One more look

pretty pink sky in my neighborhood

Well, that's it (finally).

Can you believe that's a hundred shots?  I hope you don't feel like that couple who comes to dinner and is forced to watch the vacation/wedding/birth/surgery (eww) videos.  These pictures make me happy in different ways.  And, don't worry (or worry just a little).  I haven't stopped. I've (only) taken 429 pictures so far this year. :)

So come over sometime.  I promise I won't show you all my pictures.   Maybe just 100 or so.

Happy Happy 2017!