Fall

Probably you’ve noticed by now. One word titles? Daily posts? Jessie must have committed to some sort of crazy “girl, don’t you know it’s spring and now is not the time” blogging challenge.

You are correct.  I have and I love it and today’s word, spring insanity be dammed, is Fall.  As in Autumn.

A perfect excuse to share a completely random picture I loved but never had cause to share, taken last fall while hunting in the giant wheat fields of Montana.

 

What can I say. I just can’t resist a good challenge!

Dark Cloud

It’s officially spring and I can’t help but to hope for soft blue skies and flowers waiting to welcome me to the day.  Instead this morning I opened my eyes to a sky full of dark clouds. Dark clouds that occasionally spit out rain and sleet. It was a day that truly feels like spring. One of those that no amount of cute rhymes about “April showers” can make pleasant when you are out in the teeth of the wind.

Spring is not my favorite season.

But in the wind I was.

And for the first time this year that wind smelled like spring.

And by the time I was done dodging rain showers our new arrivals were all settled in.

And with a scrap of fluff in my hand I was reminded that Spring does have it’s merits after all.

 

 

Adventure

It had been years too long since our last car camping trip.

But, finally, children had been deemed old enough, jobs and school vacations aligned, gear was procured, animal care was found and we loaded up the girls in our giant truck, that seems a lot less giant filled with car camping gear for five, and headed out on a spring break adventure to…

… Illinois!

And it turns out Illinois isn’t the kind of place most people spring break to. But when you are from Wisconsin southern Illinois looks like spring..…and feels like spring. (Admittedly mostly in a – drizzly, wear all your layers plus a rain jacket, good thing we brought the long underwear – sort of way. But that is basically spring so I stand by my statement.) And when the rest of the world has traveled to warm sunny places you have campgrounds and hiking trails virtually to yourselves.

There were rocks to climb on…

…fires to light…

… tasty food to eat…

… and general shenanigans.

At the end it was deemed a most excellent adventure by all.

Then I got home and discovered that John’s theory that Poison Ivy loves me so much it jumps on me from the side of the trail must be correct because that’s the only explanation for the amount of spots I’m breaking out in after spending the trip wearing long underwear and a rain jacket!

But you know, every time a new blister pops up, I remember the trip with fondness. It was an excellent adventure before the itching began!

Validation

There has been a lot of buzzing in the world about the KonMarie method. If you don’t know what that is, that’s alright, the key words are  the KonMarie method of tidying up. Honestly I’m not sure exactly what it all entails but getting rid of stuff, particularly stuff that doesn’t bring you joy, seems to be it’s main priority. Now, I’m not a hoarder, I just like to keep things that might one day be useful (Said every hoarder in existence ever). I like to think of it more that I embrace the practicality and frugality of my dairy farming heritage along with a strong urge to reuse items that might have further use (Dang, I still sound like a hoarder don’t I?).

My house is not piled high with old newspapers but I do have a good collection of worn out clothes that some people call rags and others just call garbage. But I just made a pile of them into a rug.

Validation.

I don’t have stacks of things littering my living room but I do have useful odds and ends tucked away in boxes for “someday”, “just in case” and “parts of it are still good.”

Today I used a drawstring out of a pair of shorts I threw out in college (that was before my rag collecting days but I kept the drawstring because it was still good), and one of those plastic doohickey’s you can put on a drawstring to tighten it up and lock it there (salvaged off a defunct Christmas item) to replace the non-existent drawstring on my husband’s sleeping bag stuff-sack (an item that I’m pretty sure was saved by my parents for “just in case”).

Validation.

You can KonMarie all you like, I’m saving my cast off bits and doodads and springs of all shapes and sizes. Those doohickys and rags really do come in useful, eventually, and those springs, well I’m with Marie on that one. They bring me joy.

 

Disclaimer:  I clearly don’t know anything about Marie Kondo or her methodology. I just wanted to write a blog post to brag about the fact that my ferreting away of “useful” things really is useful. Sometimes. And also so that I could photograph a spring. Because I love them. 

Tom Wasp and the Seven Deadly Sins by Amy Myers

A Victorian London murder mystery being solved by a chimney sweep?

You have my attention!And once my attention was captured, this book kept it!

The characters were rich enough that I thought in the back of my mind that this must not be the first of the Tom Wasp books (Great news, it isn’t!) but wholly contained enough that I didn’t feel I was missing anything. The chimney sweep lifestyle and idioms were so well done I went out and found another book on chimney sweeps just so I could learn more. And the mystery was different enough to keep me flipping pages past bedtime.

Would I recommend it? A page turner that sent me to the library looking for more on the subject? Oh, and did I mention that it made me laugh out loud on more than one occasion? Really, what’s not to love?

Just in case it was unclear the answer to all those questions is, “Yes, get the book!” (Though perhaps you should start with the first one, it wasn’t necessary but it is definitely now on my “to read” list!)
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I discovered this book because I’m a proud member of Rosie’s Book Review Team!

Stories with Granny: “The Indian Scare”

When I was last at my Granny’s house she showed me a booklet she had recently obtained about the history of Lannon, Wisconsin, the town where she grew up. As I looked though it, Granny guided me toward pictures of her and articles about her dad and she mentioned that she was surprised that there was nothing about the “Indian Scare” in it.  Well, that was a story I wanted to hear and after she told it to me I thought I might not be the only one who wanted to hear this almost forgotten piece of Lannon history.  So, she told it to me one more time as I typed it up to share.

When I was about eight years old I would sit on my Great Aunt Delia’s lap and beg her to tell me the story of the “Indian Scare”. It went like this:

My great grandfather Heman came to the Wisconsin territory in 1844 ( Wisconsin didn’t become a state until 1848).  He and his wife Sarah had four children John, Demerit (where did they get that one?) Amelia and Adelia. Delia was the youngest of the four and they all lived in a log cabin just East of what is now the village of Lannon.

One day Heman, Sarah and the boys went to Uncle Hiram’s, which was though the woods, to help them with their harvest. They left the two girls at home with a list of chores to be done before they were to join them at Uncle Hiram’s. This included sweeping the floor, setting the cheese and generally tidying up the cabin. Before they finished their jobs a man came riding along and stopped at the door and told them that they better run away someplace and hide because the Indians were coming. It seemed that a couple of men from Milwaukee had devised a scheme to get all the settlers to run away from their homes to avoid the (non-existent) Indians.

After the man rode on to “warn” other settlers, Delia was ready to go through the woods to Uncle Hiram’s in a hurry. Melia said no, they had to finished their jobs. Which they did. Delia was frightened all the time and knew the Indians were going to come and when they did they would eat all the cheese! Finally Melia said it was time to leave and they headed off through the woods. But Melia kept stopping every once in a while and breaking off grapevines. She threaded these grapevine pieces through the hem of her long skirt with the intention of making a hoop skirt for herself. Delia was very frightened and she knew there was an Indian hiding behind every tree in the woods. But eventually Melia finished her hoop skirt and they both got safely to Uncle Hiram’s.

Later on they found out that the whole Indian scare was a hoax perpetrated by some jokers in Milwaukee, though a lot of the settlers that were warned did pack up their belongs and headed further West to what is now Merton.

When I think about those men scaring the settlers for fun I’m incredulous that people could be so callus but I can’t help but get the giggles when I picture the two sisters headed though the woods, one jumping at every noise and the other improving the fashion of her dress as she walked along!

Beach Morning

Have you ever gone outside on a beautiful, sunny, March morning when the snow is still crusty from the freeze the night before and the sun is warm on your face?

And when you were out there did you ever look at a nice big spot of snow that didn’t yet have foot prints on it and think, “Hmmm?….”

“Ahhh yes!”

“This does feel just like the beach!”

 

 

Coldest Place on Earth

Winter is winding down. We still have a foot of snow on the ground and the driveway is still covered in ice but the sun has warmth again and the forecast for the week ahead is starting to lean toward spring temperatures. I suspect by this time next week we will have a whole different landscape out the window.

Looking back I think it’s been a great winter-y sort of winter. We are not blessed here in southern Wisconsin to have winters that automatically come with piles of snow and cold weather but this year we were. Of course this year we also had, according to our school’s superintendent, “an unprecedented amount of snow days” and some people didn’t really like that. Other people complained that they ran out of places to put snow along their driveways and sidewalks, I guess they didn’t like that either.  Still other people liked to share the shocking fact that for a bit it was colder here than in Antarctica (of course it was summer in Antarctica, but people using that phrase don’t like when that is pointed out to them). In any case it was undeniably cold here, the weather powers-that-be called it a polar vortex.

I liked to call it real winter but that made people want to facewash me in that lovely winter snow. Fortunately for me, those were also the people who didn’t want to follow me outside into the cold and snow so I was pretty safe. And yes, it was super cold, like pipe freezing cold and “Wow, let’s use the infrared thermometer to take the temperature of the toilet seat because I think my butt is freezing to it” cold.  One could be upset by that or you could just relish in the fact that taking the temperature of the bathroom floor vs the toilet seat vs the living room floor vs the woodstove is a fun game to play with the infrared thermometer you always wanted but never needed. Of course that’s just inside the house, the real fun was outside.

Going outside when the windchill drops to 40 below (for my international friends that’s the same in Fahrenheit and Celsius) is an adventure. There are layers and layers to put on and eyelashes try to freeze together and your boogers certainly freeze inside your nose and if you spill water on yourself while hauling it to poultry it freezes solid before you get inside and, if you really get a good gust of wind on your forehead, the cold can cut through all your hats and layers and give you an ice cream headache just from standing in it.

It’s amazing when it gets that cold!

Reading back on that I fear I have failed to relay the amount of fun that is. Maybe you have to be a certain kind of person to find the fun in just being when the air makes your face hurt. But what can I say, I’m that person.

My (possibly weird) love of the cold is not the point though. The point is, it was quite cold and wintry here.  However as cold as it was outside, I maintain the odd truth that the coldest place around (certainly colder than Antarctica was this February) are gas station bathrooms. How they manage to keep their water running at such frigid temperatures is clearly some form of gas station magic that us mere mortals are not privy too. As much time as I spent outside in the “dangerously cold” weather I was never as cold as I was in a gas station bathroom. In fact I’m willing to put forth the theory that it’s possibly the weathermen had it wrong and this “polar vortex” situation was really just what happens when too many gas station bathroom doors open simultaneously.

How about you? Were you any place colder than a gas station bathroom this winter?