More signs of spring

Today is sunny but breezy. Hilda and I had a nice walk. Each time I’m able to get outside, I see more signs of life. I’m sad to report there is no activity where the white trillium is supposed to be. There is one rather lonesome-looking red trillium making an appearance by the garage. Too soon to tell if that bump in the middle will or will not turn into a flower.

Red trillium

The prairie smoke is doing very well and will be in full flower soon.

Prairie smoke

The wild ginger is up near the creek. Once this plant gets going, it is capable of outcompeting weeds. It will be interesting to see if it can prevail against the ubiquitous garlic mustard and reed canary grass.

Wild ginger

The trees are flowering all over, giving a fuzzy appearance to the thicket that borders the west side of our land.

Boxelder flowers

The tiny cotyledons on the wetland are big enough this week to show up in a picture. They all look a lot alike. It is probably more evidence that they are, in fact, all the same kind of weed. I don’t see any sign yet of the oats we planted as a cover crop. The birds may have eaten most of those seeds. I am going to spread more oats tomorrow in hopes that we get the rain that is predicted. The last front dumped rain all around us, leaving us with only 0.3”. Terry persists in telling me every morning how much rain we do or do not need. I remind him that it isn’t financial aid—rain is not awarded according to need.

Tiny cotyledons among the dead grass leaves

Hilda’s seedlings are doing well. We hope to start planting onions, potatoes, and cabbage next weekend.

Readiness activities

It has been a beautiful weekend. The thermometer reads 76°. I opened the windows to get rid of the lingering smell of yesterday’s red-wine-braised brisket. It smelled good when it was cooking, but enough is enough.

Terry got the tractor out yesterday to rototill the garden. The soil was perfect, he said. 

Terry rototills the garden

Today he and I planted 75 asparagus plants in a patch of soil where he used to have lilacs and Nanking cherries. He dug up and moved the lilacs last week. The Nanking cherries just got torn out. We don’t have the right site for them. He tilled the soil with the tractor, and today we were ready to plant. In a bold move, I put away my winter boots and got out my gardening boots. I put on my gardening pants and got my knees dirty for the first time this season. 

It will be nice to have more asparagus. Our pilot study that we planted a few years ago is completely inadequate. We have to harvest for a whole week before we have enough for one meal for two. It takes several years for the asparagus to get going. In the first year, you can only harvest for one week. The rest of the growth has to go to the roots. Next year, we can harvest for two weeks, and so forth. In several years, we will be able to harvest for the asparagus’ whole growing season.

The girls are so happy to be out and about. They come a-runnin’ every time anyone walks by the fence, ever hopeful that treats are forthcoming. If no treats are forthcoming, they don’t hold it against you. They just go back to scratching in the dirt, pecking at sticks, lounging in the sun, or rolling in the dust. One never knows where one will find something wonderful.

The girls come to the fence to see if treats are coming. Ingrid is particularly excited!

Hilda has been busy in the greenhouse. I made sure to get some pictures of her. Not to sound morbid or anything, but that is how I would like to remember her when she’s gone. She loves to work in the greenhouse.

Hilda pots up a cabbage plant

Onion (back) and fennel (front) seedlings

Brussels sprouts babies

I walked out to where we seeded the prairie last fall. The standing water has come and gone twice now since the snowmelt. I had to squat down to see tiny cotelydons coming through the soil. I’d like to think they are sprouting from the tiny seeds we scattered. Chances are they are just weeds. The seed catalog said on every page that it takes three years to really see the prairie develop. I must be patient. Think of how much asparagus I’ll have by then!

Spring at last

It’s been raining off and on. Yesterday afternoon, the temperature was 78°! Almost hot. After such a long cold winter, I had forgotten how much easier it is to live when it’s warm. I automatically brace myself for the cold air to hit me when I go outside but wait—it’s not cold. It’s nice! With the first warm rain, the grass has greened up considerably in the last week.

A different color on the lawn!

I had some leftover buttermilk after I made muffins. Buttermilk is reputedly good for chickens as a probiotic for their crops (“crop” in this case being part of their digestive system). I found two flattened hamburger buns, circa Labor Day, in the back of my freezer. I broke the buns into the buttermilk and gave it to the girls. It was the Best Thing Ever (as usual). I videotaped the event for your enjoyment. The chickens ate their treat in two phases. The first phase is to grab a piece of bread out of the bowl and give it a good shake, flinging buttermilk everywhere including all over the photographer’s legs. The bread gets dropped, picked up, shaken, dropped, stolen, and finally eaten. After the bread is gone, phase 2 begins. All the hens gather around the bowl and drink the remaining buttermilk making tap, tap, tap noises on the bottom. I didn’t realize until I played back the recording that the woodpecker and redwing blackbirds were louder than the clucking of the hens. As you watch the video, enjoy the sounds of spring, including the occasional gust of wind.

Nice weather

Today was beautiful. I went out for a walk this afternoon. There was a brisk wind blowing from the south, but the temperatures were in the 50’s and the sun was, at last, warm. Hundreds of sandhill cranes flew over in waves high, high in the sky. I went out to the wetland to spread some seed that I found when we were preparing the garden order. I collected seed from some of the native plants I have growing here and there, stowed it in lunch bags with my garden seeds, and forgot about it until it was time to inventory our stock and figure out what we needed for this year.

The wetland is very wet. Canada geese hang out there often. I hope some of the seeds we planted survived. They are supposed to be adapted to wet conditions. I’m pretty sure the birds have eaten all of the oats. I put more oats out along with native seeds. I also spread some coneflower and New England aster seeds in the drier bare spots. The coneflower seed head is wicked! I should have used gloves or beat the seeds loose with a stick while the heads were still in the bag. When I got back in the house, I pulled 5 splinters from my thumb.

The wet wetland

When I was done seeding, I walked back to the creek. The water is high, but nowhere near flooding. Not much sign of plant life yet.

The creek

Last week one of the Aracauna chickens laid a tiny egg. Hilda boiled it along with some regular sized egg. It was very cute. We don’t know if it means that one of our hens has started laying again after taking a break or is on the verge of giving it up forever. We have more chicks coming in May. When they reach maturity, we are going to have to make difficult decisions about the old girls. 

A tiny egg next to a large one.

Spring break

While Terry made a quick trip to North Dakota to visit family and friends, I had a staycation with Jane. We spent Monday and Tuesday cleaning closets, removing a total of 32 garbage bags of clothes for Goodwill.

We set aside Wednesday morning to have fun. Pat told us about enormous croissants at the Village Bakery in Fox Lake. Neither Jane nor I was familiar with the area. We found the bakery with a little help from Jane’s GPS. The croissants were, as Pat reported, as big as the plate. While they weren’t the flakiest croissants I had ever had, they made up for it with a huge log of marzipan-like filling in the middle. Given that it was after 10:00 when we got to the bakery for breakfast, the croissant was enough to do me for all day.

Giant croissant on dinner-sized plate

As long as we were in the area, we drove north on Highway 59 to Grass Lake Rd. Grass Lake Rd. went between Grass Lake and Fox Lake. On one of the bridges we saw three loons on Fox Lake and a small flock of buffleheads on Grass Lake. On the other side of the lake, we went north to Chain-O-Lakes State Park. Shortly after entering the park, we came upon a pair of sandhill cranes in a wetland. I took a picture with my little camera. We hadn’t set out to bird watch and thus did not bring the good camera with telephoto lens or even a pair of binoculars.

A pair of sandhill cranes

Down by the lake, we saw a large bird in a tree. We couldn’t tell what it was without any means of magnifying the image. We decided to call it an immature bald eagle.

It was a beautiful day for a drive, even if it was cold. Despite the persistent night freezes, we have lost most of the snow. Sad, ugly piles of grey slush, riddled with pits where sun-warmed stones have melted down, line the roads. I can’t wait for it to all be gone. I wonder if the grass with ever get green again. 

Too late for eagles

On Saturday, Jane, Jan, and I went down to Starved Rock to look for eagles. We knew we were late. The eagles hang around in January and February, fishing in the open water by the lock and dam on the Illinois River. Still, it was such a bitter cold winter that we thought there might be a chance that the ice wasn’t yet gone.

Jan’s father loved the lock and dam. As a child she went on family trips there often. Thus, she could navigate our way past Utica, IL to the road along the river. We saw a bufflehead duck in the flooded lowlands next to the road. And geese. Canada geese everywhere. There was no ice, however. Not a good sign for eagle watching. Jan saw a large white bird which she thought was a swan. I wondered if it was a pelican. I never heard of pelicans in Illinois.

We pulled into the parking lot at the Lock and Dam Visitor Center. The Visitor Center had an upper and lower outside viewing area. We spent quite a while on the upper deck. There were no eagles. We were too late. The large white birds were, in fact, pelicans. I loved watching the pelicans in North Dakota. I nearly drove off the road more than once watching flocks of pelicans soar over the prairie potholes. There weren’t so many here, but we did see a few of them soaring.

Three pelicans

Several pelicans sat near the dam on something solid. I couldn’t see exactly what it was.

Pelicans hanging around by the dam

 

The lock and dam is right across from Starved Rock. I had never been to Starved Rock, so Jan explained the story. A tribe of Indians sought refuge from their enemies on the top of Starved Rock. They were trapped there and starved to death. I figured that they didn’t call it Starved Rock because there was a cheerful story behind it.

Starved Rock

We crossed the river and entered the park. It was after 11:00 now, and I was getting hungry. We drove up a hill to the lodge.

Ravine near the Lodge

 

Most of the Lodge was built by the CCC in 1933. “I always think of Louie when I hear about the CCC,” Jane said.

“He was in the CCC?” I asked. Louie was the ranger at Camp Pokonokah Hills, where all of us had worked for many years, although my time did not overlap Jan’s.

“Yes, he was.” Jane said.

“I didn’t know that either,” Jan said. That surprised me. I though Jan knew Louie at least as well as Jane did.



Lodge entrance

The Lodge was built of huge logs that were still round. It was a good, solid, enormous old building like the CCC could only build. They stand the test of time, those buildings.

We went inside. The gift shop was amazingly high end. There was a sale rack of women’s clothing and scarves that made no reference to the park at all. I saw some fleeces embroidered with the park name and some pine trees for $37, which was pretty reasonable. I didn’t buy one, though.

We got a table by the windows and had a lovely lunch. I had a grilled portabella sandwich with an enormous pile of home-made potato chips. Hooray! I love home-made potato chips. I made the waitress take my plate before I finished every last one.

Jan and Jane at lunch

After lunch, Jane and Jan waited on the outside deck of the lodge while I hiked the 0.3-mile trail to Starved Rock. I went down a lot of steps and came out at the Starved Rock Visitor Center. Damn it, I thought, I should have taken my phone and called to tell Jane to meet me down here. Meanwhile, Jan and Jane were thinking, “We should call Bev and tell her we will pick her up at the Visitor Center.”

Jane’s first call, for reasons we do not understand, went straight to voice mail. Meanwhile, I continued hiking across the flat part behind the Visitor Center and up the stairs to the top of Starved Rock. There I learned from a plaque that it was an Illini tribe that was trying to escape the wrath of Ottawa and Potawatomi. I had assumed from Jan’s story that those pesky European white folks had been involved, but the story (never verified) dated from pre-European settlement.

The view down the river from the top of Starved Rock

I took some pictures of the river from the overlook. Jan and Jane thought they spotted my red coat and tried to call again. This time, the phone rang—in my purse that was stowed in the front of Jane’s walker. I stopped at the Visitor Center to use the rest room, my logic being that it would be that much less weight to haul back up the 150 steps to the Lodge. I counted on the return trip.

The first of 150 steps to the Lodge. Steps continue to the right in the background.

One of numerous chain saw-carved sculptures

 

We stopped at the first of many ice cream parlors we came to in Utica. We got lucky. The shop had ice cream from the Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream Company of Madison, WI. I got a kick out of the disclaimer that was on the side of the building.



Sign outside the ice cream parlor

We asked the girl what the most popular flavors were. She said “This Just Got Serious,” which was salted caramel, cashews, and fudge ripple and “Yippee Skippee” which was peanut butter ice cream with salted caramel ripples (salted caramel is everywhere these days), brownie chunks, and chocolate covered pretzels. I had one scoop of “This Just Got Serious”; Jane had one scoop of “Yippee Skipee”, and Jan had one of each. It was most excellent ice cream.

It was a good day in spite of the absence of eagles.

 

The boys are back in town

When I got home Thursday, Terry told me that he had seen four tom turkeys. He pointed out the window to tracks that led from the house out toward the wetland. And I missed them! They had come up to eat the bird seed that had fallen to the ground.

Turkey tracks leading away from the house

Turkey tracks up close showing where the foot went down and the wing dragged in the snow

The next day, Terry and the turkeys surprised each other when Terry rounded the house to come in for the night. I was upstairs grading online projects when I heard him yell, “The turkeys are back!” I raced downstairs for my camera and telephoto lens and back upstairs to the deck. I was able to get a picture; I was not able to get the turkeys in focus. Nice view of the river birch, though.

Four tom turkeys

The girls have been venturing out to enjoy the relatively warm weather. The temperatures have edged up above freezing for the last several days. The chicken run is going to be wet for a long time. There much be three feet of snow in there. Note how high it comes up the fence post. Yesterday I shoveled the snow away from the netting as far as the second pole. With the snow leaning on the fence, it had become nearly impossible to get the fence attached to the chicken coop. It’s much easier now. Should have done it weeks ago.

The girls get some fresh spring air