A Refuge for Lost Docks

I came home a little early on Friday afternoon and was mindlessly putzing around the house, when I happened to glance out the window. Then I glanced again. What the what?!?

To my surprise, there was a second dock floating just off shore. Either I'd missed some important memo, or else we'd become a refuge for wayward docks, because whatever that thing that was floating out there was, it sure wasn't ours.

It seems to have been the spring of wayward docks. A couple weeks back, two other docks were drifting through the swatch of open water in our bay. Perhaps the winter was just too long and anchors and ropes started to give way before the docks' owners had time to reattach ("put in") their docks to the shore.  Alternatively (and probably more likely), perhaps the docks were never that secure when they were "put to sea" last fall.

Although I don't remember it as being particularly windy on Friday afternoon, the wind was gusting out of the south and since our dock is located at the northern most point on the lake, it makes sense that a loose dock would end up nestled between our dock ramp, the shore, and the floating portion of our dock.

Now, the question remains: whose is it? When I spotted it on Friday, I decided to tie it up to shore, figuring that it would be easier for whoever lost it to find a stationery object rather than a floating and drifting one. All the docks in the bay are already in, or else have been accounted for, so most likely this dock lives on the other side of the lake. It's probably time to send out an email to the lake association to attempt to find the dock's owner.

Just another North woods mystery . . . 

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Still, Still, Still

Oh, I have a blog? After a good solid month+ of blogging, I kind of dropped the ball this past week. Whoops.

I hate to use the same ol' tired excuse over and over again, but things have been busy around here. Like mindblowing-ly busy. I've been working steadily away at freelance projects, trying to stay on top of things with the 9-5 ish  job, and sorting out the holiday season. Throw in the fact that we're still a one-car household (which is making some holiday travel plans tres complicated) and I'm feeling a bit like not enough butter across too much toast.

Andy mentioned this past week that we run to town the most during the months of November and December. (I'd argue that we also do a fair amount of running around in late April and early May.) These are the times when I'm not working full time and the roads are often in decent conditions. Depending on the season, we spend these trips gathering supplies for venison processing or gardening, spending time with family and friends, appointments that have been pushed off during the summer (oh hey there dentist) and doing extensive work on projects that are left simmering over the summer season. Summers are historically hectic in a rather predictable way. Come the shoulder seasons and all bets are off for what any given week (or day) will contain.

It's funny that just when a sense of stillness is descending on the woods, we're really ramping things up. Over the last week, the lake froze over. With steady snowfall at the moment, we won't be ice skating this winter - the snow reacts with the ice and puts a quick end to any "smooth as glass" ice conditions.  

I don't know that I'm doing a very good job of preparing my heart for Advent this year. I've been spending the days since Thanksgiving caught up in the minituia of my weekly to-do lists and the details of travel plans. This week I need to step back and look at the big picture.

Over the last week, most of the snow we received over Thanksgiving melted away in a warm snap. This morning, the snow falls quietly and steadily outside my window, obscuring the far shore with a veil of white. I've been busy sorting out little details that have been niggling at the back of my mind over the last month of so.My TracFone is reactivated, my bus ticket to this coming weekend's festivities booked, the majority of holiday presents bought.

In less than a week I will be spending time with friends I hardly ever see, my brother will be home for a long weekend, I get to enjoy another Broadway show with a very close friend, and many friends and family members are helping these holiday reunions happen. As always, blessings are many when you stop to count them.

It seems oh so appropriate that "Still, Still, Still" is the holiday song that keeps running through my mind this season:  

Still, still, still,
One can hear the falling snow.
For all is hushed,
The world is sleeping,
Holy Star its vigil keeping.
Still, still, still,
One can hear the falling snow.

It's difficult for all of us to find stillness during the holiday season, but if we are to survive the holidays with any shred of good humor left on New Year's Day, then we must learn to take a moment each day to create a stillness in our hearts. I hope the start of the holiday season has been treating you well and that you're all finding moments to catch your breath!

 

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Sowing and Socks (But not sewing socks)

I fell asleep last night to the pitter-pat of rainfall on the roof. While I'm no fan of sleeping through thunderstorms, I think the sound of a gentle rain is one of the loveliest sounds there is, a sweet, happy tinkling herald of spring and regrowth.

I always welcome a good rainy day, but we're especially grateful for rainfall this spring. After a low snow year, we need plenty of moisture to help the woods green up and to keep the forest fire danger down.

After last night's rainfall, the ice in the bay looks like it's seriously thinking about shipping out for the season. The ice is already out on some of the larger lakes up here, making it the earliest ice out up here ever. We're beating the prior earliest ice out dates by nearly three weeks. Yowzers!

The rain inspired more action outside today. I found a trio of sprouts out and about the yard this afternoon:

From left to right: lettuce sprouting in the cold frame, the first rhubarb nubs poking up (please let these be productive this year; otherwise I will have to barter homemade jam for rhubarb - I can't go two springs without it!), and garlic shoots. Last year, none of these guys were poking up until the end of April.

While Mother Nature is getting way ahead of herself this year, I'm planning to stay right on schedule with my seed starting schedule. I figure if I start things way ahead of time just because right now it feels like the end of May, we'll probably end up with a series of killing frosts when it actually is the end of May. (Hey, I never said I was an optimist.)

I'm not getting any more adventurous with this warm weather than starting a pot of lettuce in the cold frame because, frankly, I'm not terribly attached to the lettuce. Sure, it would be swell to have a fresh lettuce salad in the middle of April, but I'm not going to be too heartbroken if my little lettuce sprouts succumb to some unforeseen disaster in the next few weeks. Since spinach likes cool weather so well, I may start some spinach too because, well, same thing, I don't care too much if it flops. 

For things I don't have such a laissez-faire attitude towards - i.e. my tomatoes, peppers, basil, etc -- I'll be keeping them inside until late April at the earliest. Better safe than sorry.

Last night the UPS man delivered the pack of seeding starting mix and the last seeds I needed for this season, so tomorrow I'll be clearing off the kitchen table, turning on weekend NPR, and getting the first set of seeds planted. I'm planning to stagger my planting a bit more this year so I don't have nine kohlrabi that all want to be eaten at the same time this summer.

Here's what's getting sown tomorrow:

• Tomatoes (Early Girl, Brandywine, and Yellow Pear Cherry) 
• Jalapenos 
• Bell peppers 
• Herbs (Parsley, Sweet Basil, Thai Basil)
• Broccoli (first planting of three) 
• Cabbage (first planting of three) 
• Kohlrabi (first planting of three) 

I should start some flowers tomorrow too, but I honestly haven't put much thought into those.  All of our prime growing real estate (that is to say: sunny spots) in the backyard are devoted to veggies, so our flower beds tend to be rather sad and scraggly. In a twist of ultimate irony, I spent my pre-gardening days longing for a flower garden, but now devote most of my energy to vegetables while Andy, who initially wanted to grow vegetables, tends to the flowers. I will for sure start some nicotiana tomorrow because it smells so very lovely on summer evenings. As for the other flowers I'll start, who knows, eh.

Other weekend plans include finishing up this little sock's mate:

If you're looking closely, yes the top ribbing is a different color. I used little bits of leftover yarn for the ribbing to make this a true stash busting project. This is my first toe-up sock and I have to say, it was a revelation; no blasted kitchener stitch! That said, although I like the appearance of the toe much better than I do on my leg-down socks, I don't particularly like appearance of the heel when handled with increases instead of decreases. However, the fact that I have more control over how much yarn I use is great for when I have limited amounts of yarn at my disposal because I can stop knitting at any point on leg. That means things like this can't happen: 

Remember those frilly anklets I started back in January? Where I ran out of yarn halfway through the second sock? The yarn I need to finish up that forgotten little sock went on sale this week (you didn't think I'd pay full price for it, did you?) and with any luck, the yarn will arrive tomorrow.  Maybe this weekend will end with two new pairs of woolen socks. . . .

And to those of you (ahem, Mollie) who kindly suggested I just finish up the sock with orange yarn, I'm sorry to say that I am a wimpy, unadventurous knitter who ordered more matching turquoise yarn to finish the anklet. I am boring.

Have you started seeds for the season? What are your weekend plans?

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Late Winter Snapshots: The Week That Was

It's been one of those weeks. Despite have more than enough to keep me occupied, I've managed to do the bare minimum. Why? Who knows? Somewhere, deep down, that procrastinator inside me was reawakened and I suddenly felt very, very sleepy.  It was an odd enough week anyway; both of us getting over a cold and a different work schedule for Andy.

But here are some snapshots from what we did do this week. 

On Thursday, we trekked back to "ye olde fishing hole." The forecast said it would be calm, overcast, and warm. Instead it was sunny and warm (not going to argue with that), but so windy that our footprints drifted in within an hour. We spent some time on the shore, hiding from the wind in front of campfire, but after catching one fish on a tip-up and not having any action while jigging, we packed it up pretty early in the afternoon.

 

I may not have gotten a great amount of work done this week, but yesterday I took a field trip out to one of the local maple stands for an article I'm working on about maple syrup. While freelance writing is often a rather unglamorous profession -lots of phone interviews and worrying about illustrations - I do love when a piece involves a field trip. The maple syrup operation I visited has 18,000 taps and an intricate vacuum system (pictured above) for getting the sap to their sugar house. Each year they produced about 500 gallons of pure maple syrup. (Wowzers!) With temperatures creeping up into the 40s (and above!) this coming week, the sugar run should be upon us very soon.

This is Elsie. My parents are dogsitting her and because I'm hanging out at home this weekend to get my annual fix of the Minnesota Boys State High School tournament, I'm the dogsitting assistant. Elsie is pretty sweet, but she's none too sure how about all of us.  Hopefully she'll settle down soon and get some sleep!

In other news, I turn 27 today. Yikes, where did that year go?! 

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(Water)Crafting Weekend

When people ask why I knit or "craft", I feel the same way as when people ask me why I write. I really have no idea why I do any of it. Part of it is that I can barely remember a time when I wasn't churning out words or knit items from the tips of my fingers. But mainly, it just feels good to take something relatively ordinary like a pile of words or ball of yarn and transform them into something extraordinary.  

The weather was too gorgeous this past crafting weekend to devote too much time to actual crafting. We diligently pulled out our projects on Tuesday afternoon when the group of five girls arrived and moved (temporarily) into the old, unused lodge building down the road. But when Wednesday dawned just as gorgeous as the day before, we shoved the projects in the corner and spent the entire day out on the dock.

Despite our sunbathing tendencies this crafting weekend, we still managed to do a fair bit of transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. 

Just take floating in the lake, for example. Pretty awesome just the way it is, but when I mention our need for floating noodles, Katie's eyes lit up. She turned to Emily: "You have your air mattress with, don't you?"

Some people might be deterred by the air mattress's very clear labeling that it was not meant for use as personal floatation device. This group was not. "Bullsh!t!" declared Betsy.

It took some doing, but we managed to turn the mattress into a multi-person floatation device.

The canoeists in the background of the picture below pretended to be amused by our antics. But given their marked avoidance of us the rest of crafting weekend, they were obviously afraid . . . very afraid.

After we'd proven that the raft could indeed hold five grown women, four of us took the air mattress for a spin out to the island at the mouth of bay. Yep the island, in the blog header above.

Of course some things require no transformation. The double rainbow that appeared on the last evening of crafting weekend was pretty extraordinary just the way it was.

It's been one busy, beautiful week at Of Woods and Words. Stayed tuned to hear about the "miracle" that happened Saturday evening.

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Guest Post: Lake Culture as an Art

Note from Ada: This week and next I'm asking some of my bloggy friends to help fill the Of Woods and Words soundwaves. Today fellow Minnesotan, Meri of Meri-Goes-Round, takes lakes and getaways . . . Minnesota style. Enjoy!

One of the things I love most about Ada’s blog is the snippets of Minnesota life that she brings to the blog world. Born and raised a Minnesotan myself, I have spent a good while in urban, suburban, and natural parts of the state.

It’s not uncommon to have a getaway to go to. New Yorkers have the Hamptons, others have country cottages... Minnesotans have “the lake.” This is a strange term because Minnesota is home to thousands and thousands of lakes (no, not a mere 10,000 like the nickname). While non-Minnesotans may have lake homes or cabins of their own, Minnesotans really take this culture to the next level.

So in the spirit of my “listmania” month over at my own blog, I have a list tailor-made for Of Woods and Words:

Ways Minnesotans have made “Lake Culture” an art form:

10. Cabins made of real logs, a la Laura Ingalls Wilder

9. Water so pure you can be in over your head and still see the bottom

8. Spending all day on a ramshackle boat with a fishing line draped over the side, chatting with a friend or family member and slowing it waaaay down

7. S’mores, sparklers, fireworks, beer. The Fourth of July couldn’t be spent anywhere else for me.

6. Card games, board games, and cribbage.

5. Waking up and drinking coffee while mom makes homemade banana cake or pancakes. My first and only crepes from scratch. Man-go-round’s birthday cake one year. Countless barbeques and pasta salads.

4. Learning how to waterski, wakeboard, or “switch” inner tubes with your best friends or sisters

3. Walking with your Dad collecting agates on the side of the dirt road, the smell of pine needles in the air and paint brush flowers near the marsh.

2. The quiet at night, punctuated by one or a chorus of our beloved Loons.

1. No TV, no internet, little cell phone service... but nights of conversation and laughter with the people I love most.

No one messes with my summers at the cabin. I’ve spent the occasional winter weekend “at the lake” ice skating or hibernating, and a Thanksgiving or two by the fire, but to me the cabin means summer. No matter if it’s Lake Superior or the very small lake our current cabin overlooks, this is one of the reasons I simply can’t make myself leave this lovely state!

What do you love about your own state? Do you have a getaway or place you go to relax with family or friends?

Thanks to Ada for letting me guest post! I am honored.

Meri

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Wordless Wednesday: Welcome Back Water!

We're probably at least couple weeks away from the "big" lake being completely ice free, but the sounds of churning, roaring, racing water is enough to get this heart of mine to sing.

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