A Botanical Field Trip

Andy and I took a botanical field trip down the lake yesterday. Last week, I'd received an inquiry at work from an individual who'd discovered a small structure while camping on the lake a few weeks back. The individual who "found" the structure (I'm sure people have been finding this at least a couple times a year for the last 70 or so years) seemed to think it might be part of a trapper's shack, while I was more inclined to think it was a root cellar left behind from a resort that closed down in the early 1950s.

After visiting the site myself, I'm still leaning towards root cellar and also maybe bear den? The entrance seemed really wide open for a structure that's mostly sunken into the side of a small hill for a good 70 years, which makes me think "somebody's been sleeping in my root cellar." The inside of the small structure (which is maybe 8x6x6 - I could stand up in it) is filled with sheet metal and other scraps - maybe an easy way to clean up the site without actually having to bring all the junk from the old resort operation down the lake to dispose?

We also found a stone retaining wall that was probably part of the resort and it seemed pretty obvious where the main lodge building would have stood. 

Another reason I wanted to visit the site was because I'd always heard about the domesticated flowers that still bloom there, decades after the last permanent residents packed up. I'd heard that tea roses bloom in the mid-summer and the person who reported the structure above also mentioned daffodils blooming. After poking around the site a bit, I wonder if he didn't confuse daffodils with dandelions. There were plenty of dandelions to be found (which are too common of a weed to indicate any sort of civilization, I think) and I also think we found the tea roses, although they were just leafing out and appeared to be covered with some sort of fungus.

In our haste to find the structure once we got to shore yesterday, Andy and I breezed right past the shrub above. Yep, that's a ginormous lilac bush - a shrub that thrives into the Northwoods but which doesn't get here unless someone plants it.

There were also domesticated lily of the valley (easy to distinguish from the "false lily of the valley" wildflower that are very common in this area) and forget-me-nots galore which may or may not have been intentionally planted. Technically a wildflower is any flower that's not intentionally planted.

As I poked around looking for botanical signs of civilization, I actually happened upon a wildflower I'd never seen before. At first I thought it was some sort of orchid, but it's actually a type of milkwort known commonly as Bird-on-the-Wing. Google failed me completely for identifying it when I got home and I actually had to use two books (shocking, I know) to figure out what it was. It's just budding out - usually it has two petals that stick out perpendicularly from the center of the flower so it looks like a bird in flight.

We also found plenty of blueberry bushes loaded with blossoms. Another good picking season ahead. :)

If you're in the woods on a still morning or evening this time of year, you get a heady whiff of something floral. Turns out that wonderful intoxicating aroma comes from the red osier dogwood blossoms. I will be sad when the dogwood blossoms start to fall - they've been making my morning runs pretty delicious.

 

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May Day! Mayday?

May Day has to be one of the few holidays I've never celebrated.Of course, this is one of my best friends' favorite holidays, so I can't say I've never never celebrated May Day, but it is a holiday that I don't know much about and that generally slips by without my noticing.

Perhaps my neglect of May Day stems from the fact that the holiday is linked with the Celtic holiday of Beltane which means the day's all about celebrating fertility. Around these parts, things don't look too fertile come May 1. It won't be until sometime in June that we'll be able to fill "May baskets" to overflowing with flowers and actually feel like dancing about a May pole in celebration of the world's abundance and beauty.

After the early spring thaw this year, we've been treated to an especially long period of muck and brown before the spring green up. But this past week, I noticed the earliest early season wildflowers starting to poke up their pretty little heads. Wood anemones, violets, bearberry flowers, even the appearance of the common place dandelion is enough to make my heart glow with the promise of springtime.  

Full disclosure: photo taken in 2010

Yesterday, I ran to town to get the first load of soil for the new raised beds and pots. I returned with a Subaru Baja absolutely brimming with compost, humus, manure, top soil, and peat moss. After filling up one raised bed, I came inside to find not one, but two little wood ticks scampering across me.  So the wonderful joys of spring are upon us, as are the little annoyances.

On Saturday, Andy and I thought we might watching an entirely different sort of "Mayday." A rather large personal airplane (a Cessna Caravan to be specific - if you're interested in such things) landed just outside of the bay and headed over to the dock where the neighbors keep their own (albeit, much smaller) float plane during the summer months. It's pretty unusual to see a plane of this size in the area unless a portion of the woods are on fire, but it turned out that the pilot and passengers were just looking for a dock protected from the wind where they could moor the plane during an overnight visit to a friend's cabin. Not exactly a dramatic story, but the plane caused plenty of buzz during its short stay in the bay.

Happy May Day everyone! What are you celebrating today?

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Wordless Wednesday Part II: More Wildflowers

Lookie what we found! We went out blueberry scouting and stumbled upon a patch of Moccasin Flowers just behind the cabin.

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Wordless Wednesday: Wildflowers

I love this time of year. Each walk down the road brings a new beauty discovery. The columbines have just started to bloom this week.

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Wordless Wednesday: Mid-May Scenes

The days are getting long and we're currently in a string of beautiful, calm, sunny days that have me running around in a tank top during my outdoor chores. Although the spinach, onions, carrots, and lettuce I sowed last week would really like a hit of rain, it's hard to argue with . . . summer! While it's been "heigh-ho, heigh-ho" back to work for Andy and I this week, we have stolen away down the lake on a couple boat rides and even hiked a nearby trail on Sunday. There's a lot to discover in the woods this time of year.

Sandpipers in a row

Water ripple along a portage

Wood Anemone along the Centennial Hiking Trail

Monday night cookout

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Running into the Partridge Family on the Way to Work

Despite living pretty much all my life in what many people refer to as “the middle of nowhere,” for the most part, I’ve always been able to walk to work. Like any rule, there are exceptions. When I was in London, I took the Tube to work and during my winter in the Twin Cities, I took the bus. Oddly enough, this winter was the first time I had to drive to work consistently. Granted, I do a lot of my work from home now, but I am officially back to walking to work again. Any commute, walking, tubing, driving, or what have you, can get grow stale with time, but I have a feeling my new commute will have plenty of pleasant surprises for a while.

This afternoon I decided to run over to work to drop off some stuff that was just taking up space in my home office and to get myself a little better oriented with the museum’s exhibits and trails when no one else was around.

When I got to the front gate, I decided to take one of the hiking trails in. No sooner did I step on the path, then I saw a partridge walking about confidently in the undergrowth. And heard a “peep, peep, peep.” Two little partridge chicks came scurrying out. One hung close to Mama next to a fallen log. The other chick ran across the path. So little! So fluffy! So cute! I know Mama Partridge isn’t really into having human “peeps” being all up in her nest, so I hung back and waited until the family had reunited and moved on. Which is why I only have a picture of Mama.

So I wandered down the trail. There’s a wildflower trail on the grounds specifically focused on pink stemless moccasin flowers, an orchid. I wasn’t on that trail so I was surprised when I spotted a pink moccasin in full glory right in the middle of the path. For some reason I thought it was too early for these guys, but I suppose it is almost June.

There are a lot of other wildflowers out too: star flower (below), Labrador tea, and false lily of the valley.

I did my thing at work, waited out a rainstorm and headed back home. It wasn’t until I stopped at the side of the road to let a car go by that I realized I’d walked straight past a turtle. I’m not sure why turtles insist that roads are great places to hang out. Last week, during one trip to town, I had to swerve around three of them. I’ll refrain from making the “why did the turtle cross the road?” cliché, but really, what’s going on here? This guy looked pretty spooked, but he was pointed toward the ditch, so I think he was headed in the right direction.

It felt like a treasure hunt. Everywhere I looked, something I hadn’t expected popped up. Who knows what’ll be out there tomorrow?!

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Spring Times Two: Babies and Wildflowers

The old adage in northern Minnesota when it comes to seasons is that we don’t really have seasons. Rather, we get “winter, mud season, and a week of summer.” But really, it seems we have two sorts of springs up here in the Northwoods. The first spring comes with a trickle of water, a nub of pussywillow, when the snow begins to recede. With a chilly promise of green and growth, the first spring ushers in the dreaded mud season when the outside world become a mess of muck and dead grass.

Then, a month or two later, the second spring materializes. When things are actually green. When wildflowers start to peep out from the forest’s floor.

Gradually, we’ve been entering into that lovely second spring when it starts to seem like summer might really be coming after all. The strawberry and blueberry plants have been flowering for a couple weeks. I know people have been seeing violets up here for a while now, but I didn’t stumble across my first one of the year until Andy and I were out punting about for morel mushrooms on Sunday.

(No morel luck: not even false ones. Despite getting a bit of moisture last week, things remain pretty crispy out in the woods and on Sunday, I crunched my way through what was last year a very fruitful field of blueberries.)

If you spy a blooming violet, chances are your gaze will fall on a clump of wood anemones. These equally miniature spring wildflowers (violets and anemones are probably only about 4 inches above the ground) are out in full force. I love finding wildflowers and pointing them out to others, but goodness “anemone” is a hard word to say. I always feel like I’m trapped in Finding Nemo when I yell out to Andy that I found “an anemonemone. Amnemonemomne.”

As we drove home from the ill-fated morel hunt, we spotted a yearling moose beside the road. That must mean that Mama Moose has had this spring’s baby (or babies – they seem prone to twins.) When the new babies arrive, the yearling moose who have been hanging out with Mom all winter get the boot so Mom can devote her time to her infant(s). Oh, the joys of being an older sibling.

With this second spring promising summer, Andy’s been busy getting the gardens all set for the summer planting.

It’s looking really good.

Meanwhile, I’ve done a second seed planting inside to hopefully make up for all the seeds that didn’t sprout the first go-around. I’ve always had a soft spot for Four O’Clock flowers, so of course everything else I planted sprouted while the peat pots with the Four O’Clock seeds have just sat there and rudely sprouted a couple strands of grass and nothing else. We’ll just give that a second try, shall we.

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