I have a new phone with a more primitive camera, and I forgot my real actual camera, so you'll have to make do with words ( Read more... )

I just took down the 2015 Minnesota Weatherguide Calendar (it does not do to be hasty about these things), the December photograph in which was a lovely one of a snow- and icicle-encrusted evergreen branch in the foreground, with a wave caught breaking in white spray behind it, and snow- and evergreen-encrusted islands on the horizon, somewhere on ( Read more... )

Hi, you guys. I'm sorry that I haven't posted in so long. There's no particular excuse other than general harriedness ( Read more... )

I had to go downtown today for the very mundane reason that I was almost out of Peridex and had to pick up another bottle from the dentist's office. I came home through the brown back yard, strewn with all the leaves last November's snow covered before I could mow them up; and glanced, by sheer habit, at the crumpled sodden leaves of one of last ( Read more... )

My office, in an upstairs sunroom, has two windows facing south, two north, and three west. The upstairs living room, which we have crammed with books to the point that there is room for only one chair, and even that has to be moved aside if we want to get at the hardcover short-story collections, has a big window over the front porch that also ( Read more... )

So when I got up this morning and staggered to the computer, blearily clutching my yoghurt and water and my pillbox with the anti-hypertensives in it, I started my morning routine and saw that Weather Underground had changed its format.  There is probably nothing wrong with the new one and I'll be used to it in a couple of weeks; but it's the first ( Read more... )

David went around the yard a week or two ago and took some splendid photos. You can look at them hereI had a lovely time at Wiscon and managed not to bring any horrible viruses home with me. Raphael and I went to Murphy Hanrahan Regional Park earlier this week and saw clouds of dragonflies, mostly dot-tailed whitefaces with a leavening of frosted ( Read more... )

The snowdrops came up all of a piece, leaves and drooping white flowers, three or four days ago. The purple snow crocuses are blooming in the front flower bed. The peony on the south side of the house is showing red shoots, as is the evil but beguiling Japanese knotweed. The bleeding-heart in the front flower bed has put up red-and-green shoots ( Read more... )

I think Shakespeare was talking about spring, but hereabouts, you get the mass of prairie flowers right about now. Most of Minnesota's state parks now show green on the DNR's Reopening page, and Raphael and I hope to get to one of them next week ( Read more... )