March: The muddy month

I love the spring and fall transition seasons!  They smell crisp and earthy, I can wear less/more layers and I love the feeling of change. 

The highs have been in the upper 30’s to mid 40’s the last week or so, which has been absolutely welcome after a long snowy Minnesota winter.  I loved this winter!  It reminded me of the winters of my childhood- it’s been awhile since our region has seen this much snow. 

Now Minnesota is shedding its layer of snow in preparation for another growing season.  The snow melts a little more everyday and each night creates ice skating rinks on sidewalks and roads, thaws into swampy mud in our yard (while unveiling countless piles of, uh, “gold”) and causes me to use a ridiculous amount of windshield fluid. 

But, I know in just a few short weeks the wildflowers will emerge, the sap will stop running and the trees will bud and well… I’ll be a few weeks closer to being married!

Bring on spring!

Weekend projects

With Chris gone for a couple more weeks I have a few things left on my to-do list. I need to do some touch ups upstairs and I'd like- wait I think that's all that's left on my to-do list! Wahoo! This first week has been busy- intentionally so.
Yesterday the carpet was installed. Chris has my camera- which has a picture of the upstairs pre-carpet but post-trim. So we're a little out of order, but I'm sure you get the idea:

Yesterday I my mom and dad came over to help me work on a landscape project. I forgot to take a before picture. But I have a picture of the area from last year's fence project. My dad pulled out all of the hosta-like plants and repositioned them, planted a hydrangea, added a few items from around the yard, and helped me estimate how much mulch I needed. Today I added the mulch and the plant in the front triangle.

Before:

After:

A couple more pictures of landscape projects:

I added the mini-fence edging to this area. I'm hoping it'll keep the woodchips from running away when it rains- I kinda think they look like tombstones!

I added edging, mulch and a couple hostas by the garage:

Chris if you're reading this, I mulched and edged all the way to the fence. And pulled out the dead ferns. =( But they look good in the compost. =P
So, with that said I'm exhausted. I'm thinking a popsicle, the couch and a good book might be the way to spend the rest of my day!

Excitement at work

I was contemplating leaving work early today to work from home. I have a big deadline due, and with summer staff around- sometimes it’s hard to focus. I’m glad I didn’t leave early, because I would have missed this!

At noon one of our Park Attendants noticed smoke coming from a nearby trail intersection. After confirming that we didn’t have a prescribed burn schedule we got on the horn to 911. Luckily a squad was already hanging out in our parking lot (keeping an eye on the crazy beach folks). The police officer beat the living snot out of it (picture 1) just as the fire department arrived. The second picture is him claiming “victory” over the fire.

Thanks to the quick work of our local public servants only small patch of our prairie suffered! Well, public servants and mother nature. The stifling humidity and recent rain also slowed the progress of the fire. No thanks, however, to the loser who ignored our Tobacco Free policy.

A skink

We’ve caught glimpses of this guy’s tail for the last few years, but have never been able to catch one for closer inspection! Yesterday, this guy posed for Adam.

Check out more of Adam’s photography here.

Day trip

On Monday Chris, McClane and I headed to Frontenac State Park. It's about an hour south of here- lots of bluffs, ferns and cool things to see!

A dragonfly emerges

Check this out!

 

This morning a visitor brought a dragonfly nymph in for us to investigate.  It had climbed out of the lake and towards the visitor who had never seen anything like it before.  As we were telling him about dragonflies, and their love of water we noticed that it’s eyes were clouded over.  Since it had just climbed out of the water we figured it was about to do its final morph-  taking its place at the top of the insect food chain.  It would become a mosquito-eating machine.  S

 

So, we propped it up on a feather and waited…

 

We didn’t have to wait very long before its exoskeleton “ripped” behind its head.  Out came it’s new eyes and head… we were mesmerized for a good 15 minutes before  I had to tear myself away to conduct an interview.  It actually took a little over an hour before it was fully out, its wings out and dried out before it flew off. 

Playing in the dirt

I spent the afternoon playing in the dirt and woodchips. I purchased four plants today at Gertens. They're the ones in the woodchips above. A violet, a hyssop, a false indigo and a bee balm. We also have a hanging strawberry basket. There's one little green strawberry starting to form! At the end of this season, we're going to plant it in our garden by our rhubarb.
After I finished transplanting the shrubs, I moved on to the garden. I didn't intend to put the garden until after I got back from vacation, but I was in the zone and went with it. =) In the picture below the green you see are our peas and lettuces coming up.

I can't wait to see what actually becomes food! (For us and not the rabbits...)

Nature detectives

During our hike yesterday we stumbled up on a very mysterious scene.  Johnny, Autumn and Katie investigate the scene above.

1. Downy feathers were all over the area.  There were feathers hung up in branches up high, on twigs and leaves down low. From where we approached they were on the left and right of our trail. 
2. Broken eggs littered the scene.  The eggs were large- nearly "chicken" sized and found only on the right side of the trail we approached on.
3. Hiking trails surrounded this area.  To the right of the trail we were on was the small patch of trees (where we found the broken eggs) which was bordered by another hiking trail. (The "crime scene" was essentially a peninsula of woods.)

We spent a few minutes looking for more clues.  Here's what we surmised happened:

The downy feathers belonged to an owl who had a favorite feasting spot high in the oaks tree.  It also had a favorite food, turkey eggs!  Either the owl spontaneously combusted, or was attached by something larger.  A raptor?  This attack, or combustion, happened high in the trees- which would explain the drift of the feathers.  We also thought that it was a young owl because of the amount of downy feathers.

What do you think happened?

 

a day in the park

Today was a whirlwind of a Friday.  Over lunch a small group of us went to the driving range up the road to “hit a bucket of balls”- which was a riot!  And then after lunch we met with the Natural Resource specialist for the county and visited some cool sites in the park.  We visited a Tamarack bog (probably one of the only such bogs this far south!), a gold mining pit (a shady hoax by a 1930’s landowner) and went looking for one of the oldest oaks in the park too.  Unfortunately ran out of time on the way to the oaks. 

We did however see two pileated woodpeckers deep in their spring mating ritual.  I took lots of pictures- but most of them didn’t have them both in view.  They seemed to be playing hide and go seek on the tree. 

Mama Great Horned Owl

The great horned owlets have caused quite the stir around the Visitor Center.  The 2-3 owlets have become stars, but Mama is still keeping a close eye on the foot traffic in the area.  Adam snapped a picture of the Mama owl yesterday.  (I admit, it may be a Papa, but saying Papa or adult isn’t as much fun!)

 

baby owl picture

Hmm… it didn’t upload in the previous post.

 

Park visitors

This baby great horned owl was not happy about trail work happening near its territory.  Adam took this picture, check out his other work at his website.  

The dill is up!

This just in- the dill I started last week is up!

Chris and I started a bunch of veggies and herbs for our new garden. We started a couple trays of herbs, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers inside. They’ve been under grow lights in the kitchen and now that it’s starting to get warm out, we’ve been putting them out in the sunlight during the day. It won’t be until late May before we transfer them into the garden. (Our average last frost isn’t until mid-May.)

Last week we framed our garden (above) and I planted some cold weather veggies. We’re trying peas, beans, radishes, rutabaga and lettuces. Some of the lettuces and peas are starting to sprout! Before I transplant the warm season veggies I think the soil needs a bit more preparation. We shall see…

Signs of spring

It’s that time of year again! It’s time to track all the changes that make winter a thing of the past and define this new season as SPRING.

I usually mark spring with notes about the first birds and flowers. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

3/17/2009- Paired mallards in Minnehaha Park (MP)
3/18/2009- Red winged blackbirds at Lebanon Hills Visitor Center (LHVC)
3/22/2009- Great Blue Heron and paired Canada geese at LHVC
3/25/2009- Phoebe at LHVC (for several years we’ve had a Phoebe nesting above the LHVC front doors!)
4/2/2009- Chorus frogs singing at LHVC
4/11/2009- Dutchman’s breeches (white flower) at Spring Lake Park Reserve (SLPR)4/12/2009- Skunk cabbage at MP (pictured above)
4/14/2009- Leopard frog singing at LHVC
4/17/2009- Brown headed cowbird at LHVC
4/18/2009- A flock of white pelicans migrating, Bloodroot and Hepatica at SLP. Bloodroot, Dutchman’s Breeches and Wild Ginger in MP

Skunk cabbage is cool because it is one of the first flowers to bloom in the spring. They start growing beneath the snow and will often melt a hole around their base as they push up and through. It is a very alien looking plant- and they get their smelly name from the odor that comes from crushing the stems.

PS. Sorry about going hyperlink happy. I love spring wildflowers so much! And I wanted to include links to pictures in case folks didn’t know what they looked like.

A warm spring weekend

Weekends like these make winters bearable. Today it got to 67 degrees! Okay, I know today wasn't part of the weekend, but I took today off of work because it's Chris's spring break week. We basked in the sunshine and took McClane to the dog park yesterday and for a nice long walk today.

It's REI dividend time- one of my favorite times of the year. This year instead of buying clothes, I used mine towards a new backpack for the dog. (He destroyed his petco bag.) He carries his own poo bags, treats and frisbees. (During the summer he carries my snacks and water too!)

McClane tries out his new pack- and eyeballs the popcorn in Chris's hand.

Snow boogers

I learned something new about snow this weekend. If you get too much snow packed in your wheel wells (which isn't hard to do after a 8" snow event and when temps stick in the teens) it can affect your car's performance. The steering wheel of my car started to vibrate so violently I could hardly hold on to it when I hit highway speeds yesterday!

But my wonderful boyfriend scraped out the wheel wells for me this morning and everything was back to normal!

And here I thought I knew everything there was to know about Minnesota winters! =)