Waiting...

The mint is waiting. Waiting for a day, perhaps two months from now, when she can once again taste spring rains and send up shoots to wave in spring breezes. She dreams of minty leaves on stalks reaching over 24 inches toward the sky, and little purple blossoms that will be visited by bees.

January Thaw is over!

The cold is back; the thermometer at the kitchen window read in the teens in the morning. Chickadees came hunting for seeds at the feeder in the chilly sunlight, and squirrels came for a breakfast of frozen apples leftover from the Fall harvest.

The storm that came on December 9th of last year broke some large branches from the pines, the snow was so heavy and came so fast. We must wait for spring to clean them up, because broken branches were frozen to living ones.

First Post!

Kettle Moraine: a geologically unique area in Southeastern Wisconsin  formed by glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age. As you drive through the area you can see both kettles, round depressions in the land, and moraines,  hills that were formed in various shapes as the ice receded so long ago.  Some are as high as 300 feet. Cones,  kames, drumlins, and other formations can also be spotted by those who look. Kettle Moraine State Forest, broken into Southern and  Northern units showcases many of these, as well as acres of beautiful forests, valleys and waterways. The southernmost point of the Ice Age Trail is here, marking the furthest reach of the glaciers' march across the land. No other area in North America has glacial formations as impressive as those in the Wisconsin Moraine. The state forest is also home to many kinds of wildlife, including deer, wild turkeys, coyotes, and birds of prey.

We see a fair amount of wildlife right in our own one-acre lot, being on one end of a subdivision only a few miles from the state forest. The area that is now a subdivision used to be farmed by Welsh settlers who dutifully plowed up glacial rocks  and piled them up at the edges of their fields. You can still see where the fields were by looking at it from the air.  Before that time, the land was prairie. But the prairie plants were never beaten;  they still come up everywhere in lawns that don't get mowed or in flower beds and vegetable gardens and roadsides. Anywhere they get a little sun and rain they can and do thrive. And so do the animals and many kinds of birds.

This blog will be about the land and what grows and lives on it in this little corner of Wisconsin.