Category Archives: Weather +Climate

Family, Weather +Climate

Hairdo By Tesla

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38  bar falls 30.02  7 mph N dewpoint 31 Spring?

              Waxing Crescent Moon of Winds

Snow.  Lotsa snow.  An inch an hour possible.  Winds gusting this morning up to 13 mph.  That ol’ Hawthorn giant has his sinewy grip on us  and won’t let go.  My hope is that it winds down before Saturday, since I’ve got to travel about 200 miles north to Bemidji.  When I signed up to speak there last September, I didn’t imagine I might face blizzard conditions on the 13th of April.  Northern living.

Just looked over pictures from Kate’s trip.  Here’s Ruth at her #2 birthday party.  Hairdo by Tesla.

                           ruth-and-hair330.jpg

Our family is complete again.  Kate’s home. The dogs are home. I’m home.  Feels good.    

Friends, General, Weather +Climate

Slicing and Dicing. Chopped. Simmered.

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46  br steady 29.67 2mph ESE dewpoint 44 Spring

                     New Moon (Growing)

A light, but steady rain falls.  A cold rain.  The pre-emergent and the cygon I applied yesterday will get a chance to work themselves thoroughly into the soil and around the Iris rhizomes.  As the rain melts the remaining snow, I will have a few spots left to hit with the pre-emergent, but not many.  I’m ahead of the curve this year and hope to stay that way with regular, not too lengthy garden sessions.

A full stomach is a great aid to grocery shopping.  The list and only the list, so help me Martha.  And so I did.

Back home I made lunch, watched the first episode of Battlestar Galactica’s last season (I recorded it Friday night.  Love that DVR) and loaded the dishwasher.  After lunch I got out my Golden Plump chicken, read the directions for CNS on the back, and then began slicing and dicing carrots, celery, onions.  Saute the veggies.  Then 10 cups of water, Paul Prudhomme poultry seasoning, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for an hour and a half.  Underway.

While doing that, I also made a green salad since I had the carrots and celery and onions out already.  A few strawberries bought a week ago had that soon to rot look, so I chopped and diced them, too (I was in a rhythm.) and put them in plastic containers with a cutup orange each.  So there.  Domesticman to save the day!

A nap  now.  Naps on rainy days, cool rainy days.  A wonderful thing.

Garden, Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate

Tulips and Daffodils, Oh My!

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54  bar steady  29.77 3mph ENE dewpoint 32  Spring

                            New Moon

This is a fecund time.  I spent a couple of hours today putting down pre-emergent weed prevention in the flower beds, moving some mulch completely off now, the garlic, and putting Cygon on the Iris to prevent borers.  Cygon is now a prohibited insecticide so my stash is pretty much it.  Our beds are not near running water and we have a storm drainage basin to catch run off so I don’t see my limited use of Cygon, once or twice a year on about 40 Iris, as a great health hazard.

Just being outside is wonderful.  Where the snow melts back, as it has begun to do even here, we often  find tiny tunnel systems in the grass.  Voles dig these under the snow all winter.  At first it seems that they might kill the grass, but in fact, I think the opposite is true.  Where they go, the soil gets aerated and the grass continues to grow.  It looks strange and possibly harmful when you first see it. 

The Iris have grown about six inches and now is the time to get those damned Iris borers.  If you raise Iris, you know what I mean.  If you don’t, well, they’re slimy and icky and eat the rhizome.  Yeck.  

Tulips and daffodils have also begun to press through the snow and frozen earth.  With the showers we get this week I wouldn’t be surprised if we get some blooms, especially if it warms up, too.   

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Garden, Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate

Natural Rhythms and Time

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53  bar falls 30.03 omph W dewpoint 32 Spring

            Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

Over to IHOP for some of that down home country fried food.  Always a treat.  Kate and I did our business meeting, deposited several thousand dollars in Wells Fargo and came back home.  Lois was here.  She commented on the amaryllis which have bloomed yet again for me.  I do nothing special to them except take them outside in the summer, then back inside in the winter.  At some point they decided its ready to bloom, so I put them in a window and water and feed them.

I have no tours tomorrow and so have a good stretch with no art tour work.  I like that. 

Went outside and looked at the trees.  Looks like at least five, two Norway Pines and two River Birch got trimmed back to the hose I used to protect them from sun scald.  Those rascally rabbits I presume.  In the other area, though, two white pines thrived during the winter, as did a Norway Pine, an oak and, I believe, a River Birch.  Feels good to see them growing.

The garlic has begun to push through the soil, a bit pale under the mulch, but I removed it and they will green up fast.  Garlic are hardy plants that like a cold winter and they had one this year.  They come to maturity in June/July.  Drying, then using our own garlic will be a treat.

Wandering around outside gets the horticulture sap rising.   I’m itchy to do stuff.

Signed up for a Natural Rhythms and Time course at the Arboretum.  It’s a symposium put on by the University’s Institute for Advanced Studies, a real find.  If you live in the Twin Cities, I recommend getting on its mailing list.

GeekWorld, Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate

Kohler Generators

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32  bar steep rise 30.22 4mph dewpoint 24 Spring

               Waning Crescent Moon of Winds 

“I simply cannot think that human beings will be able to discard their desire and need for something that is sublime, something that transports them, takes them out of time, takes them out of the banality of the everyday world . . . to make something is tremendously powerful in and of itself.” -Sean Scully

“Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long they live, although it is in the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man’s power to live long.” – Seneca

One last snowblowing adventure.  The snow has already melted off the driveway and the sidewalk.  It will remain longer on the yard and in the woods, but the days of the snowcover are near an end.  Even so, it was nice to get out one more time and see the arc of white curving up then fall toward the earth.  Good to be outside. (We’ll set aside being there with a two-cycle engine.)

Roger came out today from Allied Generators.  When we went through a spate of disaster planning last fall, we realized our home would not fare well in a power outage.  Why?  No water since we get our pump from a well.  That’s the big one.  We could be here with all the water we needed 180 feet below us and no way to get it to the surface.  Dumb.  Then, of course, there’s powering up the cell phones and the computers for necessary communication.  If Kate is to survive in a reasonably mellow state, we need the air con to work, too.  All of our appliances have electric starter switches.  And so on.  

The result of this got me to looking at generators.  Consumer reports pointed out an obvious problem with gasoline powered generators.  If there’s a problem with the electricity, filling station pumps don’t work.  So, how do you supply the generator?  Gas gets old, too, so storing much at home is problematic.  Anyhow, the Kohler line of generators run on natural gas which solves that problem.  They also supply enough power to manage the whole house.  Roger will send us an estimate this afternoon.  It might be a sledge hammer to take care of a mosquito sized problem, but we’ll see.

Piece of trivia:  Kohler got into the generator business in 1918 so customers could use their flush toilets and their bathtubs.  What da ya know?

I got on a tear this last week or so, completing several major tasks in a short period of time.  It reminded me of the way I used to work, juggling many complicated tasks over long periods of time.  Back then I was productive, really productive.  The old work method felt good to slip into for a while.  Don’t know that I’d want to sustain it anymore.

Art and Culture, Friends, Weather +Climate

Simple, Straight-Forward Human Decency

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30  bar steady 29.83  5mph N  Dewpoint 29 Spring

                  Last Quarter Moon of Winds

“Let us all be thankful for today, for if we did not learn a lot, at least we learnt a little. And if we did not learn a little, at least we did not become ill. And if we became ill, at least we did not die. So let us all be thankful. – Buddha, attr.

This snow is serious.  The rocks in the garden have white cloaks and look as if they will disappear once again.  The winds stay high and the accumulation has weighed down the trees.  Vale and Breckenridge may have powder, but in the late spring we have heart attack snow.  Heavy, wet, voluminous.  Still pretty.

I love the quote attributed to the Buddha.  Put that together with Grandpa’s, “You come from nothing and the purpose of life is to make something from nothing.” and you have a complete philosophy of life without all the dreary textual criticism, dogma and fancy dress.

A docent colleague has organized a food service for Bill Bomash who broke his femur in five places while vacationing in Brazil.  This kind of simple, straight forward human decency is enough.  It allows us to make something from nothing and, as Grandpa said, that’s the purpose of life.   

Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality, Weather +Climate

Snow, Snow, and Then, Some More

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33 bar steady 0mph ESE windchill33 29.85   a buncha snow

         Waxing Gibbous Moon of Winds

We got socked after I came home from Frank’s at around 10.  Maybe 4 or 5 inches of wet spring snow.  All the leaves, rocks and beginning to peak through patches of grass are white again.  Tourney snow we called it Indiana.

Gotta get out and see if the snowblower can take it.  Often, at the beginning of the winter and especially in its last gasps the snow is so heavy and wet that it plugs the chute of the snowblower.  Then, I just wait for the grand snow remover in the sky to work his solar wonder.

Allison sent me this note after the docent book group discussion.  I think she caught the sense of the meeting. 

Charlie,

I enjoyed the discussion meeting today.  I want to thank you for your efforts.  I think we were chasing something elusive.  And also feeling each other out-on some pretty big subjects.

Personally, I think Dale phrased his initial question rather awkwardly.  

However, Sharon intrigued me with her question which was “Why doesn’t contemporary religion seem to make better use of art?

So between the two of them we are left with something corresponding to “what came first the chicken or the egg?”  Did art lose its need for religion or did religion lose its need for art?

I would have liked to have the team fill out your worksheet and plan a tour.

Speaking of your tour ideas, it would be great to get some serious discussions going on a tour.  You need the right people to show up for that to work.  

Travel, Weather +Climate

Mulberry Trees in Armenia

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31  91%  26%  3mph N bar29.80 steady windchill29  Imbolc

              Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

This snow has a lot of different forms: sleet, snert, wet snow, less wet snow.  At least it didn’t plug the snowblower.  As I followed the snowblower down the driveway and back up, I had these background/foreground visions:  background–I’m layered up, in swiftly falling snow and operating a loud orange machine; foreground–I’m sitting on the lanai of our oceanview room in the Westin looking out toward the western horizon of the Pacific ocean as the sun begins to set. 

The snow makes the transition from Minnesota to Hawai’i a nice contrast. 

Getting stuff done today and tomorrow since on Wednesday I leave for Dwelling in the Woods.  My day without the guys I plan to snowshoe and read about Taoism, prepare for my workshop.  During the retreat I plan to snowshoe at least once a day. 

Picked up some dried mulberries today at the co-op.  Sweet, but not local.  Not hardly.  From Turkey.  It just occurred to me that I read an article this afternoon about silk scarf makers in Armenia, next to the Turkish border.  They had a historic industry, but the Armenian genocide wiped it out.  This town had just received a grant from the EU to grow, mulberry trees!

Faith and Spirituality, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

Fallen Oak Leaves in the Snow

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26  71%  24%  1mph EES bar30.02 falls windchill25  Imbolc

          Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

The Superbowl program started at 1pm.  1pm.  Kickoff isn’t until 5:17pm.  Geez.

Spent late morning putting together my workshop/presentation for the Woolly Retreat.  I plan to read sections from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, talk about it a bit as a fable for our time and a bit about what I call the ur-faith.  The way to name it still is not clear to me.  Maybe that will come as the workshop proceeds.  Sometimes presenting things to others helps flesh them out, identify new angles or flaws in the conception.   The sacrament I posted a few days ago will follow the reading and then we’ll talk. 

I may use a way to get inside material I learned in seminary.  In this method the audience gets an invitation to take on one of the roles in the reading, to hear the material being read from that person’s perspective.  In SGGK characters include Arthur, Gawain, Guinevere, the Green Knight, the two women in Hautdesert’s castle, and the servant who leads Gawain to the Green Chapel.  Sometimes this cracks open poetry or scripture in a way nothing else can.

Fallen oak leaves have begun to show through the snow.   The boulders in our boulder walls now peak out from caps of white.  This is an unlovely aspect of snow.  Snow has its most beautiful moments as and just after it falls.  If it remains cold, as it often does after a big snow, the pristine character of the snow can last for days.  Sometimes it does glint and sparkle in the sun.  Hope we get a big whack just before I leave for Dwelling in the Woods.

Weather +Climate

The Undergods

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4  70%  19%  omph W bar30.55  windchill4  Winter

                 Full Winter Moon

The Giants are the undergods–oops, I meant to write underdogs, but I like undergods, too–against the Übergods, the New England Patriots.  Long years ago, when I began to love anthropology, a favorite professor, David Scruton, said Americans are infracaninophiles, that is, lovers of the underdog.   Maybe we’re also infratheophiles, lovers of the undergods.  Anyhow, I wouldn’t count the Giants out.  Their defense seems pretty sticky and Eli Manning and Plaxico Burress have a groove going.  If they can get Bradshaw and Jacobs going early, they’ll have a chance.  We’ll see.

A light snow.  The slightly warmer temps produce more interesting weather.  The cold builds character and the days are usually bright and clear, but warmer weather often brings back the snow.  We need some snow since the older snow got thinned out during the January thaw and we look a bit straggly here.

On to the Transcendentalists and life in the thought lane.

As Bill Schimdt noticed on yesterday’s post, the NFL pinged back.  Bill said he was sure only the computer read my post.  I’m sure he’s right.