This morning looked more like spring than winter with the water flowing all over the lawn and a major overflow from my pond due to all the rain. Eventually it switched over to snow and looked more like winter again but I’m glad we didn’t get several feet of snow.
Branch of the Amnicon River
In the summer time, a stroll to the pond is a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon. The lack of snow makes it easy to get to the pond but the water is a little stiff so no frog floating on the surface soaking up the sun and too cold for the dragonflies to dart around.
Stiff Water
On a normal winter, the ground here would be covered with snow but this year the recent warm week has finally melted the snow but the only ‘flowers’ I found on my hike through the woods was some dried up flowers or some foliage only. The goldenrod I found wasn’t the bright golden yellow of summer time but the fuzzy white of the dried flower.
Now White and Not Golden
During the 1870s and 1880s, this hotel was located in the bustling industrial iron-smelting community of Fayette in Upper Michigan where five hundred residents lived and worked. I’m sure a wide range of people passed through these hotel doors since workers immigrated from Canada, British Isles and northern Europe.
Charming Old Hotel
You often hear the phase “the good old days” and you might think of a simpler time in the past. Depending on how old you are, that time might be before running water and electricity or the “Leave It to Beaver” era where the kids played outside (without cell phones). And while some things may have been better in the olden days, I do prefer to have a hot shower after sanding frames than to wash up with a pitcher and basin as it was hard enough to get all the sawdust washed off.
Old Wash Stand
With the numerous muddy paw prints from the cats who want holding covering the front of my jacket and coated with sawdust all over it, my coat could use a washing. And if I threw it in one of the “Caves of All Colors”, it just swirl around like a big washing machine – at least on a calm day. There probably wouldn’t be anything left of my old jacket if it was in there on a stormy days as the waves pounded into the wall. Caves of All Colors are part of the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, a U.S. National Lakeshore on the shore of Lake Superior in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which extends for 42 miles along the shore.
Caves of All Colors
Today is one of the most important Marian feasts celebrated in the liturgical calendar of the Roman Catholic Church, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, “the conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the womb of her mother, Saint Anne, free from original sin by virtue of the foreseen merits of her son Jesus Christ”.
In 1858, Marian Apparitions came to a 14 year old Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes, France. In the 16th appearance of Mary to Bernadette, the Blessed Virgin Mary stated “I am the Immaculate Conception”. Lourdes has become one of the greatest pilgrimage sites of the world visited by millions of Catholics each year.
A replica of the Lourdes Grotto can be found on St. Anne’s Hill in Plain, Wisconsin and it is a peaceful spot to visit. And if you search in the crevices in the rock, you might even find my stash of pennies (and a nickel) as we would hide a penny on our visits up the hill to the chapel and shrine.
Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto
A “date that will live in infamy” is how President Franklin D. Roosevelt described Japanese attacks on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor in a speech to the joint session of Congress on the day after the attack on December 7, 1941. Of the more than 2,400 Americans killed in the attack, almost half of those who died were aboard the USS Arizona. This February, the last surviving officer of the USS Arizona, died at the age of 100 and there are now only eight crewmen from the Arizona still living.
Since I haven’t been to Hawaii to visit the USS Arizona Memorial, I have no pictures of it but this old fishing boat might not seen damage from war, but has been worn down from years of hard work and the icy waters of Lake Superior.
Boat Battling Age
Cloudy and foggy mornings have prevented seeing the some sunrises, but some days the weather clears by evening for some colors to paint the sky.
Winter Painted Sky
The spring flowers are not the only thing which involves a four or five month waiting period to see again. The non-wintering birds will spread their return dates out over several months and some of the early arrivals may have to deal with some late snow showers before they build their nest and start raising their young. It is a rather tough for bluebirds to find insects to feed their young when the ground is covered with snow.
Bluebird Bringing Lunch
