Monday, June 7, 2010

Heeee's Back


As most of you already knew, I was up north for the past week, enjoying the peace and quiet that goes with the northern castle.

It was a lovely time away from the hustle and bustle of city living. I wish it hadn't rained as much, but it's been so dry up there that the need was very much needed, plus it gave me a chance to catch up on some also much-needed sleep.

As far as news up there, we saw lots of animals, including about 40-50 goldfinches, baby robins, and a family of ruby-throated hummingbirds, like the one pictured. They have the most amazing coloring, when the lights it it right, the red color is iridescent and seems to be shining on its own.

Also did some outside stuff, like cutting the grass (twice), putting up another bluebird house, and planting some milkweed plants and seeds that my friends at the Friends of the Monarch Trail gave to me. And I did all that work without having the slightest urge to carry a gun around. Amazing isn't it?

The sad part was we found out the hard way that deer do indeed find young milkweed plants to be rather edible. Only two of ten seedlings survived. The more mature plants seem to be thriving and had escaped the attention of the deer.

I was also a little disappointed (and a little relieved) not to have seen the female bear and her two cubs that has been spotted about a mile away, or the cougar that the neighbors said was seen a couple, three miles away.

On the political front, there still isn't much interest in politics, but what there is seems to be either going for Tom Barrett or Mark Neumann, depending on which way they tended to vote. I couldn't find one person that said that they were supporting Scott Walker, even among the GOP faithful in the Fox Valley area. When Walker's name was brought up, the most common comments dealt with either not trusting him or saying he was not s"mart enough". And that was without them knowing who I was or what I did, either for work or blogging-wise. No wonder Walker seems to be a bit more panicky than when I left.

2 comments:

  1. That's the one thing I miss in Wisconsin, the wildlife. Yes, we get the robins, crows and even hummingbirds from time to time. We have a pack of chimpunks living at the dog park we go to and rumor has it, there are squirrels in the Valley. Other than that, we are pretty bare of other critters, except for the ocassional coyote and mice. If we go to the mountains, then there is more, including deer, big horn sheep and wild horses.

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  2. I didn't see them, but when I was digging the post hole for the bird feeder, my wife saw two does walking within forty yards of me. She said that they watched me for a minute before sauntering on. Now that is being at peace.

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