Bright White for Green Up

In the summer, when I see a group of campers beginning their trip on a rainy day, I say to them, "It's not quite what you pictured when you were planning this trip last winter, is it?" They tend to agree, but then we look to the brighter side and say that it's still worth going out there and having a good time, making the best of it until the weather changes (which it will). And off they go with smiles on their faces. What's better than a day in the woods--weather aside?

So begins our day of tree-planting, as part of the Gunflint Green Up. When this festival weekend was in the planning stages, we weren't thinking snow. This morning when I got up, snow was about all I could see. Sometime during the night, probably about the time that the sounds of rain diminished on our metal roof, it started to snow. When I looked out the window, I couldn't see Canada. That's the benchmark.

Will it stop us? Of course not! It just means that we will wear a different set of outside clothes than originally planned. I thought that I would be pulling out the rain gear this morning. Instead, it will be the winter coveralls. That's for the morning, anyway. By afternoon, it will be partly cloudy (which I am choosing to view as partly sunny) and temps in the forties. So I'll bring another jacket along to switch into. (Maybe it's yet another arrival of spring!) We'll still be out in the woods, planting little white pines and red pines, making memories for another day.

Everyone is happy and excited to be here for this festival, so we're going to make the best of it. After all, when living in Minnesota, isn't it about perspective? Oh, and I'm bringing a batch of brownies, too. That should help.

Gearing Up for Green Up

On Tuesday, I joined some neighbors and friends to help unload trees for the Gunflint Green Up weekend. We met up at the Seagull Guard Station and waited for the truck to arrive and for the work to begin. It wasn't long before a large roll-off trailer opened up to reveal this view of tree seedlings. Thousands of little red pines, waiting to be unloaded, and soon to be planted into our neck of the woods.

We got to work, forming a line of workers, similar to a bucket brigade. While two fellows unloaded, we passed them down the line, and then they were placed on to the ground in a shady area.

Somewhere along the way of their journey from nursery to the Gunflint Trail, they encountered snow. That added a fair amount of weight to each styrofoam flat. Since we had temps near fifty today, I'm hoping that it melted the snow off of them, and warmed them up a bit for Saturday's planting.

Tomorrow I am going to town to pick up our own batch of trees, courtesy of Hedstrom's Lumber company. Next week, we'll be planting in our backyard, then chasing the deer away so they do not eat the tender little trees. I think that the deer consider them to be like baby lettuces, a feast just waiting for them. We try to make up for the deer activity by countering with sheer numbers. I don't know who is ahead, but we'll keep on trying.

Woodpeckers Everywhere!

Wood peckers are in abundance lately. While out feeding the donkeys one morning, Greg saw a pileated woodpecker up near the pasture. When I stepped out on the back porch, I saw one fly overhead, and then heard it call to another. Greg also saw a downy, one of the smallest woodpeckers, working on the wood of the bell tower. This little guy joins the big red-headed woodpecker that came home with us from Montana a few years ago. That large one lives year-round on the side of the tower. The fellow who makes him and all of his relatives has a woodshop in the small town of Ryegate . Greg read about this man in a book about the things one finds on the back roads, and he wanted to stop by to buy a woodpecker from him. His name is Earl, and his woodpecker cutouts are fairly distinct. After purchasing our first one, we traveled on and began to notice that several other folks had done the same. Those red-headed cutouts were spotted on homes, barns and fences within several miles of this small town.

On subsequent trips out west, we’ve stopped and purchased two other woodpeckers from Earl. These, too, have migrated back to Minnesota with us, and have found new homes. When Greg saw the downy woodpecker on the bell tower, he knew that Earl’s bird wouldn’t mind sharing the territory.

Another bird of the same family that I watch for each year is the yellow-bellied sapsucker. Just saying that name out loud is fun! For several years, one of these little guys would make his way back to Heston’s Lodge, and would start to peck on an old piece of plywood that was nailed to a tree. That plywood served as the back board for a thermometer that eventually broke and fell off the tree. The board remained, and that yellow-bellied sapsucker loved to tackle it as a personal project each spring. I would first notice it by the sound it makes when pecking….It starts off with a regular cadence, but then peters out with an irregular pattern. For that reason, it is easy for my mind to recognize it, even when I am not actively listening for it. Sometime in the last year, the board finally got pulled off of the tree. I think that I heard the bird the other day, but I have yet to see it. I guess we should have left that board in place for a while longer. If for no other reason, it served the purpose of letting me spot my annual sapsucker.

If At First You Don't Succeed....

...try and try again to have spring come. I've lost count as to which attempt at spring we are on. One friend on Saturday night said that he was trying to adjust to his third winter in six months. This one really does seem endless, but in true Minnesota fashion, we can always find someplace that had it worse. When I talked to Paul on Saturday, he said that they had received between six and twelve inches in western Minnesota. Makes our dusting look great. I think the most challenging part was to see it snowing so often over the weekend. The ground melted most of it through the day, but it was getting difficult to remain cheerful while seeing so many flakes in the air.

We did have some honest-to-goodness seasonal weather a week ago, enough so to prompt us to take a picnic up to the end of the trail. The snow didn't let us drive the full campground loop, but we were able to walk into a site and enjoy our favorite picnic foods. We will be there this coming weekend, too, as this is the area that we have been assigned for planting trees during the Gunflint Green-Up. Greg has been planting trees since I first met him, and our kids have grown up knowing that each year, they will have a quota of trees to plant on our property. It's been very satisfying to see these trees grow up. We look forward to planting in the forest, this time around, and then to watching these trees in years to come.

This is a shot of the river from April of 2007, when Greg and I went up there. I still had a walking cast on my foot, so I didn't do much hiking around. The water level was down last year, so Greg was able to do a lot of rock-hopping on the river.

And finally, a view from April of 2006.