Ugh, More Snow!

Winter returned today.  The forecast was for a “wintery” mix.  To me that means sleet and rain.  To the weatherman it meant 3 inches of snow!  That was not welcome.  I know tomorrow it will all be gone.  Don reminded me that we got 20 inches of snow last April.  I don’t want that either.

Birds are starting to really come back.  We have some of the reddest purple finches that I have ever seen.  Maybe they get redder just before mating.  At any rate, they are quite beautiful.  They are also very, very hungry.   My feeders are always empty and the suet is gone.

We have been watching single deer wander across the lake one at a time.  There have also been single wolves wandering around.  I just hope that they don’t meet.  Ice fishing ends in a couple of days so no one will be on the lake.  It will be interesting to see if the deer keep out on the lake or at least away from the wolves.  We will only be feeding them another week or so.

The staff has also noticed some does are heavily pregnant.  They think that these does may have twins.  It will be about a month before the young ones are born.  I just think about how my back hurt during those last weeks of pregnancy.  In fact, my back hurts just sitting here.

So I never got up to see the Northern Lights.  Or, at any rate, when I did look, there was nothing to see.  Interestingly, a couple days later we were watching the news.  There was a program about several unusual natural events that were now happening.  One of them was usually strong northern lights.  Usually our northern lights appear as if they are lights from a city just over the horizon.  We all know there is no city and these are just faint northern lights.  So I am guessing that the lights Chris saw were part of this unusually strong display.

One of you wrote asking if I have pictures of northern lights.  Unfortunately, I don’t.   You are asking a person who doesn’t really take pictures.  When we were gone to Tanzania and Paris for 3 weeks last fall, I look about 20 pictures.  There is too much to see for me to remember to take pictures.

This last weekend was our Books in the Woods weekend.  This year our writers were Lorna Landvik and William Swanson.  We usually have about 30 participants who come for the seminars.  It is very interesting because you get a chance to really interact with the authors.  The group sizes are never more than 12.  It gives everyone the opportunity to ask questions without being part of a multi-hundred group.  The proof of the pudding is that several people made reservations for next year.

Speaking of reservations, summer reservations are coming along very well.  Canoe trips will be really busy this year.