Busy busy

Monday was a day of surprises.....

It started out with a text from my youngest son.

"Call me when you wake up. I'm bored driving home." He and his wife and their daughter were on their way home from Colorado.

I called since I was up at my usual time: Hannah Time ----->> which translates to predawn.

We talked for a little bit and then he said he had to pull off the road for gas...and "WAIT wait! Oh my goodness the sunrise is amazing!" 

As he said that, I was about to pour a cup of decafe when I took a peek towards the NE direction. The fog was heavy but there was a slight color threatening to brighten the sky. 

I texted back: Later! I'm headed towards the ridge to see our sunrise! 

My phone pinged once more: See you mom in about 5 hours!

I passed our mailbox on the ridge and saw a typical driftless region sunrise where the valley was thick with fog. The cool waters in the rivers and streams often produce amazing fog.

I pulled out my regular camera with my long lens. 

The shape of the land I live has wonderful shapes. When we have valley fog, the ridges and the trees appear above the fog creating an unusual sight. Meaning, I'm still not used to it after living here for 30 years.

The fields are not flat and even, our world is uneven and wonderfully rough. Contour farming is the only way to farm.

I thought I'd drive down into the valley and take a peek around. Sometimes the valley fog hangs 40 or 50 feet off the ground.

Not this day! However, the swallows were so busy at the bridge over Black Bottom Creek that I just stood in the road and watched them for a while.

[Yep, I could stand in the road on the bridge and not even see any traffic at that time of day!]

They were literally swarming the area. You can see that the sun is ready to dip into the valley from the light on the top left of the photo.

Depending on the season, it can take up to two hours before the valley sees the sun.

Back up on the ridge the sun was shining brightly. I was able to see across the valley fog to the dot on the map that is called Folsom.

This is one of the Folsom Lutheran Churches on the next ridge over.

I stopped back at Linda's Tractor on the way home. I taken a sunrise shot through the tractor and wanted one afterwards. It is rare that she leaves any equipment in the field. In fact this is the first time in 30 years that I can recall she has left one parked on a field she rents.

Linda still farms and is in her later 80's. She hires help of course, but still does quite a bit of field work on her own.

The heat and humidity set in by the time my son and his wife showed up but I had to walk them back to our 'campground'.

They were amazed at how cool it felt in the grove of trees and the definite lack of bugs.

Here is Mari who is 5 she was having a blast playing with Charlie and Hannah.

<--------------->

Today [Tuesday] I got to go to a birthday party for the grand daughter of a friend. I went to help and take some photos for fun because I was asked to.

Everyone was smitten with my friend's mini horses!

We came up with the idea of a birthday party with the idea of the kids decorating the minis. 

Safe to say, it was a huge hit.

All I can say is that it was a blast! I think the little girls are going to remember this as the coolest birthday party ever. Homemade cake, homemade ice cream, decorating mini horses, and so much laughter.

Grandma Pat is obviously the coolest Grandma Ever!

 

Flowers

I took flower photos Monday morning while weeding the gardens early. I did it before the sun broke through the clouds and made things much hotter.

Petunias

 Lilies!

Love in the Mist

This first shot is when the lens fogged up
from the humidity. I took it anyway
before setting the camera in a
camera bag to acclimate to the weather.

I should have remembered to stick it in a camera

bag and set it on the porch to slowly acclimate.

These are one of my current 

favorites!

They are so easy to have in the garden and they will reseed themselves. 

Love in the mist is surrounded by another easy
keeper called Creeping Thyme. 

So easy that I have to mow it back. However I would rather
have this in the yard than grass! 

It smells
nice when mowed or stepped on!

Creeping Thyme

This sunflower plant seeded itself between the round stepping stones 

just off the porch.

I let it grow and the dogs enjoy its shade!

Borage.
The flowers are edible and

taste slightly like watermelon.
I often decorate salads with these.

I had fun with this borage stem. 
I used a double exposure trick
with fern leaves. A bit of 
fun on a hot afternoon edit.

Morning Glories are another flower that

reseeds itself.

I have pulled all the little ones that I didn't want

growing from seeds spread last year.

I am allowing one plant to spread and provide

shade for the porch also.

I don't have just blue and purple flowers. The Zinnias and Cosmos of every single color are coming along nicely in the gardens I planted at the start of June. 

My nasturtium is doing its thing also. Soon, I'll have flowers and leaves to add to my salads right next to the porch.

And...

Hannah.

I am still dealing with her itchy incision. If I leave it uncovered in the morning, she goes after licking it. I imagine the whole area itches because her fur was shaved off.

I can't wait until she is all healed up.

She is such a high energy dog! 
Here she is helping me this morning inspect the meadow. I have to admit, it looks rather lovely right now with all the wildflowers blooming in the area I didn't mow.

Her new healing outfit with gauze over the incision and an Ace Bandage covering the area better so she can't pick at it.

Oh Hannah. She loves to give me the 'look'. She is driving me crazy!

Storms, Rain, Crazy

After a night of heavy rain Monday evening, the sun started to peek through the fog. 

The weather service warned of afternoon storms in our area once more on Tuesday.

I took the pups for a very early morning walk down to check out our little creek. I wanted to see if there had been damage to the forest fences. Thankfully, there wasn't. The forest around us had heavy fog lifting from the cool streams.

Everything was soggy so I started to clean a flower bed up. I gave up in playing in the mud.

Hannah had an afternoon Vet appointment to get her second booster for distemper, parvo, and hepatitis. I thought about taking them to the Reserve, but decided to stay close to home.

We went to some DNR land close to home. It is public land along the stream called Tainter Creek in Tainter Hollow.

It is one of those cool places to find spring ephemerals.

We found several patches of Blood Root that had their flowers damaged by the rains overnight. Of course,  Hannah had to checkout what I am photographing. Miss Curious is getting better about staying close while I am doing photography.

Her recall is getting much better.

Wood Anenomes

Trout Lilies not blossoming yet

I also found dozens of patches of Virginia Bluebells emerging! 

I found one plant of Dutchman's Breeches that actually had flowers. Others were just emerging.

We walked along Tainter Creek which was swollen just over its banks.

There are no buildings in this very steep valley. If there is rain, the creek floods. All of the water from the ridges around here run into the creek.

Our morning ended up being quite pleasant.

By late afternoon I was tired from the intense storms we'd had Monday. I don't sleep well during storms. 

The dogs and I took a short nap. There is peace in the house when both of them are tired! 

Somehow, they have both become Velcro dogs.

While I was at the Vet's office, Tuesday afternoon for Hannah's updated boosters, NOAA came out with severe weather warnings 3 times. They warned of a severe thunderstorm producing Giant Hail and a Tornado just miles from the Vet office. 

Wait, What? Giant Hail??? Never heard that term before!

That eeee eeee eeee noise kept going off on the radio in the office along with notifications on my cell phone. We skedaddled home to get things put away before the storm hit our place.

I came down the driveway and looked up at the sky. It was wicked looking but I was ahead of the front.

I hustled and put Little Richard and the car in the shed. The mules were eating grass but looked up when the front arrived and disappeared into the woods.

The storm that arrived at 5ish PM decimated a whole town and so many vehicles. Friends of mine said it looked like a bomb went off. Even wildlife was affected by the baseball and softball sized hail.

Photos from locals posted on FB.

Thank goodness that storm went around us.

However we did have some hail and torrential downpours around 9 PM. Very scary stuff. I heard things hitting the house.

Lucky for me, I found no damage this morning. We had over an inch of rain in the rain gauge. That made for fun exploring in the creek this morning.

The dogs and I got muddy and enjoyed every moment of it.

There is another round coming through this afternoon.

As we say in Westby and Viroqua.

Uffdah.

Weather Report ---> Kinda Cool

Well. We are doing a Polar Vortex thing here in our area, again. Last week the weather was mild and rather comfortable.

We are now celebrating when the temps rise above 0 F. This morning, I didn't do chores until it was -10 F, and yes, I stayed quite comfortable outside. It may look goofy, but there is something nice about not being cold while out in the cold.

 We are in a Cold Watch which will become a Extreme Cold Watch Thursday late through Saturday. My girls seem to have everything under control with their lovely thick winter coats.

More snow is supposed to happen tonight and Wednesday. -20 to -40 windchills are forecast to go along with that. Looks like a good time for a nice big pot of homemade soup.

Regular temps are predicted to look like this  👇

Brrrrr.

Thursday during the day looks decent enough that I might get out and do a bit of hiking with Charlie, but I doubt I'll be out and about Friday other than chores.

The shots below are from a bit of wandering around our forest today.

I just don't mess with extremely cold temps. I had enough of that when I was working night shifts at a place 30+ miles from home. Driving home in -19 temps in the middle of the night was concerning. 

Things break in the cold. 

Thank goodness, my old beater didn't mind cold weather.

The summer pasture wasn't full of tracks but the forest had many tracks. Deer had been browsing and making beds inside the woods.

Charlie didn't want to go with me for some reason, so I took Chippy.

Chippy rather enjoyed the adventure.

He always looks happy!

Well, there you go. There is the WI weather report for SW WI.

It's gonna be kinda cool.