Here are a few photos I’ve taken over the past couple of weeks…No particular order, no particular theme…just nature showing off.
Nature Scenes
Tag: Nature
A Norwegian Odyssey
It’s been two weeks since celebrating America’s Independence Day, the 4th of July. Although we didn’t get to see any fireworks in the night sky, Gary and I were welcomed to Bergen, Norway on the 4th of July with an American flag waving for us, in the reception area of the Bergen airport. A few of my second cousins met us at the airport to welcome us to Norway. What a great way to be greeted on the 4th of July. It was better than fireworks.
When we first arrived in Norway, a week prior to meeting up with the relatives, we flew directly up to Tromsø, a city 200 miles above the Arctic Circle…the land of the midnight sun. And we were witnesses to that sun that did not set…I saw the sun at 2 am one morning when I woke up.
After two days in Tromsø, we boarded the Hurtigruten, a Norwegian coastal ferry and postal service boat that travels along the Western Coast of Norway, making many stops along the way. We had reserved a cabin on it for three nights…and it was amazing. We were delighted and surprised to realize it was more than a working ship, but very much a comfortable, not extravagant, ship with wonderful buffets at mealtime, and relaxing chairs next to large windows overlooking the magnificent beauty of the Norwegian coast. We liked the size…not too big…and the only entertainment was the breathtaking sea and scenery, and that was enough.
We disembarked the ship in Trondheim, where we spent the next two nights at a hotel. We walked around the city for two days, plus had a needed, relaxing rain afternoon.
Trondheim is the city where St. Olaf College performs choir concerts in the majestic Nidaros Cathedral. I’ve heard about this cathedral for years while working at St. Olaf. It was fun to finally see it….and when we purchased tickets…we learned the young woman behind the counter had been to St. Olaf College singing with her Norwegian women’s choir.
Then… we flew to Bergen, where we began the second half of our trip with my wonderful, amazing Norwegian relatives, who treated us like royalty. We spent the next nine days with them and it was over-the-top wonderful!
Norway, a country of 5 million people, is a stunningly, beautiful country with mountains, fjords, pristine shorelines, and breathtaking natural beauty. It is clean with friendly, warm and welcoming people.
In the coming days I will be posting blogs about this amazing odyssey. I will struggle with what photos to share…I took many!
Our Camp Stove
We have had success putting unwanted items on the curb, free for the taking. I like that it helps keep things out of the landfill, and people can find another use for what we no longer want. Our latest item on the curb was our old Coleman camp stove…the classic old-style green one. It still worked, but was in rough shape so we thought some young folks might like it as a starter stove for camping. Apparently, someone did – it was gone the next day.
The camp stove served us well. Gary already owned it when got married, and we finally replaced it last year, in 2021, therefore it was over 44 years old. A few years ago, it converted easily to using one-pound propane tanks.
The camp stove holds fond memories. We used it on numerous camping trips over the years. Mostly when our two sons were younger. We liked to camp in Minnesota State Parks, and we liked to take road trips to the National Parks throughout the United States; from Acadia, to Great Smokey Mountains, to Yellowstone, to Zion, to name a few. We had many good times together on our camping trips…sometimes with friends, sometimes just the four of us.
Our firstborn son was three-months-old when we decided to go away for a camping weekend. We didn’t go far from home but one still needs to pack the almost the same amount of gear as for a longer stay. We made it to the campsite and got the tent (we always used a tent) and site all set up. After dinner, it started to rain…pour…so we quickly took the tent down, in the rain, and headed home. Camping in the rain is never fun, camping in the rain with a three-month-old is even more not fun.
But, we made up for it by taking several camping trips over the years…instilling a love of nature and the outdoors in ourselves, and in our sons.
We did buy a replacement stove, but doubt it will get the same use. Although we love to camp, we like being off the ground these days, so we try to stay in camper cabins. We discovered you need to collect the same amount of gear -just minus the tent- for camper cabins, but it’s much more comfortable than sleeping on the ground which we did all those years.
I’m grateful we were able to take these camping vacations. It made great memories for Gary and I to look back on now that our sons are on their own, making memories with their own families.
Ephemerals
Spring ephemerals: wildflowers that bloom for only a few days in the spring.
Last week I took a couple jaunts out to Nerstrand Big Woods State Park, one of my favorite parks in the area. Springtime in Nerstand always shows off its wildflowers before the trees leaf out. In spring the sunshine can reach and nourish the plants. We had an especially cold, windy and dreary April, so it seemed the many varieties of wildflowers decided to all pop up at once in May. It was spectacular.
I was able to participate in a wildflower walk with the new park naturalist at Nerstrand. As our group walked along the path towards Hidden Falls, he identified many different plants.
It was a good refresher course for me…each year I like to wander through the park and try to identify the spring flowers. I forget some over the year, and like to be reminded of their names.
The rare – grown only a few places in Minnesota and nowhere else in the world – the dwarf trout lily, was in bloom. It is always special to see that tiny, kernel of rice-size flower.
It was a sunny, glorious day as we hiked the trail. Not so windy, as it has been, and is, as I write this post.
Soon the tree leaves will cover the forest floor in shade, and the beautiful spring flowers will go dormant and wait until next spring to resurrect once again.
Bird Song
As we walked along the river trail the other morning, we heard an unusual number of birds singing. The sound ramped up as we got closer to the hundreds of birds we could not see (except for a few in the treetops) but it sounded like a huge choir of birds, and not the normal bird songs one hears in the spring. Loud chirping was more like it. We took notice.
As we walked through this moment, we passed some walkers and they commented on the sound from the birds. I recognized one of the walkers as the orchestra conductor at St. Olaf College…I said to him as we passed, “I think the birds need a conductor.” His group also commented on the number of birds there must be to make loud “music” like that.
Gary and I continued on and all at once there was silence!
Not one bird sound. They all stopped at the exact same moment…for about five seconds.
Silence.
Then, just as quickly as they stopped, the birds resumed their singing again, loudly again. We looked at each other and Gary quipped, “They must have had to turn the page.” I laughed.
The conductor said he’d love to see all the birds take off at once. That would be a sight to see.
I do love birds…to watch them at the feeders and see them in nature, to admire their unique beauty and hear their sweet songs.
Flowers
My interest in flowers did not start when I was a child. Although my mom had indoor plants and some flowers growing outside, it didn’t seem to influence me much. I do remember beautiful window boxes filled with flowers outside the large picture window in front of our house– pretty to look at from the inside as well as the outside. I must have been influenced by that. I have had flower boxes on my decks for 40+ years.
I remember my mother’s purple clematis (probably a wonderful, old-fashion Jackmanli) on the side of our house on McKinley Street, along with some other flowers.
There may have been a small garden plot in the back corner of my parent’s yard, but I don’t remember the kinds of flowers growing there. I did not have to weed flowers, but I did have to weed around the Poplar trees that lined our back yard.
My mother did plant a lilac bush and I took a small section from her bush and planted it at our house in Burnsville. When we moved from Burnsville, I took a section from that bush and planted it in our yard here in Northfield. It’s still growing and blooming after 27+ years.
I do remember, as a child, picking some tulips from a neighbor’s garden to bring home to my mom…then I had to turn right around and go apologize to Dorothy for not asking permission to cut some of her flowers. Whoops.
Recently a prompt from a writing session led me to thinking about when my interest in flowers began. I remembered giving a friend an eight-pack of starter begonias as a housewarming gift. I have no idea why I picked begonias or how they would grow …but when I went back to her house later that summer there was pot on her front porch, blooming with beautiful begonias…the ones I had given her earlier that spring. I had no idea they would grow and fill out so much! This was back in high school. I’ve learned a lot since then.
My interest and knowledge grew when we moved into a new house with a vacant yard, almost twenty-eight years ago. As I mentioned, I have always had flower boxes to fill with colorful annuals, so we included that into our deck plans, but I created a few flower gardens, too, and have been playing in the dirt ever since.
And now I love flowers…tending to them, admiring them in gardens all over the world, and taking pictures of them…
(These photos were taken in my yard at different times and years.)
Spanish Moss and Southern Live Oaks
It hangs like icicles dripping from the trees…not a certain type of tree, but any tree. And it’s everywhere in Savannah, Georgia, where we took a mini road trip from our base in North Carolina.
I admit it took me awhile to come to appreciate the appeal of these plants but I now think Spanish moss is a beautiful sight. It is not Spanish, nor is it moss. Its name is derived from French settlers naming it Spanish beard and later it became Spanish moss.
Spanish moss is a member of the bromeliad family, an epiphyte, or air plant. It uses trees only for support, but gets its nourishment from air, sun, and rain. It does not hurt the trees it grows on.
And even more beautiful is when you see the Spanish moss hanging in the southern live oak trees. The Southern live oaks are majestic trees. Although usually identified as evergreens, because live oaks retain their leaves nearly year-round, they are not true evergreens. Live oaks drop their leaves immediately before new leaves emerge in the spring. The leaves do not resemble the oak leaves we find in Minnesota.
Southern live oaks grow to about 50 feet in height, with large looming branches hanging low and spreading far and wide, its limbs may spread out 100 feet or more.
They can grow to be several hundred years old. They are the official state tree of Georgia. Southern live oaks are magnificent trees, and found all over Savannah, and the deep south we’ve read. They are picturesque.
At one historic place we visited, Wormsloe, there was an avenue of southern live oaks lining each side of the road for one mile, forming a canopy overhead. I was in awe as we drove through this exquisite scene.
This is one of the prominent features I will remember about our enchanting trip to Savannah, Georgia: Spanish moss and Southern live oaks.
Sunsets
It felt like we were driving through a sunset.
We were on our way to visit our youngest son and his family in North Carolina. Another road trip…YAY.
As the daylight came to an end on the shortest day of 2021, we found ourselves in the southwestern region of West Virginia. It was very scenic, and we were going up, and over, and down the “lesser” mountains (of the Appalachian Mountains), like a roller coaster, with a lot of curves too.
The sun was setting and the conditions were just right for a gorgeous sunset…poofs of clouds, reflecting the sun, catching the rays, turning red.
It surrounded us, and it lingered for a several miles! It was magnificent. I felt I was on a Disney ride, driving through a sunset.
It was dark when we drove into Charleston, West Virginia where we stopped for the night. The next stop…grandchildren!
Cannon Valley Wilderness Park
Fungi. I looked up the definition and still not sure exactly what it is – but I learned there are 144,000 known species.
We saw a few of the species when hiking in the Cannon River Wilderness Area (north end) last week. We saw most of the fungi at the beginning of our hike, in the area where a swath from the 2017 tornado took down many trees. It seems to have created the right conditions for growth of fungi.
We had not hiked this trail since before the tornado came through. There is still evidence of the tornado including many downed trees at the beginning of the trail, and a new parking area.
The steep steps leading down into the park remained intact, but a new rope railing has been put in place, which is a good thing to help get up and down the precarious stairs.
This section of the Cannon River Wilderness Park seems to have been taken care of at one time, but now seems neglected…probably due to lack of funds. There were a few minor repairs to one of the bridges.
There are boardwalks over many swampy areas, but they are rotting away or warped, and sometimes dangerous to walk on. There is one newer bridge over the creek, built by a boy scout troop and installed in 2006 (according to the plaque).
The trail was mostly clear all the way to the Cannon River…then at that point one would have to somehow cross the river to get to the other side, which connects to the Cannon River Wilderness Area on the southwest side of the river. We turned around and retraced our steps.
There were obstacles on the trail…some large branches we had to duck under, and some logs we had to step over, and a few streams to jump over… or carefully step on logs or stones to cross.
We enjoyed this interesting hike with all its intricacies, and its intriguing fungi.
The next day we hiked in the Cannon River Wilderness Area on the south side of the Cannon River. We have wandered the paths in the southern section many times. The trails are tramped on more, and therefore, well-defined. There are many more routes to hike in this section, including one trail along the river, which is always pleasant.
Olbrich Gardens – Revisited
Visiting Olbrich Gardens has become a tradition for me and my friend from Indiana, every time we meet in Madison, Wisconsin.
This botanical garden has an indoor, tropical conservatory, 16 acres of gardens in the outdoor area, and an interesting gift shop. The admission is free if you stay outside, and that is where we always want to be! Some years, when we have visited Olbrich in late October, there has been snow on the ground, but even then, it’s a pleasant walk.
This year when we visited, there was no snow, an above normal temperature, and the sky was a beautiful blue with bright sunshine. Although it was later in the season, we did find a few lingering blooms before winter brings it to a halt.
A couple years ago we discovered an interesting tree called the Full Moon Maple. We enjoy its fringed leaves and the vibrant red/orange color it turns at this time of year…and we like the name!
There is a permanent display with a kaleidoscope to look through onto a pot of colorful greens and flowers you can spin around. I always enjoy looking at the geometric patterns through a kaleidoscope, especially when focusing on plants at botanical gardens. I’ve seen these displays at other gardens. What a creative idea someone had.
The gardens are open to enjoy all year. There is a special event in December, “Holiday Express” that would be fun to go back and see…model trains, poinsettias and fresh greens.
It’s an easy drive to Madison from Northfield, and Madison always feels welcoming and is easy to get around. It seems to have many interesting things to do and see, including many bike trails. We have more exploring to do!
But, it’s good to know we can revisit Olbrich Gardens to find respite, and a peaceful place to enjoy nature, every time.