Escape

Spring buds on the maple trees

This week’s photo challenge at WordPress is:  Escape.

Just wanted to let you know.  We’ve finally busted out of winter here in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula after almost seven months.

We’ve successfully escaped.

We can only hope someone hid the keys of that winter jailor…

Breaking up is *not so* very hard to do

Ice breaking up on the Keweenaw Bay

Yesterday morning in town–in between errands a’plenty–I noticed that the last of the ice on the bay was breaking up into jagged concentric circles and other patterned ice floes.

It was warm, about 60 degrees (16 C) in the early morning so I paused to take some pictures to show you.

Hope you enjoy the last glimpse of winter of our Keweenaw Bay.  We hope it’s our last glimpse!

It breaks into thousands of floating icebergs

Melt

Rushing stream with tiny waterfalls

The Long Winter seems to be exiting just in time for May.  We can only hope.  Last weekend the temperatures soared to about 70 degrees (21 C) and our snow began to melt, melt, melt.

Three

We humans scurried outside, sun and warmth-deprived creatures, and we luxuriated.

I found an old cushion and sat with my back against maples and poplars and spruce, trying to feel the sap rising up my back.

Sat and delighted in Spring.

Fun, Fun, Fun

I love this photo.

OK, dear readers.  Karma, over at her blog, has posted a new photo challenge.  It’s called “Colors of Your World.”   She requests that we find a color we love, to which we’re drawn.  We’re urged to share our photos celebrating this color.

Colorful buds in frozen rain.

One of the names the Ojibway called me was “Rainbow Woman”.

It’s indicative, dear reader, that I could never–ever–pick a favorite color.  Unless it was ALL colors.

My favorite color is–ROYGBIV.  You know what this is, right?  Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet.  The whole spectrum.  Add white and black.  Tan and brown.  Whatever other color that exists.  They’re all my favorite.

Hullabaloo

During the snowstorm

Such a hullabaloo in the Northern forest!

Spring Seed Boy fell in love with young Snow Maiden.

Oh, it’s forbidden, don’t you know!

Icy beauty

The Winter Queen, in her fury, locked Spring Seed Boy in a shed behind the six-foot snow bank.

Spring Seed Boy cries and it rains.  Young Snow Maiden weeps and it snows.  The Winter Queen gripes and it snows some more.

The oregano silently stews.

The Sun King tried, yes he tried, to negotiate a truce.  He shined his hardest, but to no avail.

The Mourning Doves in the bird feeder mourn.  The poor robins, just in from the sunny south, look in vain for worms beneath the endless white snow.  The bear refuse to leave hibernation.  The trees refuse to leaf.  The ice on the lake refuses to melt.

Tiptoeing away…

January, 2012. Our Little House in the Big Woods.

You’ve been expecting this, haven’t you?

You’ve been wondering when Kathy is taking another blogging break?

You clever reader.

You know how it goes.  She writes like crazy for months, and then she accelerates and writes every day for a while, and then she announces a blogging break.  Her last 11-day break occurred in December, so it’s been a long time…

She’s gently closing her blogging door and tiptoeing away.  She’ll leave on a night light in case you want to read past stories–or look at past pictures–while she’s mostly off-line for a while.  She won’t even be reading your blogs during her break.  :(

Thank you for your support during The Long Winter by the Shores of Silver Lake  Lake Superior.  (You Laura Ingalls Wilder fans caught the attempt at humor, right?)  I have so appreciated your readership and comments during these long cold northern winter days and nights.  You’ve helped make this heart feel even warmer than sitting by the wood stove with your support and connection.

May you be blessed as the seasons change.  From our Little House in the Big Woods to your neck of the woods…  Love, Kathy

P.S.  Almost forgot to tell you!  Even though haven’t been taking as many pictures as usual during the last year or so, I found enough photos to share a favorite from each month, starting back in January, 2012.  Will leave you with more than a baker’s dozen of memories:

February, 2012. A quiet moment in Nicaragua. (Our nephew married there–an amazing trip to San Juan del Sur.)

Day in My Life: Inside a two-room schoolhouse

Our little two-room school

Imagine you’re a six-year-old in 1911.  You live on a farm about a mile from the nearest neighbor.  It’s time for you to be educated, Ma says.  You’ve got new shoes–your first shoes ever–and you’ll walk with your big brother and sister down that dirt road, maybe three miles, and you’ll start school at a one-room or two-room school.

Your brother will help the other big kids stoke the wood stove that sits in the corner of the classroom.  You’ll eat your lunch out of a silver pail and make friends with perhaps the only other 1st grade student and you’ll play outside at recess even when it’s ten below zero (-23 C).  And you won’t freeze to death.  You’ll walk the three miles back home and do chores before supper.  Then you’ll start your homework.

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth

Red and white

I used to think truth was something simple.

Something one felt.  Something essential.  Something easily revealed.

After years of meditation–and the practice of blogging–it becomes more and more apparent that, yes, Truth is very simple.  But it’s extremely complicated to convey it to oneself or another person.

Most of the time we humans tell half-truths to each other.  We pick and choose what to tell.  We announce we think or believe something, conveniently leaving out the actual experience in our lives where we did the opposite.

Ladybug in parsley and other winter stories.

Ladybug in parsley. View One.

Life is so weird.

After writing yesterday’s post about my current camera conundrum (say that fast three times) I am suddenly feeling re-inspired about taking pictures.

Twice today have dug out the Canon Rebel and photographed.

The first photo shoot involved a ladybug discovered in parsley purchased at the grocery store.

Imagine!  A bright red ladybug crawling through deep velvet-green parsley.

Perhaps some folks might be disturbed at insects in their groceries, thinking them vile creatures worth annihilating immediately, if not sooner.

Not I.

I delighted in the bright red crawling creature.  Isn’t she beautiful?  Isn’t she vibrant?  Doesn’t she remind one of spring as a possibility?

The Point and Shoot Conundrum

Canon Rebel.

I am trying to make a decision.

The kind of decision where you think of every possible related fact, feeling and eventuality.

Would you mind if I shared the latest conundrum here?