Thursday June 19, 2025 Crickets

My blog posts catch up to me almost every week. Sometimes they're written ahead of time, but not published because something else has displaced it; maybe an event like last week's road trip or an idea I've decided to flesh out resulting in a post that takes literally hours to put together. Too tired to finish, I'll go to bed, then likely wake up well before 5 am, and finish the post before it publishes; rereading it several times to make sure it is what I want. By the time it publishes, I'm content. 'It's good.'

 

This evening I was tired after finally doing a long over-due project (Yes, like finishing painting the house). I  cleaned out all the eave spouts because thunderstorms were forecast for the next few days. I had put on my two-piece rain suit, knee-boots, waterproof gloves and my waterproof cap. Then I had taped my cuffs closed so water wouldn't get down my sleeve and flood my armpits with bone-chilling cold well-water. I was so armored against water getting in, that consequently there was no place for perspiration to get out, so by the time I finished I was soaked anyway. That supreme effort warranted a big lunch, a beer, and a well-deserved nap.

 

Yesterday evening I began mowing firebreaks with my tractor and mower. Each half-mile long, five-foot wide pass that I do with my little Bush Hog Brush Cutter is hardly worth even starting their tractor to any of my neighbors who farm thousands of acres and have gigantic tractors and implements to do it all. Our farm of 160 acres is more the size of what my grandfather Wilhelm Palm (1884-1937) and his brothers started out creating back in the early 1900s. My farm equipment collection reflects that era as well, to about 1967. Whereas they cleared their land of trees, rocks, and brush to create fields and improvements to gain title to a homestead, I planted trees as many of you already know and likely think further mention of it (ho hum) redundant.

However, just as poetry is so important to so many the world over, so is our little farm along Mikinaak Creek its own expression of beauty on a daily basis. Some can render words into passages of beauty, I tend to rely on photography.

 

Lady Slipper

 

Poplar, White Spruce, and Norway Spruce Tops

Norway (Red) Pine cone

A Smidgeon of Winter Rye

A Back Trail That Needs mowing

Red Pine, Hybrid Cottonwood, and Honeysuckle

A Meadow Surrounded by Willow and White Spruce

Almost Touching The Clouds

White Spruce, Red Pine, Poplar, and Birch

Using My Sunglasses As A Filter: A Series

 

Wild In A Woodlot

Hiding Places

Mowed Walking Trail To Home

It's happened recently that whenever I'm looking for something in particular, in a maze of somethings, say on my workbench or in my truck for tools, I've begun asking myself aloud, "Do you see what you're looking at?" just to make myself focus on what it is that I'm seeing; it could be in plain sight. Conversely, although I didn't couldn't see them, I became acutely aware that I was hearing crickets in the grass and brush around me perhaps asking themselves,  repeatedly, "Do you see what you're looking at?"