St Michael’s Sandy Hill Cemetery

I spent a fair amount of my summer weekends riding through the northern Illinois countryside trying to build up my stamina for distance riding. Doing this meant that I had to lay out longer distance routes, which meant that I was seeing new and different parts of the region. This always has the bonus of reminding me that there is beauty all around us - you just have to look - and it also brought me across a cemetery that I had previously been unaware of.

St Micheal’s Cemetery isn’t hidden like some in the region are. But it is out of the way along a path that isn’t heavily traveled, and certainly wasn’t commonly traversed by me. However, it is off the main road, down a rustic drive, which also appears to be the back entry to someone’s farmstead. I have spent a fair amount of time in the past researching to find cemeteries in the area as part of my intermittent efforts towards doing genealogical research. I don’t recall this one turning up in my online searches. However, it’s possible that it did and I set it aside (and forgot it) because it didn’t include any relations.

And that would be the case in part because it appears to be a cemetery for Irish settlers. While my 3rd Great Grandmother, Martha Foulk (née Morrow) was of Irish descent, she’s just about the only one in the family. What’s more, Martha was born in Ohio. One of the things that makes this site especially interesting is that many of the people at rest here are from Ireland proper. How do I know this? It’s on the grave stones:

Driscoll, Baltimore, Cork County

McGinnis, County Louth

Yes - many of the stones have an indication of the county in Ireland in which the person was born. In the first, it also indicates a town (or perhaps a parish?) - Baltimore. Notable in the second is that the daughter doesn’t have a year of her passing on it. Perhaps she moved away and was interred elsewhere.

Not everyone here was born in Ireland, tho:

New York City

This site appears to be very well cared for and tended. There has been extensive effort to protect and contain several of the stones, with some cemented together:

Cement Repair

And others with steel frames built around them to keep them in some semblance of whole:

Steel frame

Steel frame with cross

I am certain it is no accident that bracing on the second one there takes on the shape of a cross. I’ve been to several of the old cemeteries in the area over the years, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen this level of effort towards maintaining the older stones before.

There is also another a feature here that I haven’t seen elsewhere:

Steel cross

Steel crosses

In multiple locations through the site there are these steel crosses placed. I read them as markers to indicate a burial site where the stone is no longer present. This suggests an earnest effort to remember the person interred, even if their name is no longer available. So often at these older sites you see large swaths of area between the stones that just appear empty. In many cases, and with visits to multiple sites, you come to realize that this isn’t because our forefathers left that space empty, but is rather because the markers for the people there have since broken and/or fallen over and been swallowed by the earth. At times you can find markers that are partway through this process.

Here someone has made the effort to mark those spots and preserve some level of memory. It’s possible too that a record was kept of who was in those spots (one hopes).

There is a little chapel here that has the look of being a newer building on the outside.

Chapel

Chapel

That this is an illusion perpetrated by the vinyl siding becomes clear when you look inside:

Inside the chapel

This article about the site on Genealogy Trails indicates that the chapel was part of a larger church that once stood here. It seems the congregation moved westward towards the nearby town of Amboy.

I stopped here to take a short break during my ride, anticipating a 5-10 minute rest. I ended up staying and exploring for something like a half-hour. If this is your sort of thing, it’s an interesting and engaging spot, and very peaceful on a Sunday morning.

Peaceful Sunday Morning

Winter Aftermath

It is, of course, Spring - for nearly a month now, technically speaking. And with spring there is always yard cleanup. It’s an inevitable, unavoidable part of the season out here in our old house.

Yard cleanup is one of those tasks which never seems to be easier from year to year - I don’t ever gird myself for this activity, look around the yard and say: “hey, not so bad this year”.

But this spring is something... special.

Our past winter really offered some beautiful snowy vistas, with freezing rain followed by freezing frost coating trees earlier in the season, and then later alternated with wet, heavy snow just coating everything. It was truly impressive at times:

Snow on everything

But while it’s truly a natural spectacle, it’s also naturally hard on the trees. I realized this a bit even at the time, as the old fir tree line remnant at the back of the property had some fallen limbs. It turned out, however, that they were simply the most outspoken members of our arboreal family. The others - especially the maples, stoic in their presentation - were apparently hiding their pain until they just couldn't any more. As late winter thawed into spring gusts, all of the broken material these stalwart soldiers were holding in was then released in a cathartic blast of broken branches, sticks, and twigs.

And so we have yard cleanup.

Branches, sticks, and twigs

Twigs, branches, and sticks

Not only is the volume of these prodigious, the number of very large branches on the ground is really quite astonishing. Enough so that I’ve actually separated out several of them as being big enough to cut up for firewood:

Future firewood

And the thing is, it isn’t all done - not just yet. The pictures here represent two separate weekends of activity that mostly removed and the things that were on the ground. But in some cases - for both the evergreen and deciduous trees - they aren’t ready to part with their damaged limbs.

In the case of the maples, branches break free and splinter off at the base, with portions of the limb remaining attached. You can see them hanging in the trees, just waiting for the wind to twist and turn them enough that they can finally break free. And for some of these I can reach them with my handsaw and a latter, or with my telescoping pruning doohickey:

Pruning at a distance

Others are simply too high up for that, and will need to come down on their own.

Lofty elevations

For the most damaged trees in the old tree line there were two sizeable branches that were broken and twisted to the degree that the piny part of them were laying on the ground. But the soft, malleable nature of these trees is such that they were still attached - they had broken, and would soon completely die, but they didn’t know it (one could hear them saying softly “I’m not dead”, but they weren’t fooling anyone... or was that just the wind?).

For these, then, more substantial effort was required. And for the first, and smaller of the two, I initially started to work on it with my handsaw.

I saw a problem here...

I did this for about three minutes of exhausting, largely vain effort before I remembered that I actually own an axe...

Take a seat, little guy - help is here.

And that was definitely better. The first one separated with relatively minimal effort. The other one was broken higher up into the tree, and I ended up needing to cut it up in sections to get it down into workable pieces.

Tree dissection.

I always find working with the axe very satisfying - it’s a real workout, it lets out all of the frustrations of the week, and makes one feel, well, rather manly. However, by the end of working on the second branch I’d be lying if I didn’t at least idly wonder why I don’t own a chainsaw...

My two separate weekends of this were nearly a month apart - one in mid-March, and then this weekend. Finishing it up became a thing, tho, because the grass has begun to grow again, and it’s really hard to mow over fallen branches. This put some urgency into the idea of moving forward, and so I and my yard crew had to get to it.

Yard crew

They are good company, if not really good help. And no so great at posing for pictures...

A Little Winter Color

To the south side of the house we have a large evergreen tree. It sits just outside my home office windows, as well as just to the left of the large picture window in our dining room. This has been a delightful source of entertainment over the years that we have been there, because it is a year-round favorite of our feathered friends.

Usually, in the winter this is a contingent of LBBs, but this season I realized that we had an additional, somewhat less usual set of tenants occupying our natural avian apartment building.

A fine fellow…

It’s not unusual to see cardinals out here - they stay in Illinois year round, and I see them both in the yard from time to time, as well as when I am out cycling in the snow. So catching the flash of red the first time or two was not a surprise. But when it kept happening I suspected that this fine gentleman had taken up residence.

And when I saw the lady of the house I was more certain.

She was a little harder to catch under the tree than he was. I’d see her there from time to time, but she was usually in a position that made a pic difficult to take, and/or she would relocate before I could get into position to capture her image.

And then a couple of weeks ago she apparently warmed up to me enough to spend a little time outside the office window:

Lady of the House

And that pretty much cements it in my mind - they really do appear to have taken up residence. And so far they seem to be good tenants - they keep their area clean, don’t play loud music late at night...

But I am concerned that she might be hanging out with some rifraf...

What is he doing here??

When this picture was taken we were absolutely not seeing signs of spring. About a week before Punxsutawney Phil had run from his shadow, and of course we all know just how reliable the weather predictions of sizable rodents are.

...which is to say, probably about as good as those of any other weatherman...

But the point is that the robin just isn’t supposed to be here yet, right? He’s the metaphorical sign of spring - a season that was a month and a half away in a technical sense, and at least a few weeks away in a felt sense.

So I was concerned that this robin was a bad-boy, here to be a corrupting influence on our otherwise incorruptible lady. It might as well be wearing a leather jacket and engineer boots.

Apparently my perception of the behavior of robins is a bit off the mark. It turns out they do hang out in winter weather, and alter their diet to match what is available in winter weather. This article on the Cool Green Science website covers all of that and more about these red-breasted folk, and it’s a good read.

So - I guess it can stay, as long as it doesn’t cause any trouble...

Secrets Revealed in Snow

Rosie and Calamity are working dogs.

Killing vermin is work.

We don’t have sheep or cattle for them to herd, but instead they patrol the property for vermin and always make us aware when people come by - Calamity in particular. They say that dog owners learn to distinguish between the types of barks and calls that their dogs make, and this is absolutely true for Calamity. Her “someone is here” bark-howl crescendo is unmistakable and can be heard from pretty much anywhere in the house.

They also say that Australian Cattledogs are “silent workers”. They are full of crap on that one. There is virtually no activity for Calamity, with the possible exception of sleeping, that doesn’t require some type of canine vocal soundtrack.

Rosie, our Australian Shepherd/Border Collie mix, on the other hand, has taken the forefront on a different job. And it’s one that, until recently, I honestly did not fully understand.

The dogs have worn patrol pathways into the grass around the yard and, in the winter months they recapitulate these into the snowpack as well. Along these pathways, in particular spots, one could frequently see her standing at various spots near the property line barking at... something? in the distance.

And it’s a full-body bark, let me tell you. She has a deep bark that belies her slim frame, a real “woof”. And when she is employing it in these moments, each bark begins with a slight bounce up from the front legs - paws off the ground, mind you - with the “woof” being emitted as the paws hit the surface, and her shoulders hunch up.

She’ll do this repeatedly, sometimes for several minutes. It’s exhausting just watching it.

Most of the time I would just hear her barking and look out the window or walk around the house if I was outside, and I would see her there, fully engaged in that master-barking technique.

In more recent months, however, I’ve seen how it starts. At times, she will sit on our back steps, staring out intently across the landscape. This seems regal - a queen, surveying her realm - until she suddenly bolts off the steps, streaks across the yard, and gets to the end of the property, coming up to an immediate full-stop. And then the barking.

I have tried, many, many times, to see what she is barking at. Because there has to be something there, right? But I can never see a thing, no matter how intently I watch, nothing is there. And you might think, well, whatever it was she scared it off already. But I’ve seen her at the beginning of this now, and I’ve still seen nothing where she runs.

It’s honestly gotten to the point where I started to think she might be just a little... off.

But this winter, with the extended snow coverage, I had an opportunity to take a look at the area in the field just beyond one of her more common barking stations.

Tracks in snow

Mouse tracks and fox?

Canid tracks

She’s clearly not crazy. There’s a lot of activity there, as you can see. Based upon a couple of track identification websites, I can see that there’s fox and mouse tracks at minimum (one naturally attracted to the other, I’d imagine). Maybe coyote or stray dogs as well (we have both in the area, and I’ve seen the latter fairly recently). And there’s a bit that I am not sure how to account for as well.

What is this…?

I don’t know if that odd pattern is from animal activity, or maybe something being blown across the surface (we are in a wind farm, after all).

So now I know that she’s been warding off actual critters this whole time. I’ve also long suspected that she and Calamity supplement their diet with caught critters, and the volume of mouse tracks I see in the snow would suggest there’s plenty to catch. Plus - LB and I watched her dive face-first into the snow a few days just like a coyote or fox. She’s got some skills.

And - of course - now that I know what she’s warding off, when I see her start to bolt across the yard I look at where she’s pointed and...

...still can’t see a damn thing.

Winter Lessons

I grew up right near where I live now and, while I moved away for sizeable chunk of time in-between, I have lived in northern Illinois in one place or another for most of my life. And, given the way our seasons work here, about half that time has been in the winter.

One would think, after all that time, that one had seen it all. But every time one thinks that, winter out here says “hold my beer”, and then we get something like we’ve had over the past week.

It all started with freezing rain changing into snow. While this is treacherous - loose powder on top of a sheet of ice makes steps, sidewalks, and streets an impromptu and undesirable skating rink - it’s not new in and of itself. We get to contend with that combination at least one or two times each winter, it seems. And it can offer some visual delights when it happens, something to appreciate as long as you don’t really need to go anywhere in a hurry.

Even the grass is frozen

The ice is just the beginning…

But it was followed by freezing fog. This is much rarer - I don’t think I’d ever even heard of it until the past 10 years or so, after we moved out here. This is a situation where fog occurs when the ambient temperature is at or below freezing. It causes low visibility, just like fog always does...

Top view without fog, bottom view with. There could be monsters out there and we’d never know till it was too late…

...but because fog also keeps moisture suspended in the air at close to ground level, it also coats everything with that moisture. And, of course, then it freezes.

Frost on top of ice on top of frost on to; of…

While it is considerably less common, we’ve had freezing fog out here a couple of times in the past decade. Mother Nature’s twist this time, the novel idea she came up with while she was in her cups, is to have it hang continuously for oh, say 3-4 days in a row.

It was like living in a Stephen King story. I’m just glad we were at home and not trapped in a supermarket. And when it lifted late in the day on Wednesday I was astonished to see that there were other houses on our road. It had been so long - I’d forgotten they were there...

The longer the fog went on, the more ice accumulated on, well, everything.

Everything coated

Looking out the windows each morning became an exercise in determining how many additional limbs had fallen from the day before, finally taken down by the accumulating weight. The remnants of the old tree line at the back of the house had a particularly hard time of it.

Walking Wounded

Walking Wounded

Soldier down

It also offered up the novel puzzle of trying to sort out why the garage door wouldn't open - each time I pushed the button the automatic opener would try, and then give up. Walking - carefully - around to the outside revealed a door so coated with ice that it now weighed more than the opener could lift.

Pro tip - gently smacking it gently with a rubber mallet is an effective removal approach. And it offers some exercise in the bargain as well. I’m sure it will soon be a part of a CrossFit routine.

While this was all going on I was mostly content to wait and observe, while being thankful that the power hadn’t gone out.

Which, of course it then did, in the wee, dark hours of Wednesday morning. Fortunately it was a brief event this time around, relatively speaking. I’ve gotten into the habit, when this happens, of driving along the power line network that feeds the house to see if I can find the break, and this time it was about a mile down the road and around the corner. Most houses in the area have some type of lighting that is on all night, so one can extrapolate if one is on the right track by looking for where the lighting ends. Once I found it I called it in to ComEd. I fancy that this makes it easier for the line workers to get us restored because at least they don’t have to find it first. I don’t know if it really makes a difference, but at least I feel like I’m doing something.

You know, I do like learning new things and all, but maybe someone could let Mother Nature know that I think I’m good when it comes to winter weather phenomena. And while you’re at it, maybe cut her off from the bar...

Success!?!

I documented Rosie’s front yard excavation project a couple of weeks ago.

So proud!

She has continued her efforts towards this project since, periodically appearing very intent, showing up at the back door with paws and chest full of dirt and/or mud (we’ve been going through a rainy patch of late), but with no clear evidence of a positive outcome.

And, it should be noted, that it was quite possible that she was having success at catching the critters and simply consuming them as she catches them. As I’ve noted before, the dogs are pretty effective vermin hunters, and I very much suspect that they supplement their scheduled meals with critter snacks.

So maybe, just maybe, I reasoned, she’s catching dozens of subterranean snipes, and I’m just not seeing it. Maybe - and to be honest, it salves my metaphorical wounds in relation to the craters in my landscaping.

But then, a couple of days ago, this appeared:

I’m pretty sure they’d mount it’s head on the wall, you know, if they had a wall.

Now, I had assumed that what Rosie was going after was moles - I’ve periodically seen evidence of an ongoing mole eradication program conducted by the canine crew. But this fine looking - if unfortunate - fellow appears to a ground squirrel.

Ground squirrels, like their tree-dwelling, furry-tailed cousins, are among the critters that we typically haven’t seen much of out here at the homestead. They are otherwise all over the place - driving and cycling around the countryside I frequently see them making their ill-advised mad dashes across the roadways. Just not on our property.

While we’ve seen the return of the rabbits, for better or worse, this is the only ground squirrel I can ever recall seeing on the property in our 11 years or so out here. Of course, if the current situation is representative of the type of welcome intrepid explorers can expect, I suppose we shouldn't expect an influx of new settlers.

So - Rosie appears to have been successful. But, in light of catching this single ground squirrel I couldn't help but look at the yard...

This could be the beginning point for a very short subway system…

...and ask Rosie:

Me: “Rosie, do you think maybe this is maybe a Pyrrhic victory?”

Rosie: “I’m not sure - what does ‘Pyrrhic’ mean?”

Which is clearly just her playing dumb as a distraction - every knows that herding dogs are well versed in the Greek classics.

Holy Moley!

I have mentioned here before that our canine companions are pretty capable at pest management on the property. They catch an array of critters, both undersireable and benign - I wish they’d leave the possums alone, for example, but I wish they’d do a better job managing the rabbits. They even manage to catch moles from time to time, which is a little surprising but, as someone who does not delight in the pleasure of a turned ankle, a good thing.

It is possible to take a good thing too far, however.

Generally speaking, when I say that they manage critters, what I mean is that said critters sort of show up dead (or playing dead, in the case of the aforementioned possums), either near the back door or actually in a dog’s mouth. Usually we don’t have the opportunity to see the actual critter catching. And in the case of the moles, I’ve always just pictured Rosie or Calamity patiently waiting outside the mole hole for the subterranean interloper to peek his little gray head out and then BAM! No more mole.

Well, that’s what I’ve pictured until very recently.

Rosie has apparently decided that the one-at-a-time mole removal strategy is just too inefficient. She also seems to have forgotten that she is an Australian Shepherd, and is operating under the delusion that she is now some sort of unusually large, very fast terrier.

The clever and/or attentive among you might be saying to yourselves: They’ve got a couple of dogs. How does he know it’s Rosie?

And that’s a fine, appropriate, well considered question. You are very smart.

This is how:

And what does one do when one discovers such an excavation? I think one of the natural reactions might be to utter a few well selected four letter words at an elevated volume. I’m not beyond that, and I wouldn't swear that it absolutely hasn’t happened, but for the most part I’ve had the luxury to be rather circumspect about these events. I do not maintain my yard as an example of modern botanical manicuring, so Rosie isn’t disturbing a treasured flowerbed, for example. What’s more, I’m loathe to scold her for it.

The thing is, it’s just in these few spots - it’s not all over the yard. And I’ve watched her begin the process. It’s not random. Her ears perk up and she looks straight down at the ground, head moving back and forth as if she is following an unseen - yes, tunneling - critter a few inches below the surface. It’s somewhere in this process that she begins tearing at the earth.

And once she gets down to a given depth - about a foot or so - that’s when the snout goes in. I have not actually seen her come up with a mole, mind you (though I think I’d enjoy that), but when you look in the holes, they appear to open on a tunnel. I think she’s on to something.

I’ve filled the holes in multiple times at this point, but apparently they are still felt to be fertile mole-hunting grounds.

And, if she ever manages to fully extract this particular group of burrowers and is looking for more to do, perhaps we can hire her out to an excavation company. Of course, they’ll have to be okay with Rosie choosing the dig site, but otherwise...

Welcome to the Jungle

This has been an unusually good year for wildlife spotting on and around our little section of prairie. I shared pictures of my time with foxes and our new swallow neighbors earlier, but they certainly aren’t the only cohabitants in our area of late.

Yesterday’s dewy morning revealed the work of what may be a small army of funnel web spiders in the northwestern quarter.

Funnel Web Army

Don’t get any closer…

The webs are notable for their sudden appearance on a given morning - a dozen or more where there previously appeared to be none. The spiders themselves proved very shy and challenging to locate or capture.

And speaking of spiders, I had this fine, terrifying fellow for company whilst shucking corn by the grill:

Terrifying Spider

He puts on a fine show of being frightening, but only if you are very, very tiny...

Slightly less terrifying spider

And, as far as that goes, one of our screens appears to be a bit loose on one corner, provider a perfect, if unintentional habitat for this specimen:

It got this far - will it make it all the way in?

I asked LB to clean out between the window and the screen, but all I got was a "hell no" in response...

Earlier in the season, doing a bit of yard work (yes, with a machete - isn’t that how you do yard work?) I managed to pick up this little guy:

Inching along

I don’t know exactly how I picked it up - it must have been on something I was cutting down. It’s a pretty good trick to catch a machete blade while it’s swinging.

Just ahead of Independence Day this specimen decided to help us with hanging the laundry out to dry:

His name is Dennis…

He’s considerably smaller than his cousins who are plaguing me on the road.

One of the apparent benefits to not pursing a monoculture of Kentucky bluegrass is that the variation supports these tiny critters. Among them, we also get more than our fair share of butterflies and moths every year. We get everything from the little butter pats:

Butter Pat

...To the ubiquitous monarchs. And sometimes we get some additional splashes of color:

Black Swallowtail

Red-Spotted Purple Admiral

And sometimes we encounter butterflies and moths still in the process of becoming:

Spotted Apatelodes

My best guess on this one is that it’s the caterpillar form of the Spotted Apatelodes moth. If so, it definitely appears to live it up in its youth with that bright yellow.

The final entry in this little photo catalogue are the toads. We always have toads here, but the population seems to have exploded this year. It used to be kind of a pleasant surprise to encounter them. Now it seems to be unusual to walk in the yard and not see one. This is not a problem, mind you - I always enjoy the meeting.

Our current companions range from the camouflaged...

Darth Toader

...To the standouts:

Look at me!

The summer isn’t over yet, so I’m sure we’ll encounter more. When we first decided to move out to the Homestead I was looking forward to the solitude of separation from neighbors. I did not anticipate the additional benefit of being surrounded with such variety. I did not anticipate it, but I do appreciate it.

Kill the Wabbit…

A while back I wrote here about my excitement at seeing the return of rabbits to our little space of nature. I’d been surprised to find, when we moved out here, that both rabbits and squirrels seemed to be absent from our island of grass and trees in the agricultural sea of former prairie.

Back when I wrote that, I didn’t have a garden...

We’ve planted vegetable gardens here occasionally over our decade or so at the Homestead, the grandest effort being the straw bale garden that MLW designed and implemented a few years ago.

...In fact, looking back, the first sightings of rabbits on the periphery of the yard was later in the same summer as we put in that garden. Coincidence...?

At any rate, we hadn’t done a vegetable garden since then, but we decided to do one this spring. In our uncertain times we didn’t want to incur the expense of the straw bales, so we modified the garden plot to just use the soil underneath. This mostly involved pulling up some partially buried landscaping fabric (a hateful activity which has definitely affected the likelihood that I’ll ever use it again) and renting a rototiller. We are in prime farm country, so one can anticipate that the soil is going to be pretty good for vegetables, and this same area, more or less, also held my grandmother’s garden years ago.

We sprouted seeds indoors and then planted them - a variety of items including pole beans, peas, lettuce, spinach, carrots, beets, rutabagas, zuchinni and yellow sauash, and a variety of types of tomatoes. I enjoy much about this process - the planting, the weeding, and watching the garden grow are as much fun as the actual anticipation of the harvest for me.

When it started I did not make the connection to what was going on. Specifically, I noted that one of the pole beans seemed to have broken off. It had not been in great shape when it went into the garden, so I figured it just hadn’t made it, and set it aside in my head.

Then the one next to it was gone.

This proceeded, each trip to the garden finding less and less of what was planted still remaining - no lettuce, no spinach, and now one single, sad green onion...

I think MLW actually first suggested that it might be the rabbits. I don’t think I’d made the connection, in part because I hadn’t seen them anywhere near the garden. And, after all, the garden is right there in dog territory, so they wouldn’t dare, would they?

I say I hadn’t made the connection "in part", because the other part might just be that I’m kinda dumb. I already know they will venture into dog territory, even without a garden in there. And, after all, what else did I think was happening? I clearly wasn’t shaving with Occam’s Razor that week.

So where does that leave us? Like this:

Of course, it’s a little hard to see what isn’t there, without context, so let me offer some:

The zuchinni and yellow squash are doing great - I suspect the hairy composition of their stalks is somehow unpalatable to the leporid louts invading our space. And somehow, some of the rutabagas have made it through. There are a handful of tomatoes that have survived, but most of them are later transplants offered up by some friends, and I suspect that their larger size at the time of planting may have reduced the risk of predation.

But spinach? Slaughtered. Carrots? Killed. Peas? Pulverized. Beans? Butchered. Lettuce? Left this mortal coil. Beets? Uh... well, you get the point.

I did have this section of the garden blocked off to keep the dogs out, worried they would walk on the sprouts. In retrospect, that was almost certainly a mistake. The space between the climbing wires is too small for our dogs to walk through, but for rabbits...? What I appeared to have offered, instead, was a rabbit smorgasbord in a canine-free safe zone.

I am quite honestly now wondering if the absence of rabbits from our property was more than just happenstance. My grandparents were children of the depression, and their gardening was more than just a hobby. Grandma Marie even picked dandelions for salad (the yard offers an abundant supply), and I’m certain that was even more true for prior generations at the homestead. Our ancestors did not have the same perspective towards maintaining a natural balance of critters - I can easily picture ancestors engaging in an active rabbit extermination program to protect their gardens.

...I do love roasted rabbit, and they’ve become pretty comfortable around here... But I am not going to do that - mass scale lepooridicide is off the table. However, it’s clear that if we are going to continue to grow vegetables going forward I will probably need to put a rabbit-proof fence around our garden. This is the sort of chore that I don’t love because, while I understand how to do it intellectually, my technical skills are... lacking. No matter how hard I try the fence will almost certainly look like crap when I’m done. But our garden looks like crap now, so...

New Tenants

The view out the back stairwell window is almost always my first glance at the out of doors every morning. It changes with the weather and seasons, of course, but you’d expect that it would otherwise be a fairly static view. I would think that too, but it often surprises me.

At the corners of the house we have these little ledges. They are an architectural element that has been there since the very beginning:

And my Uncle, I believe, made efforts to preserve or reflect those elements despite the re-siding of the house over time - what was once wood is now reflected as metal, but still present.

These residential plots out here in the agricultural territory of the prairie are, as I’ve mentioned before, little islands of wooded area. As such, birds of the tree nesting variety (as opposed to the ground-nesting avians out on the prairie itself) tend to congregate heavily around the house. Spring mornings from mid-May until the earliest days of summer are a riot of jumbled birdsong. Even with the curtains pulled tight against the morning light there is no confusion as to whether the sun has risen.

I can readily verify that we have now reached the point of the year where that is happening before 5:30 AM... ugh...

At any rate, it’s clear that even though we have an abundance of trees, there simply isn’t enough room at the inn for all comers, and it’s inevitable each year that some poor robin or sparrow will try his hand at building a nest on one of those ledges. They are master builders, each and every one, but even mastery can’t defeat physics - the lightweight material atop a smooth surface inevitably succumbs to the spring winds.

Given this history, it wasn’t necessarily a surprise to see a nest under construction on the ledge just out that back stairwell window the other morning. And, when I saw it, it was with the thought that it would be only a short while before the avian architect saw the error of his ways. "Poor chap", I thought, "must be a young whipper-snapper on his first nest building foray, not yet experienced in the trials and travails of trying to nest on our old house".

But then as I watched the master builder came in to do some work and I got lucky enough to capture his image:

Seeing the type of bird I looked closer at the nest. Swallows, in addition to being the aeronautical acrobats of the prairie, build their nests not to nestle in, but to stick. And that does appear to be what is going on here.

The swallows have always been here - or at least as long as I can remember. Our resident population appears to mostly nest in our Old Gray Mare of a decaying barn. I don’t believe that I’ve see any try to nest at the house in the time that we’ve been here. Perhaps the returning population has grown to the point where they need more room than the barn can offer, or perhaps the progressive decrepitude of that structure has caused some of them to look for a nicer neighborhood. Perhaps it’s a combination of both situations.

In any case, we appear to have new tenants for the season here in the homestead.

Roadside Vulpines

Sometimes you just get lucky.

I was on a variation of a very common countryside riding route, a few miles from home, and on the way out I caught a glimpse of a fox in the tall grass of the ditch. It was the briefest of sightings, both because I was moving and because it ducked for cover as I approached. I considered myself fortunate for having been granted the viewing at all, and continued pedaling.

I had more or less forgotten that sighting by the I’d hit the middle point of the ride and began to swing back for the return trip. But as I approached the same section of road from the other direction I was greeted by a much less shy furry friend:

At first he just peeked his head out of the tall grass, and I assumed it would be similar to the prior encounter. But he was still for long enough to suggest I could get a picture, so I checked my rear view mirrors to make sure I was safe from behind, and then pulled up the phone to take this picture.

I thought that would be it, but I waited, keeping a watch behind me, because he continued to stand there. And then he moved out into the road and towards me!

But that was apparently close enough, and he bolted away:

And again, I thought it was done, and prepared to move on. But I was wrong - not only did he not take off and hide, but there was another there as well.

Litter mates, I assume, and likely not far from the den. Mama must have been away hunting or they surely would have been scolded back in. I was both thankful that she did not do so, but also concerned about the frolicking close to - and in - the road. But it afforded a marvelous opportunity, for as long as I stayed still and quiet, they continued to largely disregard me.

They stayed, playing at the side of the road until I decided it was time to move on. It was the rare perfect confluence of events. I am no expert in vulpine age determination (nor do I play such an expert on TV), but I assume these were juveniles, which would account for the relative lack of concern at my presence. They must have been denned up in the ditch, likely near where they were playing. And the road was blissfully clear of any motor vehicle traffic for the entire time I was there. This last part was a special gift, because while this was a country road, and not even a major country thoroughfare, I honestly cannot remember a ride on it before where I did not encounter at least one car or truck.

It was a gift of life in the country.

Delayed Mowing

This year, like last, we decided to delay mowing for the first part of the season to allow for additional flower time for the variety of plants growing in our two acres or so of yard. Of course, in this case, flower time is specific to Dandelions, Violets, and (gasp) Creeping Charlie, among others. This is a practice that bee folks advocate for, as it allows for additional nectar gathering opportunity for our fine, buzzing friends.

One gets an opportunity to see it at work while traipsing thru the tall grass. Bumblebees, in particular, are easy to detect as they go by, both by the erratic flight pattern and what seems to be the sound of a tiny B-52 bomber sailing past your ear.

It lends itself to an interesting - to me at least - visual presentation of the yard:

It’s interesting, at least in part, because it only looks this way for a short time. We (LB) mowed it yesterday afternoon - trying to get it done ahead of the threatened rain for today - and it will stay mowed more or less for the rest of the season, so it won’t look this way again till next year.

I do occasionally give thought to leaving it - perhaps mowing a portion of it in the front yard and around the house and leaving the rest. But you only have to do this once to realize why we mow. I mean, nowadays I suspect most of us now because _what will the neighbors think?_if we don’t. The reality is that there are practical purposes to it. The simplest one is that a yard like ours, where there are abundant Maple trees and a few hated Chinese Mulberry interlopers, would soon become a small forest. Volunteer trees sprout all over the yard, and mowing keeps them at bay.

The other thing you realize during that first mowing is that tallish grass - even the 6-8" high stuff in my yard - is excellent coverage for rodents of all sorts. We are not, as a rule, in the business of trying to support rodent propagation in this household.

Thus, after a decent interval, down it must come. But we’ll probably do it again next year.

Future Pears…?

Several years ago we planted three new fruit trees- a Cherry, a hardy Peach, and a Pear tree. We haven’t yet gotten around to adding to the orchard (which is what I’d like it to be), but the varieties are supposed to be self-pollinating, so the promise of fruit is still present.

For the most part, that promise has been largely unmet. I think we’ve had fruit on each tree once, and then only in small volumes. I look at them periodically, and this year the Peach tree seems to be struggling - it’s growing leaves, but not everywhere, looking more like the tree equivalent of a man with a severely receding hairline.

But a couple of days ago when I checked the Pear tree, this is what I found

Those white spots are flowers, of course. I moved in to look closer:

Not only are the leaves healthy and happy, hopefully reflecting a healthy and happy tree, but there are multiple flowers. Each flower, I believe, is a potential pear, which would suggest the chance for an actual pear harvest this year.

It’s obvious to me that we’d do better if we had more trees, both in terms of fertilization for fruit, and in general for orchard goals. I’d love to be able to work out to the point where we get enough fruit in to make (hard) cider and perry in small batches.

We are quite a ways out from that at the moment, but those flowers at least give me hope!

Backroad Mystery

Things are different now in the world - behavior patterns are changing - businesses are closed down, there’s less traffic and activity on the roads, and people are sheltered at home.

It’s challenging for everyone, but with all of that, I did not expect to find this on our Illinois country roads...

I was heading out to check my PO Box late in the afternoon - late enough to ensure the post office would be closed and I’d be unlikely to encounter anyone. Often I will ride to do this task, but this day I took the car. I didn’t realize it at the time that it was likely the safer option, offering protection from marauders. I did not realize that our society had devolved to this level, that I should be on the watch for roving gangs searching out that one last tank of juice.

It’s clear to me now that I should have been more wary.

From a distance I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I know from experience that, traveling in mountain regions you do periodically see rocks in the road, but this is northern Illinois. If it were a fallen rock it would have fallen directly from the sky. But what else could it be? The size of it was... curious, to say the least.

When I stopped I took the first picture to document where I’d been and what had happened, such was my uncertainty about the situation. And then, after checking for traffic - just for safety, mind you - the fear of roving brigands had not yet entered my thoughts.

The road was clear, so I approached. As the item came into sharp focus my heart fell, for now I knew what it was. Now I realized just how far things had fallen.

It was a head, ladies and gentlemen. A head, unattached to anything else, laying there in the road. What have we become?

Catastrophe

Like most folks, we’ve been mostly home for weeks now. We do have cats and dogs out here at the homestead. The dogs are mostly outside, and in general seem pleased to have more humans home more of the time. The cats, who are always inside seem unphased.

Or so I thought.

As I have mentioned before, the house is big and designed to be subdivided, so the cats have a lot of space - they don’t have to be around people if they don’t want to be. What’s more, the nature of our family prior to the pandemic is such that someone was home the overwhelming majority of the time, so it’s not like they have ever been accustomed to just having the place to themselves. It really seemed like all of this was no big change.

And then, just a couple of days ago, I came around the corner and saw this:

I can only assume this is the result of one or both of our feline compatriots finally reaching the boiling point and popping his or her respective top. I imagine the shrieking meow version of "I am so sick of the people! Why must they be here all the time?!?"

This is both understandable, but also unacceptable. While one might well get upset, smashing and tossing about of things is simply not an appropriate way to manage one’s emotions.

So, of course what I did was to leave the mess there as an object lesson to the furry friend who made it. When he or she is ready to acknowledge their error I expect they will pick it up.

I’m sure that will happen any day now...

Closed Concept Revisited

A couple of years ago, almost to the day, I wrote here about how our old house is built on a closed concept, in contrast to the fascination with the open concept designs you see on all of the remodeling shows.

Our current national (and world) crisis now has a lot more people either working from home, or just staying at home. I wonder, particularly if this continues to go on for a while (as it looks like it may) if we won’t see a change in perspective surrounding both work and home design.

Our old house is built on that closed concept design in part because these homes were built with the expectation of multi-generational occupancy. It was anticipated that the children would continue to work the farm and live in the homestead, building their own family in the process. It would not have been unusual to see three generations living within the building and, in the case of our home, a worker or two as well. It’s notable that the four bedrooms in the front of the house are virtually identical in size - there is no "master" bedroom built into the design. The largest potential bedroom is at the back, in the workers area, and I’m quite certain it was built with the intention of bunking multiple people in the space.

These were work-from-home spaces by design. It’s true, of course, that the bulk of the work would have been done outside - tending the fields and livestock - but records need be kept and accounts need to be balanced. When you aren’t cramming a king-size bed into them, each bedroom has ample space for a small desk and chair. While there are communal living spaces, it’s clear the design of these homes was meant to allow people to separate themselves from others when the need for privacy arose.

For the subset of the population who are fortunate enough to be able to work from home I am certain there has been an adjustment period. If you have not worked remotely before, there are issues of both physical space and personal discipline to be worked out in order to be successful at it. You have to have a space where you can be away from others, and you have to set yourself to a schedule and not allow the distractions of your home to pull you away from that schedule. The other members of the household need to learn to live with and respect that schedule as well.

You might think "well, sure, that was true for a big old house like yours, but what about people who didn’t live on the farm?" If you live in a town or village that still has a downtown area, I’d encourage you to go and look at the buildings built from the 1850’s through the turn of the century. There’s a characteristic design to those storefronts that includes apartments on top.

People often lived above the stores, restaurants, and taverns they operated. This is about as close to working from home as you can get without literally living _in_ the store.

What I wonder about all of this is whether, as this goes on and people adjust, we won’t see a developing preference for working from home among those who can do so. There are a host of advantages - not commuting means you regain that commute time. The average commute in the United States, one way, is 26.1 minutes, almost an hour per day, and rolling up over four hours per week (4.35, to be exact) for a full-time job. That’s four hours per week regained, 217.5 hours per year.

Commuting costs money as well as time. Car commuters - the majority of commuters - must buy fuel, and the travel back and forth puts wear and tear on the vehicle. Even a 10-mile commute one way puts 5000 miles a year on a vehicle. Commuting can also take a toll on your health and relationships.

With the savings in terms of time, health, and money, you can see where this might become attractive if people can get over that hurdle of work space and discipline in the home. The thing is, we can clear that hurdle - as described above, we’ve done this before. Frankly, although our era of commuting seems ubiquitous, it really is the outlier - we’ve only been doing these long commutes for a tiny slip of time in the grand scheme of things.

In fact, for quite some time the discipline of the work day was structured into our society. For those of us in Gen-X and older, many if not most of us grew up at a time when, as the saying goes, they "rolled up the sidewalks" at the end of the day. This is to say that, in smaller towns and villages at least, it was understood that nothing would be open downtown after 5 pm except for restaurants and taverns. Many places were not open on Saturdays and, when they were, it was always with limited hours. No one opened shop on Sunday - whether you were observant or not, it was understood to be a day of rest. This sounds inconvenient to our modern lives, to be sure, but it wasn’t all that big a deal then - you just planned ahead - and it is largely abrogated by online shopping now.

This is just a thought experiment of course - maybe things will just all go back exactly as they were when the pandemic has passed. But I wonder if we won’t see an impact on how people work, and how they want their homes laid out to support that change. I can just hear Drew and Jonathan now saying "what everyone wants nowadays is a closed concept design"...

Life at Home

We are, at the moment, in the middle of a world that seems to have gone crazy. As the Coronavirus spreads and cases of Covid-19 grow, social media is replete with jokes and struggles about toilet paper scarcity and social distancing.

It seems fair to say that, at this point, virtually everyone in the country is experiencing some impact from the effort to mediate the spread of infection. Schools are closing nationwide, including here in Illinois. Events are being cancelled, businesses are closing their doors to decrease engagement with larger groups of people, hopefully all just for a limited period of time.

It’s a huge change for a lot of people and, jokes aside, it’s clear there are folks who are uncertain how to weather the time disconnected.

All of it makes me think of the contrast of modern life against what our ancestors would have experienced only a few generations ago. When our old house was built in 1861 it’s certainly not the case that there were no cities, but life out here on the prairie would have included a level of social distancing by default that was far beyond what we are encountering now (and let’s not even get into the question of toilet paper). While there were towns, to be sure, and cities in the distance, I had to imagine that there were periods of time when the people at a given homestead went days or even weeks without seeing others. They muddled through with limited entertainment options - likely a book or three (one most certainly being the Bible), and the farm work and handicraft that they engaged in. And they only had each other for company (which likely explains, in part, why older homes were not built on an open concept floor plan).

None of which is to say that those prior generations were better than us - I’m not about to suggest that we all tear down our cities and towns and move out into the country. It’s really more a matter of what you live with and get used to. They didn’t have all of the entertainment options that even we in the rural world can access now. They weren’t better, but they were definitely more used to filling empty time. And, of course, they also had more that they needed to do - washing machines and dishwashers and Amazon, etc, free up a lot of time that our forebears would have used just for daily maintenance and care.

So now we have that time free, but it’s unoccupied. But if we look back we know that those who came before us were able to weather through it. And that means that we can, too.

Take care.

Return Visitor?

Last year, around this time, we had an unusual visitor. Back then I’d seen him at least once before, but had not been in a position to take pictures. Then MLW and I happened across him while we were in the car together, and she was able to snap some pictures of him.

Now, a year later, give or take a couple of weeks, he’s back!

Full disclosure - I have no idea whether this eagle is the same one as before, nor do I know it’s gender identity. But the pictures here are taken approximately a mile and a half from the location we saw the eagle last year. That’s a mile and a half as the crow - or eagle - flies.

Being able to catch him on camera this time was just sort of dumb luck. I was in the car coming back towards home, but the road was empty and I wasn’t in a hurry to get anywhere. I first saw him standing in the field, and did get a couple of shots of that, but oddly enough, a brown and white bird doesn’t stand out well in contrast against a field full of dirt and snow...

As with last year, this was a brief encounter. As I mentioned, when I first saw him he was standing in the field. I was probably 50 yards away from him, but clearly that was too close - my presence agitated him and he decided to go.

Last year we didn’t see the eagle again much after the February sighting. It could be that it had moved on - that it was passing through our area on the way to somewhere else. Or it could be that I just didn’t get lucky again. Still, two years in a row, around the same time of the season, suggests that the first event wasn’t just a fluke. I’m hoping we start to see them more routinely.

These shots were all taken with an iPhone XS Max

Tabling the Subject

It’s been an extremely slow year for projects out here on our little piece of the prairie. This owes to a combination of time and budget, and there are points in all of that where one realizes that, for the moment, what started out as a restoration project has become one of basic maintenance.

For the moment only, hopefully.

One of the things we ran into this past year was the need for a new roof - or more specifically, new shingles upon said roof. It’s a big project, and arguably one that pays dividends over time. But it’s also like getting socks and underwear for christmas - it’s something you need, but not something you wanted.

Unless, of course, it’s awesome lightweight wool socks for winter cycling - then socks for Christmas are pretty cool (thanks Mom!)

Our new roof is of the regular, cotton sock variety.

But we did manage to forge ahead with just a little bit of progress very recently. Our dining room has, of late, been bereft of anything resembling a dining room table.

To be clear, this was of our own doing. Some months ago we made arrangements to acquire a table from MLW’s sister - a large, Amish design that we felt would fit well within the house. But at the time, we already had a table in the dining room, and no obvious place to put it if we brought in the new one, so the new one waited patiently in the garage.

And then a friend who was moving into an apartment needed a table, so we loaned her our dining room table, which opened up the space for the new one; at which point the new one... well... waited patiently in the garage.

See, it was big and required at least two people to move, and it had to be assembled, which would take time, and the Christmas tree goes in the dining room so we needed room for that and... and... and...

Ok - yeah - I suck.

Anyway, the weekend before last or so presented the opportunity to get it done (finally). I pressed LB into service as journeyman furniture mover (a service she has served frequently and well), and we brought the table inside (finally). Here it is in its raw (e.g. undecorated) state:

This is the table closed. It has four leaves, stored inside, which can extend it sufficiently to make Henry the VIII feel comfortable dining at it. LB has already declared it to be a fine surface for future gaming, and I anticipate that it will be used as such in the near future.

As I say, a small bit of progress, but I feel at least like we’ve gotten something done.

So now I just need to look around and see what’s next...

Bam! No Power.

The winter of 2019-2020 thus far has been incredibly, unseasonably mild. Temperatures have ranged in the 30’s and 40’s (F), with occasional forays into the 50’s as well. This is historically unheard of for northern Illinois (though we know we are in non-historical times for climate). We have essentially gotten a pass for the first third of winter.

One of the effects of this is to lull people into a false sense of security. Then, when the temperature does finally drop, even a bit, it’s a shocking change. A 20° day, which would seem pretty much par for the course in most years, perhaps a reprieve from much colder days, now seems painfully cold itself.

Mother Nature decided to make up for a bit of lost time this weekend, and sent in the winter trifecta: ice, followed by snow, followed by wind.

This leads to trees covered with layers of ice, smaller bits made brittle by the cold and stressed by the additional weight of the frozen material. As the west wind passes over and through them, bits and pieces break away.

Sitting in the living room yesterday afternoon, which happens to be situated on the west side of the house, we could hear the snap-crackle-pop of bits of ice and tree breaking away, and the periodic "smack" as those pieces were propelled into the side of the house. And as we listened to this, I looked over at MLW and asked "how long before the power goes out?"

This was not a rueful statement, nor even a fearful one. The reality is that, when the trees are covered in ice, so too are other things, and some of those things are on the power poles - lines, transformers, etc. The statement was simply an observation of expectation.

I’ve written here about the power going out before - this is an event that happens at least once or twice every winter, and it is ultimately a fact of rural life. What happens afterward is largely just a matter of course at this point: send ComEd a text saying "out" and relocate to a warmer part of the house, in this case, to the east side of the home.

(The layout of the house was clearly not conceived with winter TV watching in mind - what was John Foulk thinking when he designed the home in the 1860’s?)

This particular adventure in unintentional time travel was brief - a little less than three hours. MLW and I coped by snuggling under the blankets in our bedroom and watching videos on the iPad. Life could be far, far worse.

And upon waking this morning and taking my usual look out the stairwell window I was greeted by a familiar, but fleeting site:

The frost is, of course, on the inside of the window...

This is the situation with the power on and the heat working - the old, single-pane windows tend to frost up. It doesn’t happen often - it has to be pretty cold outside for it to occur - but it does happen.

Which led me to wonder - exactly how cold was it? So I checked the handy-dandy iPhone weather app:

That’s right - it was negative zero degrees! I mean, zero is cold all on its own. How cold does it have to be to classsify as negative zero?!?