lake hilbert

I went to visit my brother and his family last Sunday and while I was there I took some pictures of the lake to show how far down the water level is.   All the mud you see in the pictures used to be covered with water.  You’ll notice that the docks don’t even reach the water anymore.

The water used to be right up to where the tall grass starts in this picture, except for the area to the right where the tree is.  The dock used to be at the far left, but they moved it out farther, and now it is at the far right, but you can only see a tiny bit of it in this picture.  This lake has a lot of mud at the bottom, probably about two to three feet, but the water is only a few inches above the muck here in this area and my brother said you can walk right across the lake here now, in fact, the kids from across the lake did just that last weekend.

Lake Hilbert is made up of 3 sections.  They are referred to as first lake (the one I’m on in this shot), and in this picture you can see a small channel that leads into the second lake.  There is another channel that leads from the second lake into the third lake, but you can’t see it in this picture, but it would be on the right.

my good deed for the day

My alarm went off at 7:00 this morning and 15 minutes later I was still thinking about actually getting up, when I heard chirping and splashing right outside the bedroom window.  The cats ran to the window to have a look, and so did I.  What I saw was a bird trying desperately to get out of a bucket of water that was about half full.  I ran outside and tipped the bucket so the bird could get out and I saw that it was a young robin.  It was breathing heavy and shivering, so I took it around to the front of the house and put it in the grass in the sunshine to warm up and settle down.  After about an hour it was dried off and stopped shivering and looked much better, and it was calm enough to let me pet it.  There was a bird in the tree above me that was chirping quite loudly and  I think it was the mama.  I went for a walk and when I got back it was gone.  I feel sorry for the baby bird, but I’m glad I got to have such an amazing experience, and besides, the little bird survived.  Poor Axl had to wait much longer than usual to be let out of his crate though.  I didn’t want him to find the baby bird before mama bird did.

Straight out of the bucket of water.

The trip to the front of the house.

Looking much better.

This picture makes me think of the book I used to read to my daughter when she was little called, “Are You My Mother?”.

Purple trillium and matching spider

Before I get started here, let me first say thank you very much to wordpress.com for featuring my “Remember” post (5/31/2010) on their Freshly Pressed page.  I really appreciate it and I am flattered that they liked my post well enough to put it on the home page.  Next, I’d like to express a sincere thank you to everyone who stopped by my blog and a sincere thank you for all the wonderful comments.  I hope you liked what you saw here well enough to come back and see what else I have posted from time to time.

Now, about my pictures.  I’ve taken quite a few pictures in the last two days and it’s going to take me awhile to get them all posted (as usual), but I will get them posted.  I took a walk this evening and took a lot of pics, but I’m just going to post two of them for now.  We have a lot of Trilliums growing around here, and they are almost all gone now, but the cool thing about trilliums is that, though they are normally white, when they get old and start to die, they turn purple, which I think is great because purple is my favorite color.  As I was walking along, I decided the take a picture of this trillium and when I went down in the ditch for the picture, I realized that there was a spider on it.  I absolutely hate spiders, but I’d do anything for a good picture, including getting totally creeped out, so there I was with the camera about 3 inches away, shooting like crazy.  I looked it up in my bug book and it is a Goldenrod spider.  The goldenrod isn’t up yet, so I suppose this spider is just hanging out on the trilliums, waiting.  I like how the stripe on the spider matches the trillium.  It also looks like he’s holding something in front of his face.  Supper, maybe??

Monday morning walk

Yesterday morning, as I sat out on the deck with my coffee, I tried to decide if I should go kayaking or take a walk.  I decided to take a walk and it turned out to be the right decision.  I ended up seeing something so amazingly beautiful that it took my breath away.  As I was walking down a side road, I turned and saw a doe and fawn just a short distance into the woods.  I stopped walking immediately and slowly got my camera ready.  The little fawn didn’t see me and was slowly walking towards me, but mama deer saw me and watched closely, but didn’t move.  The fawn was a little wobbly yet and probably only a day or so old.  After a minute or two, mama got nervous and started to whistle and run.  The baby dropped to the ground and mama ran a short distance away to watch.  I walked in and took a couple quick shots and left so I wouldn’t disturb them any further.  The baby laid perfectly still the whole time.  That is how they react to danger.  The mama signals an alarm and the baby drops and remains motionless and the mama runs around to draw attention away from the baby, then when the threat has passed, she comes back for the baby.  I felt bad for scaring them, but that little baby was such a wonder to see.

The quality is bad on this pic, I had to crop it quite a bit.

trilliums

There’s nothing quite like what you’ll see in the woods around our house this time of year.  The trilliums are out and they are very plentiful in some areas, and ours is one of them.  There are large areas where the ground is just covered with them.  I’m surprised at how well they are growing despite our serious lack of rain here.  In fact, I’m surprised anything is growing at all.  We haven’t had a decent rainfall in about a month and even that one wasn’t nearly enough.   They predict rain for us quite often, but it seems to go around us or simply die out before it gets here.

The following pictures really don’t do the trilliums justice.  I’m trying to give an idea here of just how many there are, but I feel my attempt falls short.

Staron House

This is an old abandoned house a few miles from where I live.  I’ve been there quite a few times to take pictures.  I have a strong fascination with old buildings and this old house just draws me in.  I would love to see what it looked like when it was lived in.  I wonder about the families that have lived here over the years.  All I know about it now is that the family that built it was named Staron.  I have taken pics of this house in all four seasons, but I’m not very happy with the summer shots, so when the conditions are right, and I take new summer shots, I will post this house in all four seasons.  That said, I will post the shots I got yesterday.  If I ever learn the history of this house, I will post it.  The first two shots are originals, and the last three are HDR.

simple abundance

When I was out at Goodman Park on Sunday, I was amazed at how many plants I found growing out of the rocks.  There’s obviously very little there for them to sustain life, but yet they do.  They have everything they need, even though it appears to be so insufficient.  We humans seem to, for the most part, want more than what we already have, and what we don’t realize is that we already have everything we need.  There are so many simple joys and so much abundant beauty around us, but we don’t always see it in our pursuit of material things.  I don’t believe that material possessions can make a person truly happy, whereas for instance, a walk in the woods, listening to the wind in the trees and the song of the birds, or sitting beside a river, or silently watching the sun rise or set, can fill our souls with a joy and peace that cannot be found anywhere else.

Hollywood!!

I just have to share this picture.  Hopefully it will make you laugh like a nut, like I did when I was taking this shot, and at the very least, I hope it makes you smile.  My daughter bought a used Jeep Cherokee and when we brought it home this morning, she discovered that the previous owner left these sunglasses in a storage compartment.  She didn’t want the glasses and neither did I, so the next logical thing to do is put them on the dog, right?  All I had to do to get this shot was hold up his ball and he sat perfectly still will I took quite a few shots, and this is the one I was waiting for.  You see, Axl quite often will close his mouth and his bottom teeth push his top lip up, forming this unusual “smile”.  I knew if I stood there long enough, he’d stop panting and “smile”, and that’s exactly what he did.  We all got a real good laugh out of this little episode and in the end, Axl got his ball back.

Ya Gotta Love Wisconsin…

This is what I woke up to this morning, a lovely April snowstorm.  I don’t know why I’m surprised, after all,  I live in Wisconsin and we have an April snowstorm every year.  Our snow melted very early this year and everyone I talked to said the same thing; “we haven’t seen the last of the snow, we’re gonna get one last blast in April”.  Well, here it is.  Hopefully the little wildflowers that were out already will survive, (see previous post).  Last year we had an April snowstorm and the wildflowers did just fine, so I hope these will too.   Guess I’ll have to leave a little early for work so I can stop for pictures along the way…

Lake Oneonta

I got up a little earlier than usual yesterday morning and hauled the kayak over to Lake Oneonta.  I have never gone kayaking on this lake despite the fact that it is only 3 miles from home.  There are no combustion engines allowed on the lake and the only public access is a long wide set of steps.  The steps are no problem for hauling a kayak, but I’m sure it would be much more difficult with a rowboat, which is much heavier.  There were quite a few ducks on the lake and I ended up upsetting quite a few of them.  Not on purpose though.

I thought it was interesting that this little tree is growing out of the end of a log sticking out of the water.

This is a small island that I plan on exploring in a few weeks to see what’s growing there.