Winter in the U.P. 2018

Winter U.P. Style 2018

Well another lovely winter in the upper oenninsula of Michigan.!!😍👏👏❄️❄️😍

Our snow is frequent and fluffy light for shoveling. Our temps hover from the teens to the mid 30's. Yes we get a few cold weeks but thanks to lake Superior and lake effect temps it is much much warmer than the landlocked parts of northern Wisconsin , Michigan and Minnesota.

We cross country ski fom December  thru March...with bonus months of november and April. And we have a lovely groomed trail system for skiing with 25 miles of trails.

This year we go over 175 inches which is pretty normal for us!!

If you are going to live in a winter climate might as well enjoy it..so the more snow the better.

At age 65 it is still a joy to ski as often as i can...the sheer beauty, fresh air and amazing forest views are still awesome...it never gets old...and may even get more beautiful each year.

Such a blessing to havevour health, live in a small town with great people and slow living and have the national forest at your door step. What else  would we want?  

I love visiting the  city to see our girls but i am a country girl at heart and every minute i spend outside i extend my life and my joy and peace.

Happy spring to all....golfing is also just around the  corner now...our  outside choice for the warmer months...with our beautiful golf course Just a block away ,well that is a great blessing also.

So we have the four seasons of outside fun covered..hehe

Do yourself a favor and be sure to spend some time outside today and be sure to visit the amazing great lakes our midwest has to offer!! It will extend your life, joy and peace!!

Our amazing garden of veggies in wisconsin!!

Well our garden in Wisconsin again yielded amazing bounty this summer!!
We use landscape fabric over the raised beds and insert seeds or plants into the rows when planting.
The porus fabric  allows moisure in but retains more moisture in the soil when the sun beats down.
This fabric has allowed us to be absent  as needed in the summer yet still yields a great crop of veggies at summers end.

This year we again had a very large harvest of cucumbers..i think probably 50 or 60!!
I made refrigerator bread and butter pickles until i could not do one more jar.
Some of the cukes were huge..the size of my forearm, almost 4 inches in diameter...all great eating and pickling. they do. Some Turn yellow quickly after harvsting but still made great pickles.

We also harvested alot of yellow plum tomatoes, tons  of spinach, some cabbage and spaghetti squash.
What a joy to watch a garden grow...just amazing to me and a gift to our dinner table!!

Pics to follow!!

Winter in the UPper Penninsula..2017

Well it has beeen an interesting  winter this year. It started out with a bang the last week of December...with a 12 inch snowstorm. I think by  mid February we had 130 inches. We have had cold and warm spells. We were gone to milwaukee for some family issues and had 18 inches of snow to remove upon returning 4 days later!! Yesterday it reached 50 degrees and sunny all day long!!

The skiing has been good but too often this year our volunteer work and family needs take us away from the sport we love.  The snow got so plentiful that Dave has resorted to snow blowing our very long country driveway instead  of truck plowing the snow away as there is no more rom to push the snow!!

The U P is famous for our fluffy almost daily snow that is not hard to shovel or plow as so light but if you dont keep up with it well it is a daily job sometimes....hood exercise for me!! I get to shovel the deck and sidewalk and dave does the driveway. We love the winters here. They are beautiful and quiet( except for our neighbors barking dog hehe).

It is peaceful retirement for us and a real blessing.living here.  Working as board member ,volunteer manager and grant writer for our communtiy food pantry along with participating in a womens service club here keeps me busy with service work and Dave is super busy as a board member and volunteer  trail groomer  for our great cross country ski trails and we both teach free kids ski classes each sunday afternoon in Jan and Feb. So we have found our service strengths and it is a blessing as well. We love our part time jobs in retirement doing community service work on a weekly basis.
I will try to attach some great photos from this winter if my computer behaves🤣

Winter Wonderland 2016 Upper Peninsula

2016 here and gone

 Hello faithful readers...so sorry any readers out there as i have abandoned my blogging in 2016.... caught up in facebook and instsgram.

The good or bad news  hehe is that i am back in 2017 as i have abandoned my fb page...too time consuming and this election ...well it discouraged me from anymore political posts except environmental. You can also find more pics on instagram as that is my weekly post site....i will write soon when more time....good for my aging brain...hehe...happy new year to all!!

Old Family Photos

Thanks to my 97 year old uncle Lee's photo slides and my cousins Jim and Rob on the west coast I have some old family photos I wanted to share with you.... Enjoy!! See if you can guess who is who??

Fall 2014

The Fall this year was cool and rainy. Altho as always the beautiful UP offered up some glorious color at the end of September and early October. Our yard was a glorious yellow as if someone turned on the lights in our 20 acres surrounding our house. What suprised me the most was the gorgeous after color here..we had color all through October as the lovely Tamaraks give up a glowing yellow next. to the the green pine trees and the regular trees with leaves turn to gold and rust all around our town bay  by Lake Superior. The color seems to last a whole month instead of the usual few weeks. It all started mid of September and lasted till this last week in October when the leaves finally all fell down from the trees. It made cutting a trail in our back 20 really fun for  cutting dead trees for firewood and  snowshoeing( later this winter) as the color brightened up the usually dark woods. It was beautiful!! Most people complained of the cool weather this summer and Fall  but you will never hear me complain as I love the cool weather for outside sports. I just add on another layer of clothesand breath in that lovely fresh air!! I did feel badly for the school kids though who had little to no weather to swim in the Great Lakes this year as too cold. We were still getting water temps of 40  and 50 degrees  in July  and August (at 150 feet with our fishing depth finder), with surface temps barely reaching  into the 60 s all summer!! But al least the fish came around even if a bit late in the season.

Well our amazing  Honda "walk behind" leaf blower machine really helps with our long driveway and to push the fallen leaves beyond the back our our flower gardens in the yard. I have always hated raking as it hurts my back but I can push that leaf blower for 2 hrs with no back pain the following day!! Good job Dave for him buying this a few years ago as even our small yard in Illinois had mature oaks and offers up oodles of leaves to clear....
Dave had some real creative chain sawing down of dead trees on our property for chopping wood for our wood stove heat this coming winter. We have an interesting situation where our many trees are tall and skinny so when you cut one it may not fall as trees close together and canopy of tree line can catch a cut tree in mid fall. We actually had to tie a rope to one connecting the tree to our pick up truck on the edge of the woods and drive it down to the ground. I always ask dave to tell me when he is cutting down a full tree as want to be there as a second person for safety reasons in case that tree falls an unexpected way. He is getting to be an expert at tree cutting though..knows how to make those angle cuts to direct the fall. It is still a bit scary when you hear that crack as it begins to fall !!
Dave has cut almost 4 face cords so far as works at it a bit each week!!!!! Go dave!!! This helps as we usually burn b wood in our wood stove during the day to heat the house and just use propane furnace over night.  As propane prices soared last winter in Michigan it was nice to have our wood to burn each day. Ahhhh country life.

We did a ton of golfing this fall..everyday that was nice we walked our nine holes for exercise. My game is really consistent now..so fun after all these years..just have to work on my putting a bit. We both got new drivers and they are working well!! The course is just one house away from us and most days we simply walk on the course and play..no tee times or reservations needed!! I love this timeless golf ...we seldom have to wait to get on the course or to play a hole..just pure delight. Not like city golf!! It's a real treat and we love it!!
We took our boat on Lake Superior to see the fall colors around the bay from the water for the first time this year. It was beautiful and the water was like glass so flat(..not a wave around)...the perfect day to be boating on Lake Superior. We must have stayed out for 3 hrs enjoying the views of the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore formations and the lovely fall colors above them. It was a real treat for the eyes and the weather was a gorgeous 75!! Dave' s aunt and her husband came from Milwaukee for a weekend visit of golfing and boating. We also golfed at the well known Greywalls golf course in Marquette. It is an amazing golf course built on rock foundation  up in the hills overlooking Lake Superior..wow!!! It is a course you do not play for score (as very difficult with angled fairways and greens) but more for the beautiful views. It is like a mosaic of lovely holes sculpted out of the beautiful Michigan foothills near Lake Superior. The golf rates are super high because it is a  one of the top ten courses in the Midwest but they have a reduced rate in fall so worth it to play it once!!
Well they predict rain /snow and 30 degrees for Halloween this Friday so old man winter will be knocking on our door soon.  The fire wood is cut and piled in the garage and pole barn ready for the cold temps a comin.




 We love it and could never go back to living in the city. So very peaceful here and I love the fresh air activities everyday. It is a great blessing to us!! Thank you Jesus!!