Ice Out and Ice In on our Minnesota lake

This week was ice out time. If you don't live this far north it is something that wouldn't enter your thinking about the seasons. It's a big deal. There is a good feeling that comes from seeing open water after four or so months of cold. It doesn't mean the end of snow, or the frost on the windshield. It just means the end of ice on the lake. 

It came a little earlier than average, which is around April 9th. That is typical, it jumps around a lot from one year to the next. One day the lake is mainly covered in ice, the next day the ice is gone. The reverse happens in that fall. Our lake is not huge, around 250 acres or so. If you live on a really big one, the process is a little less straightforward. More fits and starts, one bay is open, another is not, depending on sunlight, wind and the like. 

March 25th was the ice-out for this year. In the last ten years the earliest was March 15, the latest was May 1. Dec 1 was the ice-in date last fall, ranging between November 12 and December 19 since 2012. 

The state government keeps track of this information. I am one of the hundreds of citizen volunteers who watch the ice and submit the numbers. I've been watching the ice for the past week, binoculars in hand from the warmth of my den. Whew. My work is done. Until November. 

Spring finally

I don't know why it has taken so long for me to post to this blog. Try to put something here at least monthly.


It has been a good spring, though wetter than we would like. I suppose there is always something about the climate to love or hate and this year it is all the water. Our drought that began last summer is over. The lower part of the lot is under water, about a foot of it. That means that the dock and lift are still waiting to be pushed off the shore and the boat is still in the driveway. There are ducks and geese swimming where I normally cut grass.


As an amateur gardener, it has been a busy spring. Time will tell whether it is productive. In addition to a small vegetable garden the weekends have been spent clearing brush and planting a number of small shrubs, for both their flowers and fruit. We have planted cranberries, lilacs, gooseberries, blueberries, currants. A straw bale garden is also underway.
We have taken down six trees that were either in danger of falling over, or had outgrown their space. Now the challenge is to get grass and shrubs to grow where the trees once stood.
I am sitting on my deck looking out over woods full of songbirds and you can almost see the leaves growing by the hour. Royals and Seattle on the radio.
It is mothers day and I am so thankful for the mother of my children, for my mother and the soon to be mother of my first grandchild. It's a good day.

On the deck

This winter seems to be longer than normal, with more snow and cold. Don't know whether that's true, but seems that way. Perhaps as we age the more difficult weather days seem longer than they actually are.

They weekend was spent gazing at my Weber Grill. While shoveling snow off the deck I wished that it was warm enough to cook something. While that's always possible in theory, the reality is no one wants to stand over a grill when it's 14 degrees.

However, there was something about cleaning off the snow, and digging out the tires from an ice pack, that made it feel a little warmer. I took the lid off and smelled the dead coals from the last cookout of 2013. Stale old used charcoal. And yet, it did have this tiny aroma that gave a hint of better weather to come.

Today I look out on snowdrifts 3 and 4 feet high. Piles of plowed snow 6 ft high. In just a month, most of it will be gone, replaced by water on the lake, a few puddles perhaps here and there on top of the huge ice cover.

Pitchers, Catchers and the smell of barbecue

On this coldest date of the year, two observations.

1) I stepped off the bus this morning in -17 temps. Was hit by the smell of barbecue coming from who knows where and immediately felt 100 degrees warmer.
2) Pitchers and catchers report in a couple of weeks. Kudos to the Arizona Diamondbacks for reporting the earliest of all, Feb 6th, followed by the Dodgers on the 8th and the Cardinals on the 12th. Everyone else in the National League is still sleeping in on those days and show up sometime around the 14th. It will still be cold here, but somewhere there is the whizz of a pitch, the smack to the glove and the crack of a bat that all sound like spring around here.  

The weekend I did almost nothing

Got rid of a futon by giving it away on craiglist. Went to see "Hunger Games". Grilled steaks on Sunday night. Cut the grass for the first time this year. Loaded salt into the water softener. Went to church. Went to Costco. Got a haircut. Ran about six miles each day. Played scrabble. Watched a Cardinals game on tv. Scotch guarded the new outdoor furniture cushions. Planted flowers in various outside containers. Restocked my supply of charcoal and hickory chunks. Pulled weeds. Finished watching "24, The Complete Series", for the third time, all while running on the treadmill. Watched game 6 of the 2011 World Series, also while running. So baisically, running, watching tv, yardwork.

Our Home in May

May began with freezing temps and snowflakes, but it is beginning to look like spring around here. The grass is green and leaves are coming out on all the trees. We had some landscaping done the past few weeks and took out a lot of the shrubs.

Smoked a few ribs for the third time this spring. Though the temp was in the 50's there is something about firing up a smoker and a grill that makes it seem much more like summer than it actually is. "You smell like smoke" is something I never tire of hearing.

Ribs 2011

Today for the first time in quite a while, it feels like Spring here. I uncovered the smoker, checking to make sure no animals had made a home inside during the winter. I'm here alone this weekend and decided to smoke the first ribs of 2011. Ribs are hard for me to get right. Real frustrating. Why I can smoke a pork shoulder to perfection almost every time, but continually spoil ribs is a mystery. Don't know what i'm doing wrong but will keep trying.

The picture is of our house today. One last pile of snow in front of the porch, big enough that I still cannot get all the Christmas lights off the bushes. There is still a few strips of snow in the back and front yard that will likely be gone by morning. Wandering around the yard I find mementos of the fall and winter that have been buried for months. The girl next door's lacrosse stick, a piece off the snowblower handle, used firecrackers from New Years.

After taking Robin and Caroline to the airport early this morning I took our dog, Rocko, for his first walk of the year. We're not bad dog owners, its just that he is so old he can only go to the end of the block and back and most mornings it has been too cold. He was glad to be out but got tired before we passed two houses and we turned around. Aging is taking its toll on our 16 yr old dog. After that and a twelve mile run I went out to Costco to get the ribs. Turkeys crossing the road near my house have an irradescent sheen to their feathers that I have never noticed before, jade, blue, red. Birds are back, including a few of the pesky canada geese that will soon infest our town. Neighbors are cleaning out the garage and draining gas from the snowblowers. We'll have more snow, just not enough to worry about and not enough to need a snowblower.

Back to the ribs... finally, a decent batch. Really good. I think part of my problem has been cooking them too long. This time I used an approach I saw on the Food Channel. Smoke with a dry rub for four hours at 250. I used just a little salt and pepper. Follow by grilling with a vinegar based mop. I grilled for about a half hour, turning about every five minutes. Good hot flame. Work really well. Given my general incompetence in the rib category, i'll probably use this method from now on.

Thoughts on the end of the baseball season....

There will be Spring.

One machine that puts a smile on my face.

Noon. May 2nd. First lawn mowing of 2009. Pack away the snowblower, gas up the John Deere lawnmower. Purchased for $25 from previous owner of this house in 2003. Three pumps on the primer button, one pull of the rope. Bbbbrrrrrrrrmmmmmmmm