Goodbye snow

The last five days or so we've had temperatures above freezing and a fair amount of rain, to boot, so all our wonderful snow is melting away faster than you can say ... something. On Monday I went to the bark park and the warm, humid air in contact with the still frozen snow created fog as thick as, umm ... very thick fog. Although it saddened me to see the snow disappearing, I've always enjoyed fog, so I used the crummy camera in my mobile telephone (not too long ago, having a telephone and camera combined in one device that fit in your pocket would have seemed impossible, and here I'm griping that it doesn't take good enough photos!) to take some grainy photographs of the soggy, foggy scenery.






Look, you can see the sun in this one!

Cherokee Marsh

As I mentioned in my profile, I'm a wood-worker for a remodeling company by day. Thanks to our "president" and his policies, our economy is in the toilet. As a result, I've been laid off for the last two months. Hopefully, I still have a job to go back to, since I like my employer and the people with whom I work. However, looking for the silver lining, I've had a little extra spare time recently. I'm learning how to blug, for instance. I also have tried to get out and enjoy some of the wonderful things this area has to offer. One of those is Cherokee Marsh. It's an incredible piece of land set aside as a wetland restoration project right on the outskirts of Madison. Prime real estate for those money-grubbing developers. It's past the peak of fall colors right now, but beautiful, nonetheless. As I was walking along one of the trails, I looked to my left and saw, maybe fifteen feet away, something staring at me. It was close enough that I started thinking about how deadly those hooves can be. Anyway, it stayed still while I got out my camera (well, actually, it's my daughter's camera. I still don't own a digital camera so I borrow hers when I think I might need one. Can you say "loser"?) and got a quick shot of it before it hightailed it out of there. It's not a great shot, thanks to the auto-focus, but you can see it a little to the right of center. If you wish, you can enbiggen it by clicking on it.



Whenever I get out of the city, I'm always struck by what a beautiful state Wisconsin is. Yes, other states are beautiful, as well, and, while we don't have some of the spectacular elements here that you find elsewhere, there is a subtle beauty to Wisconsin that I find very satisfying. You don't often find Wisconsin featured in the Sierra Club calendars, but that's probably just as well. We already have too many people moving here to escape from whatever. They're usually people with too much money, they displace people who have lived here a long time and they generally bring the whatever they're escaping from with them, destroying what attracted them to Wisconsin in the process. Check out the photo at the top of this post. If you click on it and make it bigger, you'll see a McMansion on the other side of the river. It's huge, believe me. I envision maybe two adults and one child living in that monstrosity. Probably a six car garage with at least two SUVs (a Lexus and a BMW), a sports car or two and a big honkin' truck, minimum. Oh, yes, let's not forget the big ol' boat! I've worked on a house or two like that and it's nothing short of obscene. And it's getting worse. Beautiful "unimproved" land gobbled up by rich people while poverty, homelessness and the prison population go through the roof. But I ramble. Time to stop. Just one more photo of Cherokee Marsh, though.