COLD Sunshine...

Today, is a bright clear sunshine filled day but is bitterly cold...so cold I have built up frost inside all of my windows. So COLD that this is what our thermometer read this morning...so cold that the top temperature is actually reading the inside temperature at the windowsill. We do have our furnace set to 70 degrees so the interior areas of the house are much warmer.
The first birds at the feeders every morning are always the juncos and today was no exception. When the sun got high enough to light the backyard they puffed up and sunned themselves.
Do you see the wind catching his feathers? This morning the wind chill value was -40! We are in a wind chill advisory as the wind chill temperatures will be -22 to -34 through Wednesday night.
I have two variations of juncos visiting - do you notice the above bird has brown coloring while the one below does not?

The male hairy woodpecker constantly makes his presence known with loud pips but I notice the females are always silent. The male is also more camera shy but posed long enough in the sunlight for me to fire off a few shots this morning.



Today, I am content to stay in the warm house and fire off bird shot through my windows. I wish I could say the same for Jeff as they are outside working in this extreme cold repairing a broken water main in a nearby town. It's bad enough being outside in this weather but in a wet mess is even worse, it took them quite a while to get all the trucks & equipment running and warmed up this morning. Thankfully they have heated equipment to take turns warming up in!

Richard, Josh, Rich & Shane

This morning another central MN blogger, Richard (At the Water), forwarded me an email titled Holy Humor. This cute little story was included in the content: A father was approached by his small son who told him proudly, "I know what the Bible means!" His father smiled and replied, "What do you mean, you 'know' what the Bible means? The son replied, "I do know!" "Okay," said his father. "What does the Bible mean?" "That's easy, Daddy...", the young boy replied excitedly," It stands for 'Basic Information Before Leaving Earth.'

I've loved that acronym ever since I saw it several years ago on a trailer I presume is owned by Josh, Rich & Shane. I don't know them at all as I only saw their trailer but it looks like they are not only some adventurous guys with a racing team, but they also know God and are not afraid to let everyone at their events and driving behind them read this eye catching acronym.
Looking through the archives for the trailer photo I spent a few minutes looking at spring photos. With the deep snow outside and our days all looking white and cold I was reminded how much I miss the colors green, yellow, pink and purple!
Have a wonderful weekend and THINK SPRING!

the girls...

are happy we are back home! After being gone for a week in northern MN all the birds are quite happy we are back and Jeff filled all the feeders. The hen pheasants (we had 4 at a time this am) spent most of the morning eating corn from the sleigh and spilled sunflower seeds.Pardon my blue snow...when I photograph snow in the shadows I usually get blue snow. Any tips out there on how to avoid it? You can see the white patch of sunlit snow she is walking towards.

Between the sparrows, bluejays and pheasants the corn is a popular feeding area today...


but, the area under the sunflower feeders are just as popular.



The girls are easily spooked and frequently head for the cover of the evergreens.
I appreciate these beauties a lot but sure wish the boys would come back as well. I miss Joseph and Johnny.

lighting up February...

I watched the sunrise over the frozen Lake Superior this morning...
the clear skies and bright sun are...
such a welcome sight to see after the...
snowfalls of the past few days.
Impossible to capture with the camera lens but...
the rough ice just sparkles like diamonds in the early low light.

steeple Sunday...

This morning's steeple comes from Queen of Peace Catholic Church.
This weekend, we worshiped at this church with Jayme & Scott and I was not able to get a photo of the complete building from the sidewalk so I borrowed the above shot from the church's website. Reading the church history says that this current church was built in 1926 after two previous buildings were destroyed by fire. The first in 1908 after lightening struck the church spire and the second during the Cloquet fire of 1918. Wikipedia gives this information about the fire - The 1918 Cloquet fire was a massive fire in northern Minnesota in October, 1918 caused by sparks on the local railroads and dry conditions. The fire left much of western Carlton County devastated, mostly affecting Moose Lake, Cloquet, and Kettle River. Cloquet was hit the hardest by the fires. It was the worst natural disaster in Minnesota history in terms of the number of lives lost in a single day. In total, 453 lives were lost and 52,000 people were injured or displaced, 38 communities were destroyed, 250,000 acres (1,000 km2) were burned, and $73 million in property damage was suffered.
The church is as beautiful inside as it is outside with lots of marble and stone. The ceiling is painted in intricate designs of blue and gold.

We are spending a long weekend helping the kids remodel a bathroom - for more on that visit Jayme's blog.

Flashback Friday...

I'm joining my friend, Suzy, Kitchen Bouquet, once again today for Flashback Friday. She did her post today especially for me showing the beautiful gardens at the hospital she used to work at. Seeing these photos once again give me rose envy :) Please click HERE to go to her post to see the gardens as photographed in 2006. Since she went all the back to 2006, I decided to as well. Here is a photo of our dearly missed, Gabi, sitting admiring the gardens. They look so different since the garden is about 3 ft deep in snow these days as you saw in the previous post.
Snowing again as I type!

wordless Wednesday...

steeple Sunday...

We saw this short steeple on another cycle ride last summer. While not impressive in height I liked it for it's shingled design and gingerbread trim.
The church building itself was also small...
the United Methodist Church, Lake Benton, MN.

sunny Saturday...

If only the sun would SHINE every day!
Even this extreme cold spell seems less cold on a sunny day.
I love finding objects to hold the suet dough besides the conventional square ones. A little downy love...

I've blogged this bird dough before but here it is again for those that might have missed it. I no longer buy the squares of suet dough in the store because I did a birdie taste comparison and they didn't hardly touch the store bought version until the homemade version was gone.

1 cup lard
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup flour
2 1/2 cups cornmeal
2 1/2 cups quick cooking oatmeal (I use whatever I have on hand, old fashioned also is quickly eaten up)

Melt lard and peanut butter and add remaining ingredients one at a time and blend well. Remove the mixture from heat, and let it cool overnight. Store at room temperature.

The original recipe does not call for any other ingredients but I always add hulled sunflower seeds and sometimes dehydrated mealworms if I have them on hand. I double the recipe because it goes so quickly in cold weather.

Flashback Friday...January 21

Today, I am joining my friend, Suzy, Kitchen Bouquet for her weekly Flashback Friday meme. Usually, I am posting new stuff each week so I don't often join in but ever since last night my heart and mind have been flashing back to January 21, 1979. Last night, I was reminiscing to Jeff how 32 years ago we were walking into the hospital at 10 pm and suddenly were being honked and yelled at by a car a block away. Turns out it was my 2 brothers and their wives who were downtown having dinner and thought wouldn't it be funny if they drove by the hospital and saw if our car was there - and lo and behold there we were walking into the hospital (only 10 days after our baby's due date!). A short 3 hours later we welcomed into the world our beautiful firstborn son, HAPPY BIRTHDAY NATHAN!
I love the photo of us on your first morning of life - you look like a little old man, but soon you filled out to be the most handsome little baby boy ever! I also love how you are not afraid to look silly and still pose with your mom in snowflake glasses. Dad and I both love how you have grown into such a wonderful man, caring son, loving husband and best big brother!

We hope you have a wonderful Day - Love, MOM & DAD. Stay warm, interesting weather tidbits - today, January 21, 2011 we woke up to 17 degrees below zero and dangerously cold windchills. In 1979, January 19th was a whiteout blizzard and I was so afraid of going into labor and not being able to get to the hospital 20 miles away. Dad being the farmboy he is, told me not to worry he saw lots of foals and calves born in his lifetime and he could deliver you! January 20th was bright and clear and the roads were cleared and all was well when I went into labor mid afternoon and into the hospital that night. January 21st was another nice day where the Grandparents all came to the hospital to ooh and aahh over you. January 22nd was another blizzard and Dad couldn't even come up to visit us - the morning of January 23rd was clear with another blizzard forecast for later that day, so the doctor told me to tell Dad to come in and pick us up asap. I am thankful we had good weather to get to and from the hospital and being snowed in and loving you all to ourselves with no other visitors for awhile just was the BEST!

I loved your sister's post - I didn't know you could rock a cowbell!

mason jar photos...

Last week when I was sick I spent a lot of time catching up on reading blogs and saw this post from Darla, More Family and Flowers. Taking photos of flowers in mason jars sounded like fun and while Darla did elaborate shots with foilage, different backgrounds, and eye catching angles (on top of a lampshade) I only had time yesterday to do a few simple shots before it was time to leave for the day. Thanks Darla for the inspiration and Jeff for the flowers (even though I had to hint how they would make me feel better when I was sick, lol)!

First up was a red gerber daisy in the Ball Mason jar which is round and also has raised glass bars along the edges.
Next, is the Atlas Mason Jar which has a square bottom and I continued to use different colored cardstock for backgrounds.
The third jar does not have any "brand" markings but is gorgeous with an all over square pattern in the glass.
Of course, I had to try the same thing with a couple different colored blossoms...


and never to waste a flower, the cut off blossom heads are now floating in a heart shaped ramekin.
Darla did one more post yesterday showing the photo she chose to enter in the contest. It is beautiful! No contests for me, I did this just for fun and I think during the long boring winter you will see many more things in a mason jar :)

You should try it, Darla's post shows the link on how to do it - flower in the jar and camera resting on the mouth of the jar if you have a point and shoot. My lens was too big to rest on the rim but I still think the shots turned out fine.

Wordless Wednesday...