Tag: wisconsin

It’s been a weird fall here in Wisconsin

This fall has been ridiculously warm. You’d think we’d like this unusually warm fall up here in the land of blizzards, frozen cars, burst water pipes and children frozen to flag poles. But we don’t. Not really. We’re not used to this.

img_0828It’s October 23, and I’m still harvesting eggplant and peppers, for heaven’s sake. I mean look at that box full I picked this morning over there on the left. And there seems to be no end in sight. The eggplant and assorted pepper plants are in full bloom, loaded with baby fruit. I’m harvesting dill for the second time this year. I have a second crop of spring onions about ready to eat. I planted those at the end of September. I have chives coming out my ears. I’d be drying those but we already have far, far more chives than we know what to do with. The greek oregano is going crazy. It’s over a foot tall and in full bloom, for the second time this year. Same with the sage. Some of my hostas have put out flower stalks for the second time this season. I was looking back in the tomato bed that I cleaned out at the end of September and found a dozen or more volunteer tomato plants newly sprouted, some six inches tall already. I’m tempted to pot some of them and see if they’ll grow indoors.

According to the recording thermometer the coldest night we’ve had has been about 41. Daytime temperatures have generally been up in the high 60s to low 70s. The only way we know it’s fall is that the days are much shorter and the trees are losing their leaves.

This isn’t a horrible thing, this extended warm streak. It certainly is keeping the heating costs down. But it’s, well, odd. It doesn’t feel right. And you can tell it’s bothering people. They seem nervous, edgy, waiting for the other shoe to drop. We all have this feeling of mild dread.

I don’t know if it’s our upbringing, or some kind of inherent human trait, but we all seem to share it. We all get this feeling that something is too good. Some malicious deity or force of nature or something is deliberately lulling us into a false sense of security, and then wham, drops ten feet of snow on us, or plunges the temperature down to -30, or — or something is going to happen.

The thing is, we like winter up here. We like the snow. We like the bone chilling cold. It’s part of our heritage. It’s part of our nature.

We complain about the cold, the winter, true. But if you listen to those complaints, you begin to realize that we also take a perverse pride in it as well, pride in our ability to deal with it. And an enormous amount of delight in laughing at the people down south when an inch of snow shuts down the entire metro Atlanta area.

Our complaints about the cold and snow are part of the fun, the bragging about how cold it was, the complaints about shoveling six feet of snow off the porch before we could even get outside to get to the outhouse.

Well, okay, the outhouse thing is a bit outdated. We’ve had real indoor plumbing here in Wisconsin for, oh, two or three years now. But you know what I mean.

What’s the point in living in Wisconsin if we can’t brag about the bad weather any more? Is it really worth putting up with living here if we can’t laugh at the people in Illinois because they don’t know how to drive in the snow any more?

 

Ore Dock at Ashland, Wisconsin

This is the old iron ore dock at Ashland, Wisconsin. Wish I had taken more photos of it the last time I was up there because I heard it was recently demolished, which is kind of a shame but understandable. I’ve been in Ashland many times and the dock was always an amazing sight to see.

The dock was built back around 1915 or 1916. It was enlarged in 1925. It was 1,800 feet long, 85 feet tall and 75 feet wide. Ore from iron mines in the area was hauled by rail where it would be dumped down the chutes you can see on the side of the dock down into freighters which would take the ore out through the Great Lakes.

The dock was shut down in 1965, and has been badly deteriorating ever since. In 2009 Ashland gave the Canadian National railroad permission to take the dock down because it was in such bad shape that it was downright dangerous.

As usual, all photos are copyright by the author and should not be used without permission.

Concrete Park, Phillips Wisconsin

The photos above are images I took at the Concrete Park in Phillips, Wisconsin in Price County. The more than 200 statues in the park were all created by Fred Smith, a local farmer and tavern owner. The first time I saw the place I thought it was utterly charming, and after visiting there several times and taking hundreds of images, I still find it absolutely fascinating.

Fred was an interesting character by all accounts. He began working on the statues in 1950 when he was 65 years old, and he continued making them until he had a stroke fourteen years later.

The statues are made out of pretty much whatever he had at hand; concrete over wooden frames, bottles, broken glass, insulators, stones from the property, anything might become part of one of these whimsical statues.

The statues depict people, agricultural scenes, animals and the last piece he worked on, the Budweiser Horses pulling the wagon.

The story I heard was that the family was rather ashamed of the whole thing, and after his death they were going to bulldoze everything. But the 16 acre property was purchased by the Kohler Foundation. While restoration work was done to maintain the statues, if you look closely at some of the images you can see that many are in poor condition and deteriorating badly.

In 1995 an organization was set up whose mission is to restore and maintain the statues.

The park on the outskirts of Phillips is open to the public. The old farm house has been turned into a visitors’ center.

If you ever get up in Price County, stop in and wander around. It’s  a fascinating place to visit.

Note: All images are by the author, copyright 2013 and may not be reproduced without permission