Well that didn’t take long.. There are two updates right off the bat..
First of all, the fall colors visibly changed between yesterday and today. A drive down the same road went from mostly green to some color emerging and starting to look nice. Some of it was the overcast vs sunny day, I suspect that the rain helped too.
Item #2 is an event that I forgot. This Saturday is a big 10th Anniversary party at Curve Inn. They are having two bands, one in the afternoon that plays general variety for everyone, and one later that rocks the house. There will be food and all kinds of stuff going on.
Read on for this morning’s update
-RJB
Greetings and welcome!
Since my last visit on Thursday a few things have happened. Number one, the cold mornings that were expected did indeed come. We had two mornings last week where the back field was well frosted, and it happened again a few days ago. So far the lowest that I have seen was in the mid-20s, and that was briefly at about sunrise. That cold air mass has passed and there is nothing in the forecast for the next week under 40.
I recall checking the upper air temperatures as that cold air mass was moving in, and checking for the possibility of snow. We did not see any, but I had an unofficial report of a few flakes by Eagle River and Land O Lakes.
Fall starts on Friday with the fall equinox at 11:49am CST. Apparently no one told the Great Outdoors about it, the fall colors are still in the early stages. There are some early trees and underbrush offering splashes of color, but the world around me is still mostly green.
My theory is that since we have had very little rain in the past weeks they are moving a little slow. When I was looking the other day some of my cherry and maple trees looked more wilting than color changing. My guess is that a little rain will set things off, but since I have a terrible track record predicting fall colors I should probably stick to observing.
We are expecting a minor chance of a rain showers daily until Friday, when the rain is expected to stop and we should have a nice weekend. The NWS is looking for 60 and partly cloudy Saturday, and mid-60s Sunday. Low temperatures over the weekend should be around 40.
Here is this weekend’s event list..
| September 24 | Silver Cliff Memorial Park | Annual Chili & Soup Fest at 11:00 AM Sponsored by the Silver Cliff and Athelstane Legion Post 66 Auxiliary |
| September 24 | Crivitz High School 400 South Ave. |
Fall Harvest Fest Craft Show 8:30am to 2pm Crafts/Bake Sale/Food & Refreshments/Outdoor Fall Decorations/Rummage Sale Admission – bring a can good to donate to local food pantry |
| September 24 | Lakewood Town Hall and Pavilion | Kolorama Kick-Off from 9am to 3pm sponsored by Lakewood Area Chamber of Commerce Pumpkin carving, T-shirt painting for the kids, chili cook-off, bake-off. Food, fun and music. Arts & Crafts Farmers Market. |
| September 24 | Waubee Lodge Lakewood |
Annual Lakewood Reunion To help with the planning, or for further information, e-mail rjblaze@centurytel.net |
I got out to do some firewood last week, and out into the yard to process some of it Monday. My guess is that I am up to about 20% of what I need, so there is still wood to cut and split. It doesn’t look like much of a pile, but it goes about 10′ back.
Usually when I go cut in the woods I take the wood in as long of lengths and I can handle them, ideally 4′. The big stuff still gets cut into 16″ lengths there, some 16″ pieces are 100# or more. The smaller stuff I pile up and cut all at once in my stanchions. Anything under about a 10″ diameter goes here.
The idea is that I can cut a lot in a few cuts and save a lot of time and effort. In this load I think that I had 26 pieces in, and 4 cuts (2 end, 2 center) made them into 56 perfect length pieces 16″. It would have been 78 plus ends, but some were short lengths. Once cut, the big stuff gets thrown in the splitter pile, the small and medium stuff goes into the cart and gets stacked in the wood house.
It is a good system, and I make a lot less cuts in the woods where an errant dip in the dirt could dull a chain.
There was an article in the paper last week about a controversy at the recent county forestry committee meeting. Apparently a local snowmobile ATV club and the forestry department closed about 13 miles of logging trails to anything but snowmobiles and ATVs this Spring, and some people weren’t happy about it.
I don’t think that the article in the paper is enough info to have an informed opinion, so I am looking forward to talking to some of the club members. Right now I think that they might be stepping in something by a) Suggesting that there is a safety issue using those logging trails as ATV/snowmobile trails, and b) Making it a lot harder to get future trail approval as logging road/trail users oppose new trails for fear of losing the roads and access to the forest.
I have been on both sides of the issue, seeing huge ruts in a freshly groomed snowmobile trail from trucks, and coming up on a group of ATVs while I was out on logging roads getting firewood.
For now I am limiting judgment and f0rming an opinion until I get more of the story. I have seen how some of the topics I have been involved with have been handled by the local paper.
That is about it for me today. I don’t expect that a lot will change by tomorrow, so I am planning on skipping out on my late week report. That seldom works, something usually comes up. When It does, I’ll be back.
That is about it for today. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!
RJB