Virginia A. Spiegel

It’s a tradition in my family to have handmade ornaments for everyone at our holiday gathering.  My sister, my Mom and I used to take turns making them.  But we are up to 26 people, so the last couple of years we have made them as a group project.  Since Mom and Nancy were at my house for a visit, we decided to go ahead and make them in October.

I set up a six foot table and we loaded it down with beads and fibers to be sewn on small ovals.  But what we most loved was THE BUTTON BOX.  Does anyone still keep one of these?

This is my Mom’s collection, but Nancy is the keeper. I dumped it out on a big cookie sheet and we kept it right on the breakfast bar and not on the side table.

What fun!  Glass buttons, metal buttons, tiny buttons with a rim of color, “jeweled” buttons, cloth-covered buttons, and on and on.  All of the buttons were cut from clothing by my Mom; maybe some even came from my Grandma’s button box. I must admit I “liberated” several buttons that looked like little gears (long underwear buttons???).

I’m sure that some of our ornaments won’t be appreciated (as much as we would like) for their embroidery, buttons and beads, but it was worth it just to take a stroll through the button box.

Photo by Nancy J. Spiegel Rosman

When I am in the Boundary Waters I try to keep my mind blank, but open.  A terrifically hard thing for me personally.  But art will out.  We were having “rock time” and I started pushing “stuff” around with a little stick.  The time floated by as the little stick worked its magic in finding and arranging things found on the rock.  I wonder what the next person who arrives on these campsite rocks will think of this found-object collage.

I’m always looking, looking, looking from the canoe, on the portage, and in camp.  Here are some of the themes I am, once again, contemplating with these new images as inspiration:

The juxtaposition of hard and soft; the timelessness of nature, the ephemeral nature of humans.

The beauty of decay, the cycling of all things in life from life to death.

The abundance of everything in nature, even spawn upon the shore.

The power of water; the mystery of reflection.

The Beginning of Pink

June’s Trip #13 to the Boundary Water Canoe Area Wilderness was pretty much a disaster, but it was compensated 1000 times over by this delightful journey.  We had an adventure-packed ten days of portaging, paddling, and appreciating nature.  Every other day we would “gear up” and paddle forth.  We portaged over 13.5 miles total, but were always done fairly early in the day.  The weather was phenomenal.  Our only disappointment was seeing only one moose (rut hadn’t started yet – very late), but he had only one antler!

Highlights included a concert from a pack of wolves camped out in our neighborhood and four beavers doing a ritual of some sort involving an all-nighter of tail slapping.  Of course, stunning as always were the eagles, the stars, the tall pines, and the strong teamwork of the Sister System required by the Boundary Waters.

That Sinking Feeling
Photo by Nancy J. Spiegel Rosma

One of our great adventures was beaver dams!  (I am not even going to start on impassable rapids with no portages and very little water – another whole story.) We would run the boat up as close as possible and I would jump out.  Sounds easy.  But you are climbing up/standing on a shifting mass of sticks – - some dried and easily broken, some loose, some firmly wedged in mud.  The water rushes between and over your feet and in the back of your mind in this little false alert going off, “I’m sinking, I’m sinking.”

Sister Nancy would jump out, we would take out one pack and lay it on the dam and then heave Beauty, our 17.5 foot Kevlar canoe, with the other two 50 lb. packs over the mass of sticks. Nancy would fling the pack back in and then take the fully-loaded boat out, swing it around and I would jump in.  Off to the next one.  Of course, coming back with the current was a different story (and actually easier).  The photo is the from the first and smallest dam (we did 3 out and 3 back) which compensated by being built on boot-sucking mud.

More later this week on things that inspired me on this journey, but here is one of the huge variety of mushrooms we photographed :

Pedestal

Arachne

Technically this probably isn’t a very inspiring photo, but I still like it for its levels of sharpness and blur. The spider webs have been beautiful and numerous of late.

This plant is one of what I call Contractor Shrubs. They are planted because non-gardeners have a hard time killing them, although they are of dubious landscape value. This is barberry with nasty thorns.  I should have taken these barberries out when I started my own landscape gardening, but now have more or less muted them out with other plants.  I didn’t photoshop this at all, but the general hue of this small shrub is generally more purple than red.

Number 12

This photo has sort of a “Little House on the Prairie” vibe.  The prairie reserve has a bluebird house trail.  I notice they allow swallows to nest in them also.  I have never had a bluebird nest in any of my houses. I keep cleaning out sparrow nests until I’m sure the bluebirds aren’t going to make a go of it and then put the houses away until the Fall when I put them back out for winter shelter for the chickadees.  It bluebirds can’t nest in my yard, I’m glad they are able to fly out to the prairie reserve and nest in peace.