The first "normal" event of the entire winter occured: it snowed for the last few days of March!  We woke up today to an inch of wet slushy snow.  Grouse are busy drumming in the woods.  Steelhead have begun to make their way up the streams of the lower North Shore.  Lots of fresh wolf sign in the woods.

Clearing to the Top

For the last few weeks I've been firing up the chain saw.  The goal in the back of my mind has been to clear the top acre and half of the property which will one day be our main home site.

The reason why I want to get this done now is that we are planning on building our septic system (located near the home at the top of the property) this year.  I was planning on completing this project and burning the slash this winter as burning permits are easier to come by when you have snow cover.  However, spring came early and our sparse snow cover melted within a couple of days!  Most likely I'll have to wait until green up to burn.  That will give me plenty of time to pick through the wood and select what I want to keep for firewood.  

At this point the procedure is business as usual: drop the balsam fir and burn it.  Then fell the poplar, take the tops off and burn; reserving any timber to buck, cure and load into the wood stove.  I've learned that it is easiest to thin the small diameter poplar first and come back to cut the timber.  That way the large trees are on top and exposed so that I can go around and cut the eight foot logs that I will pile seperately for firewood.

View from the home site

Spring is here:  Our snow has melted.  The lakes of the Gunflint Trail are ice free.  Robins are back.  My main winter project is complete.   

Mature poplar along the trail have begun to bud.  Pussy willow have opened.  About an inch of rain has come down in the last two days.  Osier Creek is running it's tumbling course to Lake Superior.  Dense fog blankets the North Shore.  It certainly feels like spring now...

And now it's summer!  With highs in the 70's and bugs in the air it fells like summer on the North Shore.  The scarse snow pack was hardly enough to fill our streams with spring melt.  Many small channels have already run their course and are dry.  The fire danger is moderate but growing daily.  Fortunately there is rain in the forecast.  The snow melted so fast that I wasn't able to get all the burning that I wanted to get done from my winter clearing project at the homesite.  I'm going to have to wait until things green up to burn the remaining brush.

Inside the cabin I've been busy building bookshelves, installed the last two remaining interior doors, organizing pantry storage and started to work on firewood for next year...

Unseasonably warm.  Highs in the 50's.  A saw whet owl has been calling its distinctive "beeping" hoot at night.  I spotted my first robin of the year today.  Sap is flowing from the maple trees.  Water is flowing in the ditches and streams.  Snow has completely melted off the garden.

Jupiter and venus are very close in the western sky.  Despite being 450 million miles apart, during this conjunction the two planets are only three degrees apart (about the distance of two fingers)!  Northern lights continue after a large solar storm spewed electromagnetic energy into space.

Hoping and anticipating for steady spring rains; we installed gutters on the cabin today.

And just like that; right when the ski trail is bermed and packed, the dogs find their trot and the body is seasoned to the cold winter ends and spring arrives.  This weekend was sunny with highs in the mid forties.  I was lucky to have had a slight western breeze to cool the dog team off for the inbound runs during this last week of guiding.  Slush cloaked the lake ice so staying on the trail was imperative.

Northern lights were in the sky after a massive solar flare last week.  Owls and woodpeckers have joined the crows and black capped chickadee in the forest chorus.  Plenty of wolf sign.

Rain is falling...

Out and about in the neighborhood...