Darkness and Sleep is Brief

Hot.  Highs in the middle eighties (90's over the hill).  Recent abundant rain has brought us out of a drought and yet spared us of the catastrophic flooding that occured closer to Duluth. 

Blueberries are ripe for picking on the Gunflint Trail.  This is early as most years the berries aren't ready until the last week of July.  Strawberries, however, were late this year.  Most years we can go to an excellent "pick your own" strawberry farm in southern Ontario for Amy's birthday in the end of June.  This year they weren't ready until the end of the first week of July.

A pair of wolves have taken up residence of the neighborhood with their pups.  I haven't seen them yet but their signs are all around and we hear them most nights.  Some nights they sound like dogs playing.  Other times they howl at the moon rising over Lake Superior.  Either way, it's actually a comforting thought to know that we aren't the only parents raising young in these woods!

While our garden has been spared the worst of the recent cut worm invasion, slugs have found their way into our potato patch.  Despite the heavy rains of June and these slugs our garden continues to thrive.  On top of that our young apple orchard is surpassing my expectations.  The sweet sixteen apples are slightly larger than a golf ball in size.  We also transplanted perenials from my mother's garden and planted a new bed in front of the cabin.  The holly hawks are from my grandparent's farm in western Minnesota.

A couple weeks ago I was fortunate to catch a boat ride out of Grand Portage to Isle Royale to help a friend work on his cabin on the island.  His family is one of the last of the original commercial fishing family's twhose summer cabins remain on the island.  The trip was short but needed as the temperatures out there were almost twenty degrees cooler than the mainland.  A loon with a chick on her back greeted as we entered the fjord-like waters of the archipelego's southern islands.

So while I water and weed the garden, mound the potatos, and work on building a wood shed, Penelope and the local wolf pups watch the midsummer moons wax and wane for the first time.  Golden finch and black capped chickadee feed on sunflower seeds from our window side feeder.  The sharp shinned hawk continues to patrol the poplar tops for rabbit and mice.  The local black bear luggs through the woods feeding on berries and not garbage.  This time of year the days are busy while darkness and sleep is brief.  I busily scurry around learning what it takes to build our homestead and raise Penelope...