We're back from a week on Beaver Island. The week was so relaxing that the camera rarely came out. But I did snap a picture of Abbey on her first fishing trip. She out-fished me two-to-one.
UPDATE - Here are some photos from the first few days of our trip, taken by my friend Eric Doyle.
The change of the years always brings new things. Resolutions, the post-holiday season, and new digits that have to be hardwired into the brain before writing checks.
For us, this new year brought new snow, a new tradition, and friendships both new and renewed. To celebrate this rather arbitrary holiday, Julie, Abbey and I joined ten other friends at a cabin in the Waterloo-Pinckney State Recreation Area. We typically gather with this group earlier in December, but the cabin was booked; so we moved our plans to the New Year's holiday and started what appear will be a new tradition.
As we do most years, we enjoyed a long hike on Monday. The hike Julie, Abbey and I did was a little bit shorter than the others', as little legs needed a shorter loop.
The temps were in the mid thirties and the birds were singing. In fact, some chickadees were even prematurely singing their spring song.
Monday night about an hour or two before midnight, the snow began to fall. This was no ordinary snow, but a real dumping, complete with thunder and lightening. When dawn broke and I ventured out doors in just my Sorels and my bedclothes to take a pee, I found 15 inches of fresh white snow had blanketed the world over night.
Indeed, the new snow was an excuse for the gang to help Abbey make a seven-foot-tall snowman, complete with cookies for eyes and raisins for his teeth.
The whole weekend was relaxing and enjoyed in the company of a dozen, easy-going, nature loving folks. Our friend Andy did an excellent job of reserving the cabin and making sure this event went smoothly. Even while he was visiting his family in Poland earlier this year, he was thinking of his hiking friends in Michigan. That was evident in the kindness he shared by bringing each of us a little 100ml bottle of one of Poland's finest treats for sipping by the campfire on a snowy, late December night.
Na zdrowie!
It's been a while since I posted, so I have a number of odds and ends to share, most of them the former.
The first "end" to share is that Thanksgiving eve was the final end to this year's gardening season, with our first hard frost in Grand Rapids. Typically we see our first hard frost in late September, or October for sure. This year, we've been eating fresh garden lettuce, spinach, and chard right up to Thanksgiving.
Now for a few "odds." When I put on my jacket to go for a walk on Thanksgiving, there was this brown fuzzy mass stuck to the left lapel. Upon closer inspection, I realized it was a bat that had nuzzled down into the coat rack to get away from the light of day. So I slowly took off my jacket and took the old boy outside. We're not sure how he got in the house, but suspect Honey, our time-share cat, brought him in.
The second "odd" happened a week ago when we went to the Grand Rapids Thanksgiving parade. Actually, there were a lot of odd things about this parade, but the weirdest was the fact that the Grand Rapids Home for Veterans entered their short bus in the parade. Rather than having a bunch of veterans marching or on a float, down the street came a bland white van with windows tinted so dark you couldn't even see the people inside. Thankfully, one extroverted veteran in the back seat took the liberty of waiving out the window.
Lastly, Abbey and I finally got to do something tonight we've been talking about for a few weeks. We went ice skating. We had planned to go downtown (the mailer that came last week said they would be opening November 23 and it's been below freezing for the past three days), but there was no ice there. So tonight we went to Griff's Ice House for Abbey's first lesson. She did great, and is eager to go again. Afterwards, we watched a period of a high school hockey game. Hockey is tops on Abbey's list of spectator sports.
Yesterday I received probably one of the best birthday gifts a dad could receive--a fun and peaceful evening out with my daughter. With a busy week planned, I needed to get out to the People's Republic of Perkins to pick zucchini and tend to a few other tasks.
We started by pulling up the early corn stalks and planting cover crop seed in the soil you see behind Abbey and the sunflowers. The cover crop is a "winter" mix of wheat, legumes and clover that will help build the nitrogen in the soil and break up the clay.
Abbey was so into gardening that we got a lot of other chores done too. We weeded, thinned and transplanted some small collards, picked zucchini, cucumbers and broccoli, deadheaded the marigolds, and sprayed the pumpkins and squash with egg water to repel the woodchucks that have been burrowing under the fence and into the garden.
We should be picking the basil that Abbey is standing by, but you only need so much basil. Some of the basil is Tulsi, or Holy Basil, and will be dried for winter tea.
With Abbey's cooperation and help, all the chores were done before the sun dropped below the horizon, so we also had some time to take some picture and to smell the flowers.
Friday morning at the breakfast table, I got my first surprise. I half jokingly said to Abbey, "Daddy doesn't have anything on his calendar for this weekend, want to go camping with just Daddy?" Unexpectedly, she looked up at me and said "Yes."
I clarified. "Without your Mommy?"
She said,"Yes."
Julie checked with her throughout the day to make sure she understood that this meant spending a night away from home without Mommy. When I got home from work, Abbey was ready to go.
So we drove north and finally found an open campsite when we got to Pines Point campground on the White River in the Manistee National Forest. Abbey slept on the way up, so she was wide awake and a big help with setting up camp. She even had enough of a second wind that we lit a campfire and sat up by it until 10:30pm.
We had a restful night's sleep and slept in late. Then we had a leisurely breakfast of grilled cheese sandwiches and fried eggs cooked over the fire.
In the late morning, we went for a short hike at Abbey's request, then decided to drive over to Freemont for some lunch on the way home.
When we got to Freemont, Main Street was blocked off and there was a huge carnival going on. While I had heard of the event, I didn't know that this was the weekend for the National Baby Food Festival. Being the home town of Gerber, the idea of a National Baby Food Festival is not quite as weird as it sounds.
We took advantage of the cool, clear day and the unknown surprise and mingled about the rides and booths, considering our next step. Abbey finally decided that, after lunch, she wanted to ride the merry-go-round and get some ice cream. So that's exactly what we did.
I'm looking forward to the next time I have a weekend with nothing to do.
The posts have gotten pretty infrequent this summer, something I have all the best intentions of rectifying soon.
As you can see, we've been far too busy with important stuff, like flying kites on the beach and growing lettuce.
But in all seriousness, it has been a busy summer with trips to Pictured Rocks and North Carolina. When around home, many weekends have been taken up with either trail work on the North Country Trail or getting caught up at Perkins Garden. June is not a good time for gardeners to go away, as the weeds and the bugs come on with a vengeance around the solstice.
But overall, things are going good out at Perkins. While the corn failed and the cucumber beetles are relentless, the peppers will be early, we've never eaten so much of our own lettuce and spinach, and we picked the first two golden bush zuchinnies tonight.
Basil and beans will be coming out of our ears soon, and the sunflowers are sturdy. I have even started planting some fall greens (collards and spinach), and they too are coming up nicely.
More on the garden soon, I promise...
Late May and June are a time of gardening madness. I was spending so much time planting and getting the garden started that not much blogging got done.
Add to that a trip to Pictured Rocks over the Memorial Day weekend. And now a trip down to the Carolina shore to celebrate my parents 50th wedding anniversary.
I've had good intentions of blogging a few updates, but instead I've been swimming, reading, watching birds and catching little sharks on my surf rod.
And I agree with my brother Rich and Abbey that vacations are also good for napping.
Over the Memorial Day weekend, Julie, Abbey and I joined eight friends for a hike along the North Country Trail along Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. The trail along Pictured Rocks is about 45 miles long and covers a wide variety of terrain.
We took the shuttle from Munising to Grand Marais on Friday morning and exited the bus to a hoard of black flies. Fortunately, that was the last we saw of those nasty creatures. We had purchased some Repel Lemon Eucalyptus insect repellent that worked wonders on black flies and did pretty good deterring mosquitoes too (although it needed somewhat frequent reapplications for the latter).
On the first day, we crossed behind the Grand Sable Dunes and enjoyed a wide variety of wildflowers and bird life. The forest floor was carpeted with spring wildflowers that had stopped blooming in Michigan's lower peninsula weeks before.
Fortunately I toted along my binoculars, but I regretfully left the bird book in the car. I also had now way to identify flowers, so I picked up a small Michigan guide when we past by a ranger station at noon.
By the end of the first day, we were camped near the Au Sable Light Station.
The second day was mostly beach hiking in the morning, then back into the woods for the afternoon. While we had about a dozen miles to hike, Julie, Abbey and I got started early and walked at a rather leisurely pace. When you hike with a three-year-old, you get plenty of time to stop and reference the field guide. You also get plenty of time to watch birds through your binoculars.
By that evening, the clouds had rolled in an we got a few sprinkles of rain around dinner hour.
The second half of the trip was a dramatic departure from the gentle beach and forest walking of the first two days.
Our family left camp at dawn and stopped on a bluff over looking Lake Superior for breakfast. As we we cleaning up, a frantic hiker passed us and said that he had just come from the next camp don the trail and that there was a black bear in the campground. We quickly packed up and headed onward to see if we could find he bear, but he was long gone by the time we got there.
Later that morning, we started climbing into some rockier headlands. Now we were in the area for which the lake shore is known. Small cliffs gave way to higher and higher ones, and drama of the scenery became more intense. That night we camped at Mosquito Beach, which proved to be a misnomer.
The fourth and final day continued the climbs over rocky headlands. I filled my camera with images, too many to show all of them on this blog.
Bright sun, blue waters and woods full of colorful birds and flowers made for a beautiful walk.
By 2:00pm, we were exiting the woods. As we got near the road, Abbey surprised us all as she saw the car, then turned around and ran back into the woods crying. We quickly soothed her with promises of pizza and Phish Food.
The company was good, the weather cooperative, and Abbey successfully completed her first backpacking trip. It was a good walk and has filled my mind with memories.
More species tulips are blooming in the garden now that we're back to spring. If you've never grown species tulips, you really should give them a try. They are much more satisfying than the big hybrids.
Species tulips will multiply and naturalize on their own, and come back beautifully year after year. They are little trouble and always give a good show.
One really nice thing about them is that they really catch the eye of people passing by. Like this little pink tulip, which always gets comments from visitors who are used to seeing the same old hybrids again and again.
So far I have five different varieties, one of which has yet to bloom this spring.
But the tulips aren't the only ones up. The peas and favas all sprouted this week. Carrots, radishes and various greens are all on their way too.
Early this afternoon, Abbey helped me plant bush beans and chard. I planted the mustard, as the seeds are far too small for little hands. I also planted some early basil in the cold frame, more cilantro, and some arugula seed that a woman shared that came directly from her father's garden in Italy.
After getting some of the beds at home dressed up, we all went out to Perkins to work on getting some more of the fence put up. During last weekend's work party, we sank more than a dozen posts and got a lot of things ready, but we still have to fence in the early spring beds. 
It was a beautiful day for working in the garden... and also a good day for goofing of in a wheelbarrow. But Abbey didn't just goof off, she also explored the main garden with her mom and found some herbs struggling to grow in an abandoned plot from last year. They found some thyme, sage, parsley and one other unknown herb that I'll have to identify after it grows a bit.
After getting some of the fencing done, I double dug a section of the garden and put in two 4'x4' raised bed frames that were also abandoned last year. I filled the frames with a mix of vermiculite, compost and garden soil, then planted them with Allstar lettuce mix, Nancy buttercrunch lettuce, Space spinach, Bright Lights chard and broccoli raab.
We got done a little late, but here's a picture of Julie and Abbey surveying a hard day's work and hoping for a little rain.
Like in each of the three years preceding, Abbey's birthday came as Michigan moved firmly into spring. The snows of last week are gone, it's warm enough to sleep with the windows open a bit, and the grass is turning bright green again.
The years continue to march on and Abigail is growing incredibly quickly right before our eyes.
For her birthday, we had spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. Meatballs have become her favorite food--in a house that doesn't buy meat, no less. So don't tell her that the "meat" balls were made of mushrooms and soy.
After dinner, we went to her Grandma Barb and Grandpa Jack's for a party with two of her three-year-oldish friends. She asked for french bread and cheese for her party, so we spread that out along with strawberries, bananas and raspberries. Of course, Grandma found some melting chocolate for dipping.
As she gets older, Abbey is becoming a bigger and bigger help in the garden.
This afternoon was warm and sunny, but windy. So Abbey helped out by holding onto my seed packets so that they would not blow away. She watched patiently as I planted the smaller seeds.
Today I planted:
When it came to the fava beans, Abbey wanted to help put the beans in the soil. So I hoed the furrows, Abbey helped my coat the beans with inoculant, and she helped me put them into place.
Keeping us company as we planted were these wide-eyed species tulips. These are the same tulips as featured on March 27, just wide-open because of the bright sun.
The dozens of crocuses blooming on the east side of the garage tell me that spring is certainly here. Tonight they stayed open into the warm evening hours.
The weather is also affirming the change in seasons. Today we got our first thunderstorm of the year on the very first day of spring. I couldn't think of a better way to celebrate the start of this season of renewal and growth.
The thunderstorm rolled in just after dark, so Abbey and I turned off all the lights in the house, opened up the back door, and watched, smelled and listened. We stood witness to nature's annual trick of fixing a little nitrogen in the soil and talked about our eagerness for the new season to green things up.
The curiosity of a nearly three year old seems insatiable at times. "Why does it do that Daddy?" Try explaining spring warm fronts, rain, lightening, thunder and the re-emergence of the garden to a child of her age. Doing so made me, as an adult, wonder just how and why the magic of a spring thunderstorm is actually possible.
I'm thankful for the way in which little eyes can help older ones see things in new ways.
There were plenty of things to get excited about when I got home tonight.
To begin with, the first of the spring sprouts are up in the cold frame! The broccoli raab has sprouted first. Now I just hope it gets through the next couple of cold nights that are forecasted.
While inspecting the gardens, Abbey also found a penny. If that wasn't exciting enough, she stuck it in a small jar and made a rattle.
We're simple folk, and easy to please.
What should every tourist do when they drive through Canada on their way from New England to Michigan? Stop at Niagara Falls of course!
In the winter, checking out the falls is a lot easier if you watch the internet for deals on hotels with a view of the falls. I did plenty of that this past winter and ended up snagging a really good deal for a "fallsview" room on the 31st floor of the Sheraton in Niagara.
One can either freeze their cheeks in the cold mist, or one can check out the falls from the comfort of an easy chair in their bare feet. You decide. Abbey will do either.
While my Dad was busy with the chore of picking up pine cones after a spring storm rolled through North Carolina, I was happily playing in a foot of fresh snow laid down by that same storm in New Hampshire.
The morning was windy and very snowy, but by the time Abbey laid down for her afternoon nap, the wind had calmed and the snow had slowed down to a reasonable intensity for walking. I bundled up and strapped on my snowshoes with the intent of taking a short quarter-mile walk to Crystal Cascade.
As I started walking up the Tuckerman Ravine Trail, I realized that the path was nicely packed out below the foot of new powder and that the going was easy. The easy going quickly had me contemplating a longer walk.
When I got to Crystal Cascade, all ninety vertical feet of it were under snow and ice. It basically looked like a snowy hill. With that disappointment, my mind was made up that I would trudge on up the east slope of Mount Washington for another ninety minutes to see how far I would get.
By 3:30pm, I was standing at the foot of the lower headwall of Tuckerman Ravine and 1,850 feet higher than my starting point. While you can't see the dramatic headwall due to all the falling snow in the picture, this is the area on Mount Washington that is famous for springtime backcountry ski runs. Since the avalanche danger with the new snow was very high, no one was skiing the ravine. Instead, skiers and snowboarders headed down the John Sherburne Ski Trail.
Wearing snowshoes, I had to return back down the Tuckerman Ravine Trail. Heading downhill in a foot of powder definately goes much more quickly than going up. In fact, I arrived at the bottom within minutes of the snow boarders who left the ravine minutes after I did. They were surprised to see me at the bottom so quickly.
In all, it was a quiet 4.8 mile hike during which I saw only five other hikers and two on skis along the trail.
As I walked back to Joe Dodge Lodge, Julie and Abbey were coming out the door for a walk before dinner. We crossed the road and post holed through the deep snow for about a quarter mile to the Lady's Lookout.
Yeah, the name is a bit sexist and I know plenty of lady's that can hike further and higher than most men. Nonetheless, we enjoyed the short walk in the woods among the birch, spruce and fir and worked up an appetite for dinner.
Ever since we took Abbey to the National Zoo last April, she has been just fascinated with pandas. Those of you that know her well are aware that on many days she asserts that she is a pandamonkey. If you're lucky, she'll assert that you are one too.
On Monday, we went to visit her friends again. Tia Shan will be two years old in July. Like Abbey, he is working on weening. Of course, with pandas it's easier. You just put them in a different cage than mom.
To deal with his cravings, grumpy Tia Shan found a tree in the back of his cage to climb up into and go to sleep. Unfortunately for him, the tourons finally spied him up there and made a ruckus snapping pictures from the overlook nearby.
Abbey also used the day to get over her night time fear of elephants, giggle at the lone hippo floating in a tank, and to check out all the colorful birds.
But in the end, the pandas we by far her favorite exhibit. Do you think so?
Here's my first summit of Mount Washington. I'm the one to the left pounding the rocks.
To my right are my brother Bill, sister Beth, and brother Rich.
Admittedly, we drove the first 6,280 feet up in the back of a green and tan 1960's VW microbus with a canvas sunroof. We had the bumper sticker to prove it!
In another four weeks, Julie and Abbey and I will be vacationing at the bottom of Mount Washington at Joe Dodge Lodge in Pinkham Notch. I'll be climbing some less exposed peaks during that visit.
Among those who walk, the day after Thanksgiving is typically reserved for a "Turkey Trot." Ideally, this should be a brisk walk in cold weather to help the body burn off all the fat grams consumed the preceding day. In our case this year, it was a slow meander on a warm November afternoon.
I'm also ashamed to say that the walk was followed by a pint of beer and some Mexican food. So much for the good intentions.
As we did two years ago, we met our friend Dick Bolton and about a dozen others up at Deerfield Nature Park in Isabella County. This scenic park is laced with twisty trails, some of which follow or catch glimpses of the Chippewa River.
I don't think Julie and I were the only one's feeling a little lazy after the previous day's holiday feast, as most of the hiking boots in our group shuffled and plodded rather slowly down the trail.
With such a big crowd and the leaves all off the trees, there wasn't much for wildlife watching. Instead, we enjoyed some low-impact exercise in the company of good friends.
At the end of the hike, we came upon two curiosities. First was the bridge pictured here. It is a wire suspension bridge, so it bounces actively with every footstep and sways a bit in the breeze. Abbey had a great deal of fun trip-tropping across this bridge again and again. 
The second curiosity is the burnished steel sculpture of a hiker that implores visitors to take only memories and leave only footprints. It was nice to see this ethic promoted in a fun, non-preachy way in a rather urbane park that introduces a fairly large number of people each year to the natural mid-Michigan landscape.
We followed the advice of the burnished hiker and took home some memories of good friends, warm November skies, and a lazy walk in the woods.
When you live with a two year old, Halloween is a holiday of great contradictions.
While the event is hyped as the ultimate ghoulish, Day of the Dead, All Saints Day, Gothic, creepy night, all of that is hard to imagine with a two year old carving her version of a scary pumpkin. Then comes the horror of Abigail making her scary face!
(The pumpkin, incidentally, is from Perkins).
As other kids walked up Sweet Street hill dressed as ghouls, vampires, ghosts, and even half-dead zombies with the skin sliding off of their faces to reveal empty eye sockets and skulls, Abigail decides to be the purple cat from "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" by Eric Carle.
To add to all the weirdness, as I'm typing up this blog entry, the 1979 seminal goth anthem "Bela Lugosi's Dead" by Bauhaus comes on the internet radio. I turn the volume up rather loud. Then Julie comes up stairs and shares with me that Abbey was digging the song and dancing about the living room.
Spooky.
Yesterday, Julie and I led a hike for the Western Michigan Chapter NCTA's "Fall Fun Day." It was a drizzly day, but in all we had fourteen hikers.
We took the group on a 6.5 mile hike in the White River watershed of Newaygo County, from 40th Street to Centerline Avenue on the North Country Trail.
As we began our hike, we walked through a forest dominated by oaks. The leaves on the oaks seem to be more vibrant this year, less brown and more red. The misty rain made the woods a particularly quiet and colorful place.
One crazy piece of trivia from our hike was that of the fourteen hikers, five had thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail in the past. Two had just returned from their thru-hike less than a month ago.
The hike went pretty quickly. As wet as it was, no one was too eager to stand around too long to take in the fall colors or to stop and sit for a lunch or snack break. Instead, folks kept moving quickly enough to ward off the chill of the cool, damp air. 
The other rather unique thing about this group hike is that there were no real speed demons or stragglers. Everyone walked just about the same speed; even Julie, who was pulling up the rear with Abigail riding in the backpack carrier.
