Old World Wisconsin
Spring passes and one remembers one’s innocence. Summer passes and one remembers one’s exuberance. Autumn passes and one remembers one’s reverence. Winter passes and one remembers one’s perseverance. ~ Yoko Ono
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Posts tagged as:
Eagle Wisconsin
Deep in Thought
If there is no joyous way to give a festive gift, give love away. – Unknown
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Ribbon Candy
I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar of it every month. ~Harlan Miller
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Old World Wisconsin
Another scene using the Olympus E-P1′s pinhole art filter to help soften all that white snow and gray sky. I may be using this a great deal this winter if December is any indication of what is to come.
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Brown Jugs Behind Glass
Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in. ~ Alan Alda
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Pausing in Time
Hard to remember that only two weeks ago the trees were barely changing color, and now they are simply bare. Mid-October in southern Wisconsin saw only a few days when the sun peeked out, and this was one of those sparkly autumn days that I consider true gifts.
Another photograph from my favorite of the Wisconsin’s Historical Society sites, Old World Wisconsin, which documents the settlement of 19th- and early 20th-century Wisconsin. There is an 1870s crossroads village, where this wagon and buildings were photographed, and 10 ethnic farmsteads located on 576 acres of wooded hills in the Southern Unit of Kettle Moraine State Forest.
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Maybe I Should Get a Set of These
Soooooooooo. I have been without a washing machine since the Monday before Thanksgiving. It’s beginning to seem like a really long time. We ordered the replacement before Thanksgiving Day. The economy is stagnant, no one is buying big ticket items, so I foolishly thought my big ticket washing machine would be an easy get.
Wrong. I was wrong, Really wrong. No washing machine is in sight. And the darn thing is manufactured in Iowa AND Iowa is just across the border from Wisconsin. So how hard can this be, folks? Will someone please send a truck for my washer?
Or perhaps I shall be forced to set up some outdoor tubs – like the ones in the photo, the ones the historical re-enactment ladies use at Old World Wisconsin, the state’s historical outdoor museum. The tubs they use when they pretend it is summer and 1890 and indoor plumbing is non-existent.
Oh wait. I can’t do that. It’s mid-December, and we’re in the middle of a blizzard. Depending on how accurate the weather folk are in the area, we are likely to get eight inches of snow tonight and tomorrow, give or take two inches.
I’ve already been to the laundromat once. It’s not a horrible experience. Though it’s not at the top of my list either. Two hours and $21 to wash and dry eight loads of clothing and linen. (I had overnight guests over Thanksgiving, or it wouldn’t have been quite so bad.) And I even was treated to TV – a TV bolted to the ceiling so neither I nor anyone else in the place could turn down the volume or change the channel. The TV host was describing fast food horrors, sandwiches and such, complete with such high calorie and fat counts that they should satisfy a grown man’s food needs for several days.
Sorry, I got a bit distracted. I’ll get back to the good part. Seems I’d planned on a quiet evening tonight. I worked with a new computer program for five solid hours today, and then wrapped Christmas presents for another two hours, so I was ready to relax with a nice book and a cup of Earl Grey tea. My husband, however, after surveying the silent laundry room, thought it would be a great time to move the machines and prep the walls for a quick paint job. After all, there would be no laundry to get in the way.
Seemed like a good idea – at the time. He turned off the water, or so he thought, and then disconnected the hoses. Except the water wasn’t completely turned off, and the first floor laundry (and the floor below) was well soaked by the time he wrangled with the shut off valve in the basement. Yuk. Water. Mess.
Hey, but it gets even a little better. (One of those nights when you can be glad you were in your own home, rather than being a fly on the wall of my laundry room – you really didn’t want to hear that conversation, did you?)
Jazz, whom we are now fondly calling the Velcro Vomit-er, sized up the situation before we did. She grasped the obvious quickly. She noted her litter box had some major flood damage. And not wanting to get in our way, she sweetly went into the living room, and visualized a litter box in the corner of the carpeted room. Ah, sweet cat.
So, all things considered, it was an exciting evening. And if we don’t get our snow dump, not only will I have to go to the laundromat with a lot of wet towels tomorrow, I’ll have to fork over cash for a plumber, too.
Maybe those old wooden laundry tubs wouldn’t be such a bad solution, after all. Hmm.
Nah, I suppose not.
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Metal Pails
Don’t throw out the old bucket until you know the new one holds water. ~~ Swedish proverb.
These buckets are hanging in the Old General Store at Old World Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Historical Society’s re-creation of Midwestern living in the mid- to late-1800s. An interesting place to visit, but I don’t think I want to live there.
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Milkweed in Autumn
The Common Milkweed, a native plant in Wisconsin, has rough textured pods that contain thousands of seeds attached to strands of silky down. As the pods split in autumn, the seeds open like tiny parachutes and travel on wind currents to a new site to seed.
This silky stuff has been used creatively throughout the years. Settlers in the 1700s and early 1800s used the fluff to fill their pillows and mattresses. In the 1860s, thread from the down was made into socks and purses. During World War II, schoolchildren collected milkweed pods and the pods were sent to central processing locations. The down was used to fill life preservers and to line the uniforms of the United States Air Force. Milkweed down is extremely bouyant and a few pounds of this spinnery stuff can keep a 150 pound person afloat in water.
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Browning Leaves
Out and about this Labor Day weekend, always seems like this is the last weekend of summer, though the calendar insists otherwise. But studying the prairie signs on this morning’s hike, everything looks very fall-ish. Seeds are turning dark and scattering, the asters are beginning to show purple, berries are ripening, and the leaves are turning a soft shade of brown.
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