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Short and Sweet

My mamma once told me…if you don’t have anything good to say, keep your mouth shut. It’s may 27th, Memorial Day and our temp is 40 degrees and there has been a light rain falling all day. So this is going to be a very brief entry!

It’s not that I have only bad things to say. Saturday was a beautiful day, with temps in the upper 60’s and sunshine. Sunday was not too bad either, with a high around 64 and sun for part of the day.

It’s more like I just do not have MUCH to say! We are still awaiting the full greening of the woods. The leaves on the trees have begun to pop, but it will take several more days of temps in the 60’s or above to get them to fully open up. Most of the vegetation that comes up and covers all the leaves that fell in the autumn has yet to come up and we have not had to cut our grass yet.

Nora has just about all of her flowers planted and some of the garden has also been planted. The strawberries are just starting to bloom, which actually surprises me. I figured with all the cold weather this spring, it would be a while.

I know the warmer temps will arrive. I just hope we do not go to the other extreme. We have decided that with the summer being busy preparing for the move, we would not put the pool up. I suppose if we do get really hot, that plan can change!

That about does it for this one. Happy Memorial Day.

Good night from the Keweenaw..
–JD

Yuck

I realize it has only been two days, but it just seems like we have been stuck in ugly weather for weeks. I guess that is because we are really still waiting on that really nice mid-late spring weather to arrive. You know, the kind with temps in the mid 70’s and sunshine?

We are also waiting on all of the snow to melt. All of the natural snow is pretty much gone. I suppose if one wanted to, they could head up into the higher terrain of Keweenaw County and still find some natural patches. I was talking with the FedEx guy last week and he said that earlier in the week, the woods were still full of snow in spots up there. I still have some small piles left from where it was piled up by me moving it, or sliding off the roof. However, if you look in that first photo, you can see that my re-shoveling job of around 10 days ago paid off. There is hardly any snow left there and would probably still be at least 18-20″.

We are still waiting for the grass to green up in earnest. We are still waiting for all of the leaves to open up this way, although some of the trees in the Houghton/Hancock area have started to open some. We are still waiting for the spring flowers to pop their heads up. So are the humming birds. Nora has been watching their progress north for the season and put out our feeder last week and it only took around 24 hours and there was one at the feeder. Heck we are still waiting for the bugs! Well not waiting, but they have not appeared yet.

We are not missing the snow flake flying though. We took a trip to Houghton/Hancock to pick up a few things this afternoon and flakes were flying from Kearsarge to about the airport. Big, wet and white ones. Not the kind where you wonder if it is something other than snow. It did not last long and there was no accumulation, but that is a different case in NW WI and around Duluth, where the flakes are falling and piling up. Anyone for a round of golf? That was the image from the Lake Nebagabon cam in the NCN. It is a shot from the Norwood Acres Golf course.

In reality, the weather has been improving some. I actually cannot even remember them, but my weather station claims that we hit 67 on Monday and 69 on Tuesday. I also know that Friday was not too bad of a day. A chilly one with a high of only 53, but we did have clear blue skies, which made for some pretty good conditions for ride-your-bike to school day for Grace and her classmates.

I personally had a quiet week. Had some minor surgery done on Monday, basically the same thing I had done on April 1st that caused all the problems the past 6 weeks, but this time it was to hopefully fix things for good.

Nora has been pretty busy cleaning and packing. Not the everyday stuff, just the stuff we thought we would never have to worry about because we were never planning on moving from this place! Amazing how things can collect when you are in that mind-set. Even though we have no plans to move once we settle in Jacobsville later this summer or autumn, we have both promised to not let things collect like they did here!

The final thing I have to share with you is an event my older brother will be involved in this July. He is a survivor of Leukemia and will be doing a 150 mile bike ride to raise funds for the Lymphoma/Leukemia Society. I am so proud of him for his fight against Leukemia and then all the complications that followed and I know he feels grateful and honored to be able to help out against the disease. So if you would like to read more and/or make a contribution, you can here. Thanks!

Good night from the Keweenaw..
–JD

First for Everything

Happy Mothers Day to all the moms! I hope you all are having a great day and being spoiled by your husband and kid(s). I feel like I have not really done too much special for Nora and still need to give my own Mom a call. I guess the reality is that Nora did get cards from Grace and I and we also went out for dinner, although I was not allowed to pay, the tab was picked up by our wonderful dinner guests.

It was a pretty nice day weather wise. We have been treated to a mix of sun and clouds and I also see that we are warmer than most of southern WI, lower MI and even northern IL, with temps around 60. Yesterday was also a pretty nice day, with the same kind of cloud cover and highs in the low 60’s.

The first few days of this week look to repeat that very same weather and Tuesday some folks around these parts might even see their first 70 degree temps of the season! It’s safe to say that we have turned the corner on the cold and unusually snowy pattern we have been in for the past 6 weeks. Sure we might still see some chilly weather for a brief period, but it looks like overall, our temps will be fairly mild through May 22nd and also free from any wintry precip!

Just about all of the naturally accumulated snow has melted from our yard, although there are still a few stubborn patches here and there and around 2-3 feet where it got moved off the driveway or slid off the roofs. Which brings me to my next topic.

The first winter I lived up here, I saw something that I had never seen before in my life. Actually, it was as the winter was ending and the snow melting. I saw folks that had spent all winter shoveling snow off their driveways and walkways shoveling it back into their driveways, walkways and yards!

I understood why, but have to admit I thought the process was a little nuts! After all, the extra shoveling they were doing was only speeding up the process of complete snow melting by a few days. Perhaps a week at the very most. It sure seemed to be a lot of work to get rid of something that was not really in the way and was going to be gone in a few days anyway.

With each passing season, I grew more accepting of the process, but still could not bring myself to even thinking of doing it myself. That is until the past few days. I have been looking out our front windows at the same darn pile of snow for over 6 months! The snow this time of the year is never pretty. It has all kinds of other things on it, including what the dogs have left behind over the course of the winter.

So I actually started to entertain the idea of firing up Big Red and using the blower one last time to eat into the pile and spread it into the woods where it would melt in a day or so. This afternoon, after our wonderful dinner, we returned home to sunshine and a 60 degree temperature and I did it! I hopped in Big Red, turned the key, fired her up and before engaging the mid-PTO to get the blower spinning, let Grace hop into the cab and join me.

I did not feel like I was breaking some snow-lovers sworn allegiance to protect the last remaining snow at all costs and actually rationalized it by knowing I was really not doing much physical work at all. Big Red was doing all the heavy lifting. I was just sitting in the seat and driving it back and forth to blow the snow into the woods.

It only took a few minutes and we were nearly done with what could be moved when the chute became clogged with all the wet and heavy snow. That has happened a number of times to me when I was clearing snow during the season and it is not the most fun to unclog. Since we were nearly done and I knew that the chute would clear itself in the sun and well above freezing temps the rest of the day, we called it quits.

I don’t have any strong idea of how long it will take the snow to all melt given it’s new arrangement, but it is safe to say I did not speed things up by probably more than 5-6 days. None the less, after 20 years, I finally moved snow that had been move already and was just going to melt anyway. Perhaps another step towards being a genuine Yooper!

Speaking of natural snow still sticking around. I did drive by the Laurium Glacier on Wednesday and snapped a shot of it. Needless to say it still has quite a bit to go before it is gone. It should make it very deep into May and perhaps even June, all depending on the daytime/nighttime temps and amount of sun during the day. I had officially forgotten to close out the contest on the discussion board, but did so earlier today and the last guess prior to that was back in early April. So safe to say the contest did not give any unfair advantage to anyone.

I suppose that does it for this week. Spring has certainly sprung in the Keweenaw and it’s about time!

Good night from the Keweenaw..
–JD

Sauntering Forward

Apologies for not writing last night. I continue to make progress, but still have low hemoglobin levels. So my energy during the day is not what it normally is and I run out of it earlier in the day than usual. The low hemoglobin has also brought about several other issues, the only other serious one is really bad Restless Leg Syndrome. So bad that many nights I only get 2-3 hours of sleep and there has been one in the past 8 days where I only got 45 minutes and last Thursday I could not fall asleep at all!

After last Thursday night’s ordeal, I broke down and called my Dr and he gave me a medicine that seems to work quite well, as long as I do not under-dose! It is not a sleep medicine, it actually treats the RLS, so I do not wake up groggy. So I am very hopeful that regular sleep will become a common thing. Even with the iron supplements I am taking, it will likely take another 3-4 weeks before my hemoglobin level gets to where it should be.

So enough of my health issues. I only bring it up because I do know that many of you have said that you really appreciate knowing how I am doing.

Last week was another trying week in the weather department. Temps only topped out in the 40’s most days and we even had a few days when we stayed in the 30’s. On Wednesday, May 1, we were even treated to 4-5″ of fresh snow! We woke to snow falling and it fell at varying intensity all day and even into the overnight hours. Here is a shot I took not long after sunrise Wednesday.

Temps were cold enough the next day to keep much of the snow around and then it finally melted by Friday, with temps finding their way into the low 50’s. Saturday was like a dream! After a crisp start around 32, the sun shone brightly all day and we managed to get all the way to 70 degrees! I think the airport officially came in with a 69, but I am certain some other areas up here got into the low 70’s.

Warm enough that before noon even came along, we were all outside enjoying the beautiful weather, including a jacket-less Grace riding her bike around on the driveway while Bleau chased her. In the afternoon we headed down to Jacobsville to pay a visit to our new found friends that we are purchasing the home from and to walk around the property. Nora and Grace got to do that the weekend before, but I was not feeling up to speed, so stayed home. Needless to say I was quite envious and was hoping last weekend I would be felling well enough to take the tour.

It was fun to walk the entire property and it ended up being more than I had imagined it. I knew the acreage, but by the time we were done walking, it sure seemed more than the number on the plat book! A bonus is a beautiful back yard full of grass and a few fruit trees. I know that means grass to cut, but it will also justify a riding mower. Right now we cut all of our lawn with a push mower.

We still have a while before we have to worry about using that push mower up here. The snow is melting, crystal by crystal. It is only considerably deep where it was piled by Big Red, or where it piled up after sliding off the roof. The rest of the yard is pretty much clear, but the grass has not begun to even green up yet. In the woods, there are still some patches left to melt, but they should be gone by the end of the week.

Looking ahead, we don’t have any more 70’s in the forecast for the next week to possibly ten days, but seeing as though in 10 days we will be into the second half of May, it’s going to be getting more difficult to have temps in the 50’s than 70’s and that puts a smile on everyone’s face up here!

Good night from the Keweenaw..
–JD

A New Chapter

Greetings my friends. It’s hard to believe that it has only been a week since I last wrote. Sometimes time flies, sometimes it doesn’t. I am not one to dwell on the negative, but I have to admit that there have been some very dark moments in my life recently. I am also grateful to say that in not a single one of those moments was I left in total darkness. There was always a ray of light. That light came from my beautiful wife Nora. Her unselfish, unwavering and unconditional love was always there for me to see. The Lord was always there too, I am certain that he utilized Nora as his way to get through to me. There is no other way to describe how such a magnificent and perfect comforting could reach me in those moments. Perhaps these dark and terrifying moments are needed to see that there is ALWAYS hope, always an answer.

I would also be remiss in saying that the week was void of bright and wonderful moments. I have said it many a time, this is a magical place I live in and never ceases to mystify me in ways I never thought existed.

I am not going to get into the nitty-gritty of what medical procedure set all of the experiences of the past 4 weeks in motion, other than to say all the work was done where the sun does not shine. Rather ironic, I’d say!

So what is all hubbub about big news to share? Simply put, Nora, Grace, Huck, Bleau and I will be moving sometime in the near future. Not…and I repeat NOT from the Keweenaw. It’s a rather long story and I do plan to share with you as much as I have the energy for.

I believe the seed for this change was actually planted the moment Nora moved up here to live with me. She has ancient and very storied roots to this area. The geographical reach of those roots reaches from the very tip of the Keweenaw, where her ancestors took in survivors from the wreck of the “City of Bangor”, to a bit further south where one of her ancestors became the first female sheriff in the state of MI, or the incredibly strong and brave relatives that traveled from Vadso Norway to settle on the Keweenaw, but in an extremely challenging manner. They were the first (and only, I believe) persons to live on what is now Rabbit Island off the east coast of the peninsula. For many years, it was known as Berg island. A bit further south is the beautiful, but long forgotten community of Jacobsville.

I have mentioned Jacobsville in many of my journal entries, including those before I even met Nora. It has always been a special place for me, there is a beautiful energy that exists there. It saw it’s heyday over 100 years ago when dozens of quarry’s were created to extract the nationally famous Jacobsville Sandstone. That sandstone can be found in many of the buildings in the Keweenaw, but was also shipped out to places like Chicago, Boston, New York City and even London. The Waldorf-Astoria hotel in NYC is built with Jacobsville Sandstone.

Adjacent to Jacobsville was White City. It was the place to go to escape the summer heat. It had an amusement park, complete with a roller coaster, merry go round, shops and a boardwalk. There was a restaurant, saloon, dance pavilion and rental cottages. All the city slickers would travel by steamship to White City on weekends or day trips during the week for mini-vacations. The park closed during WWI and then re-opened briefly, but then faded into memory with so much of the rest of the “Grand Old Days of the Keweenaw”.

The ancestors of Nora’s who settled in Jacobsville were part of the first settlers in the area. Nora could tell it better, but I believe her great, great grandparents where the first. The other generations were born and raised there, including her grandfather, Russell Bergh. His Norwegian blood insisted that he be a man of the sea and had a carer aboard many different ships, the final calling making him the first commander of the US Coast Guard bouy tender/icebreaker Sundew. The Sundew now takes up residence in Duluth and is a floating museum.

Back in the mid-60’s Russell Bergh and his wife June built a new home directly behind the old family house, as it was time to retire the old girl. The old home being torn down, Russell and June went on to live a happy life in the quiets of Jacobsville.

Nora actually lived in the home for a few years and then went on to spend the vast majority of her childhood summers living there with her Grandma and Grandpa. Since I have known Nora, she has never had anything but wonderful stories of her time there. Mention the name June Bergh to a long-time local in places like Jacobsville, Bootjack and Lake Linden, and you will immediately put a smile on their face and then be treated to a story of warmth and generosity. These traits were handed down to my beautiful wife, as all you need to do is travel about the Keweenaw and mention Nora Dee and you will be met with the same reaction. Joy in the eyes and a smile on the face.

Around a year ago, Nora noticed some property right next door to her grandparents was for sale. The property had been for sale for a while and I believe Nora even knew that, but for some reason last spring, she could not escape the thought of owning it. So we purchased it.

At the time, the initial intentions were to just build a small camp on the property. Something to get away from the hustle and bustle of the suburbs of Mohawk and to let the energy of Jacobsville do it’s magic. I even went so far as to say that we could purchase the land and build a cabin on it, but that I could NEVER leave the home we are in now. It had all I needed and it literally had my blood, sweat and tears in it. Without hesitation, Nora agreed to my wishes.

So the land was purchased. We had walked the property many times before purchasing it and also very shortly after it became ours a few more walks were taken. A few weeks passed and it was a nice late spring day. I decided to load up Huck and Millie and take a trip down to “Jake” to stretch our legs on the property. It was during that walk that something indescribable happened. I cannot come up with the words to describe what happened, but when it was time to head back home, not only did the idea of living there seem feasible to me, it seemed like it was unavoidable. As I climbed into the truck and shut the door, I called Nora to describe what had just happened and there was silence. The good kind! Some of you may think I went off my rocker, but I tell you this with an honest heart and mind, I believe Russell and June spoke to me that afternoon.

The days and weeks after that, just the mention of Jacobsville put the most beautiful glow on Nora’s face and sparkle in her eyes. It is all such good medicine.

As the summer progressed, there were some mentions of perhaps stopping in at her grandparents place, just to introduce ourselves and maybe get to know our future neighbors a bit. That gradually transpired to maybe even casually mentioning that if they ever had thoughts of selling their place, Nora and I would be interested buyers. They are actually the folks that bought the home from Nora’s grandmother (grandfather had passed) when she felt it was time to get a little closer to civilization due to her age. Nora did not feel too comfortable about being along with me on that mission, so one evening late last autumn, when we were all down in the area for a bonfire at some friends that live nearby, I dropped Nora and Grace off at the bonfire and then went to pay a quick visit to the current owners.

They were initially a little freaked out by a TOTAL stranger suddenly appearing at their door, but I introduced myself and included that Nora was the Granddaughter of June Bergh and suddenly all apprehension went away. We talked for longer than I thought we would, they were very sweet and it was clear that they were in love with where they were living. None the less, I left them my contact info and said that if they were to ever change their minds, Nora and I would be honored to be given the first chance to try and strike a deal with them.

Most of the winter passed and the idea of living in Nora’s grandparents place found it’s way into our thoughts and conversations quite bit, but in the manner of “if it’s to happen, then it will”. We figured we were at least a few years away from building anything anyway. Then about a month and a half ago, I came home to a message on our answering machine from the owners. It was not detailed in the way of saying they were ready to sell, but that they were hoping we still remembered them from our meeting last autumn and that they would like for us to give them a call when we had a chance.

The rest as they say is history. We have been down to visit them at least a half dozen times in the last 6-7 weeks and have built a wonderful relationship. I guess you could say we all have adopted each other. There is no closing or move-in date. However, the most likely scenario for all of that will be towards the second half or end of summer. That is good, as we have a lot of work to do to take this place from lived in-condition to showing condition. There is also a tremendous amount of things to pack, give away and discard, as we all thought we would be living here the rest of our lives and when we passed, all of those things would become someone else’s problem!

The home is also considerably smaller than what we are in right now, so not all of the items in our current place will be making the move with us. The thought of downsizing is very attractive to both Nora and I. As much as I love this place, I have realized I am more of a “cabin in the woods” or “Little House on the Prairie” type of person.

We have not listed our house for sale yet. As mentioned, we still have some things to do before we feel it will be ready to show. We have spread the word to some folks we know up here (mostly co-workers of Nora) that might have some interest and are going to give them a chance to look at it and decide if they are interested in making an offer before we work with a realtor. I did put together a one page flier on the home and even put an asking price on the flier. I really have no idea what a realtor will think is a good asking price, but both Nora and I did research prices of other places up here with similar square footage and acreage and feel we are in the ballpark.

So there you have it. The big news and new chapter in the life of the Dee’s!

Good night from the Keweenaw..
–JD