Blog

The holidays are over and winter has taken hold. Save for a passing snow plow, it’s quiet outside. Even a walk down a rocky horse trail near our home is muffled by a carpet of snow. The woods feel like an empty park after all the kids have gone home for supper. But...

The season of thanking and giving is upon us, so it’s time to make a list. Mine is short, yet long on importance: my family, my friends, and living in Driftless Wisconsin. The month of celebration from Thanksgiving through Christmas offers a break from the world at...

When you can’t see the prize, follow your nose. This seems to be the general philosophy of Riley, our five-year old golden retriever, who relies on his snout to find his way in life. We were out for a walk in La Riviere Park when Riley flushed a deer out of a...

There’s no place on earth quite like Driftless Wisconsin in the fall. The bluffs rising from the river gives autumn another dimension in which to paint. She does not waste a good canvas. As the “color season” nears, we find ourselves peeking around the corner to see...

A heat wave persists, bridging the short jump from August to September. Summer refuses to yield without one last performance to remember her by. Even our 18-year-old cat has bowed to the dog days of summer. Sprawled out on the baked concrete of our front porch, he’s...

As children we hiked to the top of the Mississippi River bluff, where legend has it that Michael Brisbois was buried so that he “could look down upon his intense business rival in death as he did in life.” Or maybe he just enjoyed the view. History works that way,...

Farmers Markets whet my appetite for garden vegetables and childhood memories. As a child I would sneak into my mother’s garden with my sister and pilfer fresh peas from their pods. We would sit hunched in the garden, snapping the pods from the stem with one hand and...

My wife and I live in a coulee along a drywash, a meager contributor to the Mississippi River and yet a topographical tributary to the Mississippi Valley. We live in shadow until midmorning, when the sun finally appears to resume its work on spring, as an artist...

The spring of 2012 flew early. I remember my then one-year-old granddaughter watching the St. Patrick’s Day parade in shorts. Our family picnicked on a balmy Easter Sunday, complaining only about our mud-caked dogs who had snuck away for a swim at the beach. This...