Blog

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...

To the contrary, we have not abandoned the summer cabin and gone south for the duration. There are too many extraordinary sights we might miss. Driftless Wisconsin in winter is quite spectacular. Stripped of its leafy pretense, the landscape takes on a naked...