Hot but hungry

We just had a week of record high temperatures in Madison. (And no, I'm not used to this from living in Costa Rica because we live in the cool mountains there.) Our drought continues, but this week the temperatures have moderated a bit from unbearably hot to just plain hot. Even with grass and plants drying up, there were welcome signs of life. In a tree branch extending over Lake Monona, an Eastern Kingbird pair raised and fledged their chicks. Some mornings I managed to get out and check them before the heat got too much for me. There were three hungry chicks. Kingbirds are flycatchers and the parents brought a variety of damsel flies and other insects. Both parents were in constant attendance.

Since the nest was without any shade, sometimes one of the parent birds would sit over the chicks with wings slightly extended to provide shade.

 Then it was off to catch more insects.

Summer hot and cold

   Summer weather so far this year in Wisconsin seems to be normal, nice warm days alternating with short periods of very hot weather. (And no rain no matter what.) On a very hot day recently it was fun to see a pile of ice someone had dumped out on the sidewalk.

Looking hot rather than cool is this home painted scooter I spotted in front of the library. I saw the owner riding it later and he has a helmet painted to match. Love it.

Being festive

   In Costa Rica, we flee the neighborhood festival that is days and nights of over-amplified recorded music simultaneously booming over incredibly loud commentary on the bull riding. One memorable year it lasted 10 days, usually to midnight. Most of my tico neighbors join me in disliking the torture by sound that the festival brings us. Why don't they unite to do something about it? When I understand that, I will really understand Costa Rican culture.
   Contrast that to the Marquette Waterfront Festival that is very close to our Madison home. It's two days and it has amplified music too, but you can't actually feel the bass beat from inside our house. Music ends at the civilized hour of 8:30 and it's all live. True, there's lots of beer but there are lots of activities for kids too. Many of our neighbors have porch parties to share the music with friends. One of the coolest things about the festival is that most people walk or bike to get there. (Maybe that's because parking in our neighborhood is very challenging.) Here's just a portion of the bike parking.

   This year the highlight for me was the Portland-based  Marchfourth Marching Band. It's like no marching band I've ever seen before. It plays much more danceable music and the performers wear much more interesting costumes.

The stilt dancers were really tall. The crowd gets moving—and amazingly for Madison, many of the upraised arms are free of tattoos. Our beautiful lake and giant cottonwood trees make a wonderful setting for this joyful celebration.

 

Cultural immersion

   Visiting a big U.S. city after months in tiny Monteverde, Costa Rica is both exciting and a bit overwhelming. On our trip back to Wisconsin this year, one of our stops was several days in Washington DC, where we gloried in the wealth of the various Smithsonian museums. The Smithsonian is the largest museum in the world; in fact it is really 19 separate museums, most on the Mall in DC. What better place to immerse oneself in culture and history? (Note to frugal travelers: while food and lodging in DC are pricey, all the Smithsonian museums are free.)
   In a few days, it is impossible to see all the museums or—depending on one's style—possibly impossible to see all of a single museum. We met someone who lives in the area and claims he is still working on a single floor of the Museum of American History. I prefer to dip and dabble and the lack of entrance fees encourages that. Our favorite museum on this visit was the relatively new National Museum of the American Indian. (It helps that their cafeteria is amazingly good, with inspiration from native foods.) The building itself is curvaceous and lovely inside and out. One exterior wall has a huge series of waterfalls.

Around it are planted native plants and trees, such as the Liriodendron, or Tulip tree that dropped these leaves. This is quite an exotic tree for a Wisconsinite.

  We spent a lot of time getting visually overstimulated at art museums. While we were looking at the Vermeers in the National Gallery of Art, some very important people came in. I have no idea who the VIP foreign couple was, but I couldn't help but notice that the small room got quite crowded with tall men trying to look casual. I guess they were bodyguards. Not the sort of thing one can snap a photo of but an interesting experience. The National Gallery has three Vermeers and a painting that is attributed to Vermeer. It's fun to examine compare that painting to the others and try to decide if it is a Vermeer or not.
  At the Hirshorn Museum, I loved Chromosaturation by Carlos Cruz-Diez. It is an installation of colored light tubes in a very white space that viewers are allowed to enter.

   Outside of the museums, we found this knit graffiti in the Dupont Circle neighborhood. Thanks to who ever installed this cheery bit of knit art. You can never go wrong with the rainbow sequence.

   It felt like an art installation but it wasn't: riding in an empty Metro car. Usually the cars were quite full. Suddenly we were in one that was completely empty other than us.

 The nitty-gritty: All Smithsonian Museums in DC are free. May is school trip season. Museums are less crowded on weekends but even on weekdays the art museums were fine. It's best to go to the most popular museums on the weekends. (We visited the Museum of American History on a Sunday and the popular simulation rides in the basement had no line at all.) The National Gallery of Art and the National Museum of the American Indian both have very good cafeterias. The Textile Museum near Dupont Circle isn't part of the Smithsonian and requests donations; it's a must see for fiber lovers.
 

Cool ice

  Although it has been a mild winter in Wisconsin so far this year, some ice has formed on the lakes this week. Ice that breaks up and refreezes can make some interesting effects.

 The American Coots migrating south are concentrated into the area where the Yahara River enters Lake Monona.

   And if the natural ice isn't interesting enough, a neighbor makes interesting ice sculptures by freezing dyed water outside in household containers and stacking them in the yard.

Remembrance of falls past

Autumn brings back some of my fondest childhood memories such as the aroma of leaves when kicked. This week is more suited to sitting by the fireplace but last week I was riding a bike through golden coins of leaves.

They were so lovely I stopped my bike to kick a little gold.

This week is very blustery and the leaves are quickly coming off the trees. Recently it was very still. Autumn is the season of change.

Water watching: pond strolling edition

I love it when I discover something wonderful in an unexpected place. I didn't expect to find a world class Japanese garden in the relatively small city of Rockford, Illinois which has a population of 152,871 according to the 2010 census. Plus Rockford has been going through some tough times in the last few decades. An article in Wikipedia states:

"Starting as early as the 1990s Rockford has had the ignominious honor of being listed at times as one of America's worst cities by the Rand Mcnally corporation and Money magazine, sometimes being ranked one of the top ten worst cities. This may have been due to the lack of jobs and high number of outdated or closed factories."

   So I was surprised and delighted on a visit last week to Anderson Japanese Gardens in Rockford.

 

Having been there, I'm not surprised that the Journal of Japanese Gardening that has named them the finest Japanese garden in North America. We visited during fall colors and enjoyed seeing the hill behind the garden in glorious bright colors. The garden is in the style of a 13th century pond strolling garden. There's plenty of room to stroll as the gardens cover 14 acres (5.7 hectares).
   The garden features several waterfalls, two large ponds, and a small river. There are plenty of koi in the ponds to add to the water viewing pleasure.

Even some of the gravel reminded us of water.

If you are in the Midwest and a fan of gardens, I highly recommend going to Rockford.
   

Walking in northern waters

 We finally made up to Door County, that little thumb of northern Wisconsin that sticks out into Lake Michigan. It's a beautiful and popular vacation destination. Driving 4 hours to it from Madison reminded me how big Wisconsin is.
  There are lots of picturesque sights, such as the Door County Ice Cream Factory and the church across the street. The ice cream was just as delicious as vacation ice cream ought to be.

One day we canoed up the Mink River Estuary, a special area that has been protected by the Nature Conservancy. It's possible to rent canoes and kayaks right on Rowley Bay near the entry to the estuary, but we borrowed a friend's canoe.

Water and hiking opportunities abound in Door County. There are five state parks and and numerous state natural areas. Even though Door County is very popular, short hikes can take you away from any crowd. We visited Toft Point to enjoy this water in solitude.

But wait, what about combining my favorite new sport of water watching with hiking? Peter knew a way to walk from Washington Island to Rock Island, the nearby island that is a state park. It seemed like it was over a kilometer (.62mile). This picture shows Rock Island in the distance from the beach on Washington Island.

The water was up to our knees most of the way and a wave got Mr. Rududu wet considerably higher than that. We felt very adventurous and we discovered that "water walking" is very good exercise for the legs, indeed.

Water to the west

  On our recent trip to the Northwest U.S. by train, we didn't expect to see a lot of water until we got to the ocean. However, there were miles and miles of Great Plains under water due to the massive flooding there this summer.

In fact, our train was the first westbound train on that route for about a month. The station at Minot, North Dakota was still closed due to water damage.
   Once we we got to the Pacific, most of our time was devoted to watching water from a boat. The San Juan Islands area is surely one of the most scenic places on earth.

I was fascinated by the little ferries that take vehicles and goods to the smaller islands. I tried to imagine day-to-day life in such a beautiful place where most things happen by boat.

 The sky and the water often joined to cast a dreamy spell on me.

Just a tourist here myself

   I like to play tourist in  my regular stomping grounds and see things with a fresh eye. (There is nothing like being on a bicycle to help us notice the details; rest stops are an ideal time to explore places that in a car we would be whizzing past.)  This week we stopped in at the Cedar Grove Cheese factory in Plain, Wisconsin to see where some of our favorite local cheese comes from. We saw them shoveling sheep milk cheese.

It wouldn't surprise me to see enough cow cheese to shovel, but sheep aren't all that common in Wisconsin. The nice young man at the counter, an aspiring opera singer, said they produce over 10,000 pounds (about 4,5000 kilograms) of cheese a day. Most of it is cow cheese and they specialize in organic and rBGH-free cheese. Besides being shipped out in big trucks, some of their cheese goes all over the world via UPS. After sampling and buying cheese, refilling our water bottles, and enjoying the air conditioned store, we checked out their Living Machine next to the factory.

Cedar Grove uses tanks with natural microbes and hydroponic plants to clean up their wastewater so it's clean enough put it into Honey Creek. It processes about 7,000 gallons (26,000 liters) of water a day.
  A couple of days later, a very challenging hilly ride took us from North Freedom across the ancient Baraboo Range to Loganville. Even though two state highways intersect there, minutes can go by between vehicles; it's a very quiet little town. By the time we arrived, our packed sandwiches seemed rather paltry, so we were happy to discover Aunt Ozie's Cafe where we refueled with a tasty lunch including some of the best home-made potato salad I've ever tasted.

Across the street is Burmester's Grocery Store, where one can do a bit of time travel to a really old fashioned grocery store.

The stock is a little sparse; I wanted a candy bar and fortunately Mr. Burmester had several Snickers bars on hand.

Water watching: New York edition

   While I like to play with string, Mr. Rududu likes to play with paper. We just spent a few days in New York City while he attended a national origami convention put on by Origami USA. Over 600 paper folders attended: they were of all ages and of many countries.

   Meanwhile, I explored New York. I tested my endurance in museums: walking until my legs ached and looking at art until my brain was overloaded. As respite, I relished any opportunity for some peaceful water watching. Here is the 106 acres (43 ha) Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir in Central Park with reflections of buildings to the west of the park.

I was amazed at how much cooler the air felt the second I stepped into the park and was surrounded by trees and greenery.
  Flowing and splashing water is very attractive in a noisy city short on nature. The fountain in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art happened to have a balloon in it.

The reflections in the waves looked a great deal like the water in this Manet painting detail.

 The charming Frick Collection has this frog in their fountain.

 This pocket park had a whole wall of rushing water.

Easy being green

Green: the natural color. A color that is hard to recreate in paintings. A color that is easy to take for granted. The color of grass.

 The color of Wisconsin in the summer.

 A good camouflage color for a small cloud forest moth. 

A color that has an affinity for blues.

A color that comes in many shades and loves purple.

Waterwatching in a big way

The Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta is the world's biggest.  It contains a total of 8.5 million US gallons (31,000 m³) and the largest single tank in the world (6.3 million gallons or 24,000 m³). The smallest fish in the big tank is really big. The largest—whale sharks—are about 30 feet (10 meters) and growing.

This week the aquarium might also have set the record for number of kids on school field trips. They were so excited that at times we wished we had earplugs. In spite of crowds and the sound level, we had a great time. (Our top tip for dealing with groups is to look at whatever is less crowded. Kids' groups move quickly and there are always lulls between groups so eventually we saw everything in reasonably calm surroundings.)
   One of my favorite tanks held lots of jellyfish drifting about.

I also liked the colorful Brazilian river fish. I feel inspired to stitch a temari with these colors. I seemed most attracted to creatures with stripes and spots.

See what wonderful things you can do just with stripes and a limited palette!

Water watching: frozen edition

OK, I'm not a big fan of cold weather. I've lived most of my life in Wisconsin and show no signs of getting used to cold weather—in fact, quite the contrary.  Last week, however, I had an excellent winter experience and I was even outdoors when it happened. For a very brief time, the lake was frozen enough to be safe and there was not yet snow on it.

The ice was incredibly smooth and the clearest lake ice I've ever seen. We put on our ice skates and special skate covers that Mr. Rududu designed to keep our feet warm. (They really work.)

I loved the reflections but the most wondrous thing was down below us—something I'd never seen before. We were skating where the water is quite shallow, less than a yard/meter. The ice and water were so clear we could see the sand on the bottom. Anywhere there was an object on the lake bottom, such as a rock, there was a 3D "ghost" of bubbles in the same shape above it in the ice. Here are the bubbles over a cement block.

Here are the bubbles a sunken wooden object made up of boards.

 I have no idea why this happened, but it was lovely to look at. (If anyone has an idea, please let me know!) Now it's covered up by snow. I'm so glad I went out to see this.
  Update: I contacted the Center for Limnology at the University of Wisconsin (the people who study lakes) and they sent me the following explanation which I think is fascinating.
Even materials sunken in the water hold gases within the material--especially with something porous like a cinder block.  As the water cools, the object cools and contracts, and the gases are forced out through the material.  The first bubbles are caught under the top layer of ice, then as the ice freezes downward, the next bubbles are frozen underneath the first, etc., creating a layered effect.  Of course, the longer something is submerged, the less gas it holds, however, even the rocks that have been in the lake for years still have gas within them.  This year's freeze conditions resulted in some really clear ice, making the bubble/freeze effect even more defined.