Repost from The Terrier Man

Back in the day. When most members of Congress, even the nut jobs, actually gave a shit or gave the appearance of giving a shit about some things, other than short term self interests.

On This Day in 1973, Nixon Signed the ESA Into Law

On this day in 1973, President Richard Nixon signed into law the Endangered Species Act. Congress had spent almost a year negotiating a final bill, melding a stronger House version with a weaker Senate one. The House approved the measure on Dec. 20 by a vote of 355-4.

 https://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/

Hump Day

Lookin' a tad festive.................

Hello winter

There now
That is more like it

Venison Karma

There are a lot of good people out in the world
Kind, helpful, generous, grateful folks
The sharing of nutritional bounty and artistic beauty
Helps, I suppose to bind community and
Strengthen ourselves for the coming winter darkness

One of Blondie's patients gave her a beautiful rosebush
In gratitude for the care she received during a recent hospital stay
A genuine gesture to a true fixer of  body and spirit

Late in the afternoon, while digging the hole, mixing the soil
and preparing the mulch
I thought about the hue and fragrance and radiance
That might become the rose in 2018
All I really knew was that it was supposed to be red.

After dark, that evening
It occurred to me that I should make a cage for the rosebush
Protection from the deer and rabbits that are also part of our little community
In the morning.................
Too late.....
Really !!?   Errrrrrrrr !! Really !!!

I caged the rose, but where once stood lushness
now stood sticks

Deer season opens this Saturday
I'm not sayin' I have revenge in my heart
I'm just sayin'
"Beware Bambi - I know where you live"

Deja Vu or Halloween Scary

I eagerly accepted Clyde's invitation to fish muskies in late October, 1992. He had recently landed a good job up north and also found an old farmhouse to rent, right on the west bank of the river. And he knew where the fish lived. He had caught them on big plugs.

From his small boat we cruised about three river miles upstream from his place. He flung the plugs while I beat the water with monster streamers on a full sinking 8 weight line. After four hours of fruitless pursuit, we were both pretty beat and figured on a rest. We had not had a follow.

Clyde said we might salvage the morning by catching a couple of walleyes for lunch - a sure bet below the rapids, just upstream. So, on the first cast with a 1/4 ounce Mister Twister, a 42 1/2 inch musky ate the jig. A long slow tug followed and eventually, the fish was landed for measurements and the grip and grin.  The picture is long gone from me.

Twenty five years on, in late October, I fished for a walleye for lunch. This time there were no exact measurements, but a picture was retained. This fish was much larger - I think we were in fifty inch territory.
Yikes!
Halloween scary!

The wheel goes round or deja vu or some other such coincidence perhaps............

And then there is Fogerty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkazf7znllQ

Crude Approximation

Throughout the bulk of late summer and into early September the crappies and bluegills were aggregated in their usual haunts. Edges between dense aquatic vegetation and deepwater drops are the normal places where they lurk.  They bite differently on differing flies and jigs and at different times, but they are together. With the first cooling influence of fall turnover these fish segregated; the crappies heading out for deeper water. The guts of two of those fish revealed the targeting of young bluegills, perhaps an inch and a half in length.

So, I twisted up a particularly ugly impression of a YOY sunfish.

A rude hatch match

A gossamer morning

Heavy with fog
The forest dripping down
Young spiders practice their spinning

Soft light shrouds the pending sunrise

The Benefits of Looking Down

Old School

Some old school, past tense, horsedrawn stuff is still pretty good.

.....and it is just so hard to clean fish on an e-newspaper.

Orbs

As if a pincherry might become a salmon
the summer wanes

Solstice Blues

Inducing decay
to induce waiting
for a future yield
so it goes with Shiitake hope............

A storm damaged red oak seemed the perfect size for the try, the attempt, the next thing, project, whatever.  It's top had been completely snapped off about twenty five feet from the ground.  Still alive, it may have made it, these oaks being tough tough dudes.  No match however, for the Stihl with its newly filed chain racing through it like a hot knife through a cold block of lard. Really ?  Well, at any rate, short work was made of the young oak. Zip Zop

Nine sticks between four and six inches will get the the drill hole inocculation method of spawn transplantation.
Spawn.
There I said it again
Spawn
One more time
Spawn
it's a good word

Already we tilt back toward Autumn
What will be, a year hence
Fruit
Shiitake hope

Arboreal shellfish

Both the fishing and the weather have been pretty poor
But a few oysters are in the forest.

First spear

I have been lucky enough to be outdoors a fair amount this spring, and have dined on two occasions on the early wild greens. Ramps, sting nettles and fiddleheads all boiled together in the pot. Fish or venison on the side. But now this evening, back from the walk a bout with the dogs, this one lone scepter of asparagus caught my attention. The light waning.........
Of course I ate it right there.

Proper Cropper

Brooks and Fife were working the bullrushes with minnows and bobbers
I was flinging a wooly bugger with tri-colours
It was early in the season and the cold water had not touched fifty
the fly caught three and lost two
they caught two combined
"What do you call that fly?" Brooks inquired
"It's just a ubiquitous woolly bugger" says I
"Well, seems a proper cropper then" says Brooks
and a fly gets a name..................

Whoa Nelly !

Rust and Bliss

There remained only an hour of daylight once we were afloat. Biceps and abdominal muscles both felt the remembered stresses of the paddling that seemed oh, so long ago. I dug deep and stroked hard, going for speed and that feeling of quiet flight. To what portent will the new season bring? Panfish and bass, trout and pike? Perhaps some things exotic. I worked up some sweat before taking a pause. Then let out a roar into the sky.

Arriving after a brief cool down at the cattail fringed shallow bay, the fly casting began anew.  Too anxious and freshly wired from the exuberance of the paddling, the first cast was a piled mess - due mostly I suppose to line and leader memory. And rust. The second cast produced an immediate hookup, a fairly large swirl, and then a quick unpinning. Three more cast to the same spot produced three missed takes. Then nothing. Spooked.

So, out of the bay and down the shore a bit we go, my little craft and I, flushing a pair of mallards lurking in the bullrushes. Past a beaver lodge and green water lilly leaves already emerging from the mud, striving up toward the sun. Past the red-winged blackbirds and their raspy trills, staking their claims for breeding rights. And the early frog cackles of the riparian edge. The urgency of springtime.

I cast the shoreline pockets here and there working out the old rhythm. It's never far away. Turning back toward the little bay, I paused at its mouth as a few ripples indicated more fish. Missing another three takes before finally getting a solid hook up, I marveled at the quickness of the grab and rejection that is the hallmark of these early cold water fish. Far too soon it was too dim to fish.

So I paddled around into the dark.

" Tomorrow Domingo, we ride! "

Black Ice

This is the end of it
This is the stuff that you yearn after for months
composed now of millions of shattered shafts
fused together like a massive honeycomb
but unglued daily by the increasing infrared waves
squeaky and bowing under foolish weight
This is the stuff that will kill you
there is but a day or two left 
this is the beginning of the next thing

  Bring it............
 

Oh the horror..........

Two Aspects of De-Construction

As per the humanoids and their bots

As per the gods

 

 Feelin' a bit more love for the latter............

Rich beyond belief

Went onto the ice today, as I have not been out there since King Day, which was a winner and resulted in three fat jars of pickled tullibees and good times with the old crew from the north shore. Cold but manageable, I nearly got lost trying to find my way off the lake at the end of the day - rewards and adventures indeed. But today's excursion was of the "I can't believe I am so freakin' lucky shit" kind of thing. The dogs and the Piscator walk but a quarter mile from the house, drill two holes, drop down a little spoon, festooned with wax worms, predicated by a droppered, x legged fly - and whack, whack, whack bluegills at will and a couple of fat crappies to boot! Most of the sunfish came on the dropper. The intention was to make some meat, but there was already red meat thawing in the kitchen at home, so it was just a pure bliss kind of a thing. Windsor and water as a boost wasn't lost on it either. And trumpeter swans were flyin' around on the hoot.

Like an electrical switch thrown, the fish turned off just as the western sky went all red under grey. Daylight became darkness as each fish went back down its respective hole. So to home then.

Venison backstrap steaks and wild rice tabuli in the place of fresh fish.
OK
And a full glass of Steelhead Red to besot the Piscator further.
Lucky, lucky shit!!

So starting with a lump of butter in the pan - that can't be bad..........

    Add in the seasoned backstrap steaks. 

Cook about four minutes on medium low heat. Flip and cook about two minutes more. Too long and it's tough like your boot - so don't get distracted.

Plate with wild rice tabuli

 

Wash down with full goblet of Steelhead Red

Exclaim aloud, "Great Googly Moogly!"

Oh, of course, the tabuli..............

2 or 3 cups of authentic cooked wild rice (not the black paddie shit) seek out an Indian friend or knock it yourself
2 medium tomatoes diced
1 stalk celery diced
I red bell pepper diced
2 green onions chopped
2 bunches fresh Italian parsley chopped
1 small bunch  fresh mint chopped
1/4 cup olive oil
juice of 1 lemon fresh squeezed
salt and pepper to taste
mix well

The deal here is fresh, fresh, fresh!!!

Oh and bye the bye.............
48 degrees Fahrenheit today
Nuts

Owls and such

 

The barred owl that provided the UFO freakout in the dark of the opening morning of deer season last November, is still in the woods on the home place. At least I like to think its the same bird. We see it a couple times a week, mostly on the five acres across the road. Night and day it silently flushes from various low branches before the dogs during our rounds. They are so used to its presence now that they hardly give it notice. Lately though, it has taken up residence close to the house. Close to where we feed sunflower seeds to the birds. The mice and voles profit from that feeding as well.

Two days ago, as I arrived home from the daily grinder, I went around the side of the garage for some relief, and while the day's problems and issues were draining, the owl went "Thump" into the snow from an unseen perch about thirty feet from my position. Yikes. That was unexpected. The owl seemed pretty unconcerned about the lack of space between us, as it looked first to me and then to its catch and back again, finally killing a little black shrew. A couple of flaps brought it about ten feet up into a low aspen branch. The black shrew dangled for several minutes from the beak of the owl before going down the gullet in one gulp. A fair amount of work for such a tiny reward. 

Chel Anderson talked the other day, about some of the owl issues this winter as they relate to the quality of the snow. The conditions are tough now, as a thick crust prevents the owls from getting at most of the mice and voles down below. You can hear it here  on WTIP Grand Marais.  This morning the owl was on the south side of the house, posing.

Critter attractant

 

Sometime in late November, after removing all the meaty bits from the buck's carcass, I hoisted some of the remainder in a tree behind the barn. High enough and away from my always hungry dogs, it helps to sustain some of our our woodsy neighbors through the harsher parts of the winter. The list of pickers who have pretty much finished the task is notable:

White breasted nuthatch
Red breasted nuthatch
Chickadee
Downy woodpecker
Hairy woodpecker
Red bellied woodpecker
Pileated woodpecker
Bluejay
Flying squirrel
Grey squirrel
White footed deer mouse
house cat

At the base of the tree there are tracks in the snow of both fox and weasel , but I have not had the pleasure of an eye witness encounter.