WordSisters

Tag: Photography

  • Chasing Spring

    The youngest member of the extended family is crawling and wanting to walk. His four-year-old sister prefers hitting a softball that is pitched, not set on a tee. The older cousin is closing in on successfully completing her first year of middle school. They are progressing in predictable ways that we all celebrate.

    If only the spring of 2026 would be as predictable instead of posting temperatures inspiring sundress wearing one day and tumbling forty degrees in a handful of hours. Snow, sleet, ice, rain and sunshine can be experienced during a school or workday. In the cities frequent snowstorms topped with melt and freeze have turned streets, even major thoroughfares, into pothole disasters. In the Midwest, farmers ducks float where spring fieldwork should be happening. 

    We could accept Mother Nature’s uncertainty in April. In May, we are done with heavy fleece jackets and would like to get the kids out of shoes that were worn a size too small through late winter snowy, slushy weather. But we’ll wait until spring really settles in. Money is as tight as the kids’ old shoes.

    Farmers can’t afford the same amount of fuel and fertilizer they ordered in 2025. Families don’t talk about summer vacation travels. Many worry about the coming expenses of feeding kids two additional meals much less extra day care or camp programs. We’re putting in vegetables where marigolds or coleus filled garden spaces. It makes sense if you have the time. Teach the kids about gardening and tending vegetables instead of using gas on unnecessary shopping trips. Maybe neighbors can pool childcare to save money. This might be the summer the grandparents are able to host grandma camp, or a cousin would appreciate getting out of their own home to hang out with the youngers.  

    It’s been a rough year and we can weather this. The kids want to spend time with their parents whether on a lake or in a community pool. We made it through Covid with its isolation and money squeeze. We supported each other through the Ice surges. Now we must figure out soaring gas prices and inflation. If we share with each other from what we have for a few months, we can manage a decent summer.  If spring will truly let go.  

  • Let’s Talk Turkey

    Spending last week with a ten-year-old and a three-year-old, daytime conversations focused on important topics like glitter glue, building Lego structures with or without directions, how many cookies equal too many, and the dangerous wild turkeys wandering nearby.

    One night we strapped on headlamps to walk in the meadow, away from houses, turned off the lights to look at a sky ablaze with stars. The granddaughters, bright eyes plastered upward, were thrilled until remembering it was December and cold.

    Star gazing in the meadow is the kind of memory shared in social media posts, but we talked about the wild turkeys longer. Burning off energy with the younger child, her father saw many turkeys roosting in trees along our driveway. Since a neighbor told me that the turkey brood pecking through our neighborhood slept in our trees at night, I had been reading about them. Mostly about self-protection. Our smallish dog has been rushed more than once by a mom turkey protecting her poult. When he made it to the house before me, she turned attention my way. Nothing stopped her approach. We’ve been captive in our house as turkeys peck through the garden.

    Mom turkeys can sit on their eggs for a month and have not one hatch. About 20% of eggs will hatch with only 25% of those surviving their first months. Clearly not cute, poults, or baby turkeys if you prefer, are fragile and a snack for many predators. Turkey poults require loafing and roosting sites. Got to like a youngster that requires loafing territory, or fancy word for shelter, during their food search. 

    Turkeys spend their day on ground pecking for edibles and their nights roosting in trees. Our garden and grassy areas provide easy shopping for mom turkeys. We are annoyances in their family protection effort. Woodlands provide some shelter while the poults are too young to fly up to the roosting zone.

    Thanks to tended gardens, grass and woods, our local turkey population expands. Mom and the recent four poults joined a multi-generational wintering flock of about two dozen spending each night. They prefer multi-story stands with mature trees. I’ve read that up to a hundred turkeys might roost near each other. 

    This potential does not thrill me. Even our current community leave enough excrement on the driveway or in easement near the trees. As a popular toddler book says, everybody poops. In the human neighborhood, poop is not cute. The turkeys don’t care.

  • Wet Feet and Warm Heart

    To people living in the lake-effect snow areas, Tuesday night’s seven and three-quarters inches of white stuff that landed in Door County is insignificant. Except the weather professionals predicted a dusting. Opening the door at six in the morning to send an old, thirteen-inch-tall dog with arthritis in his hind quarters required intervention by an owner still in cotton knit pajamas and slippers.

    The flip side of this story is that one of the most intensely awesome sunrises distracted attention from noting the snow depth. Bare tree branches etched black lines against nature’s red, orange, yellow, saffron into beauty that could not be painted, photographed, described. Walking along the back windows of the house behind the small dog, my eyes never slipped below the horizon. 

    Sunrise colors seem shorter as the solstice approaches. By the time boots were located and a snow-covered dog rescued, the sky had turned a warm pink then faded into regular daylight. Winter weather arrived surprising me with the gifts of sunrise, snow in the trees, wet pants and bare feet discovering small cold puddles where the furry one shook.

    In a time of deep emotions ranging from the continued happy surprises of family to dread of the immediate political future, from satisfaction in completing a complex writing project to sadness about a relative’s illness, it is easy to not notice what is simple and beautiful. Life’s gifts and losses cannot be tabulated. A stranger’s smile might change an icky morning into a better day. 

    May your holidays bring calm, happiness, and the beauty of a winter’s day even when your feet are cold or wet.