Serenity Room

The long winter is a time for relaxation and renewing one's spirit.   It's a time for catching up on reading, working on hobbies, spending time visiting friends, and generally doing quiet things.   When the temperatures are below zero outside, it's good to stay indoors and be cozy.  It's peaceful!  When the outdoor conditions are muddy or windy, that's also a good time to stay inside and enjoy quiet time.  When spring comes,  we kick into high gear up here in the north country, making maple syrup, getting the gardens tilled and ready for planting, and cleaning up the yard from winter debris.   Then, all summer long, we are so busy with yard and garden chores and canning and preparing produce for our market booth, weeding and watering and mowing, etc.  Things don't really slow down for fall either, as then we are busy with harvesting honey, more garden chores, and then clean up and preparing for winter!  And of course, there's wood to be cut and stacked - a never ending job.    
     That's why I enjoy winter so much and the quiet, cozy times when we don't really have to be outside!  As much as possible I enjoy hours in my library room.   With a mug or two of tea or cocoa or hot cider, and some good books to read, I'm happy as can be!  I cherish these wonderful peaceful days, as I know that shortly we will all be more than busy. 
     It's always been a dream of mine to have my own library room!  As a kid I would ride my bike to the local branch library and check out several books each week and read them quickly, then go back for more.  Libraries were always a special place for me.  The library had it's own aroma of books and ink and old wood, which always was a great smell to my way of thinking!  Later, in my adult life, I lived in Rhode Island for a while and would visit the great mansions of the millionaires in Newport.  Every one of those mansions on Ocean Drive had a magnificent library room - great, beautiful rooms filled with perfectly arranged books.   I always dreamed about having such a room (on a much less grand scale, of course!) in my own house someday.
     When we built our house in 2005 up here in northern MN, I knew it was time for that dream library!  By this time I had collected quite a large number of books and needed a place for them.   I DO love books!  Modern culture encourages things like Kindles and digital devices to read from, but I don't care for any of that!  Give me a real honest-to-goodness book to hold in my hand!  I enjoy all kinds of books, but my favorite reading is short stories.   Whenever I go to a used book store, or an antique store, or a thrift shop, I search for anthologies of short stories.   My second favorite thing to read is of course, cookbooks!  Do I dare tell you that I have about 700 of them?  And I also love daily devotional readers, Christmas books, and poetry.  Occasionally I'll read fiction, but usually classics or historical fiction. 
     Here is my library.   It is my serenity room.  My quiet little bit of heaven on earth!  And my "dream room"!  It is a room to spend hours reading in, or a quiet place to work crossword puzzles (another passion).  When the weather allows and I can open the window, it is so pleasant to hear the birds singing in the woods or hear the trumpeter swans flying past the house.  These days I rarely have to visit an actual library, as I have so many books of my own to read and re-read.   Come spring and summer, I won't have much time for reading, so now is the time to enjoy my special little room.

My library in the early morning hours.   The pink wing chair was purchased years ago by my son at a thrift shop for 5 or 10 bucks.   It is SO comfortable!

A better view in late afternoon with the overhead light on.   Harold built these great shelves for me.  They go from floor to ceiling and can hold so many books. 

The other side of the room.   The pile of books on the floor are some that I will be selling at a friend's garage sale this spring.   I have to make room for more books, you know!!  The other side of the room could probably have more shelves, but instead I will put my old floor model radio from 1947 over there.  One of these days I hope to find someone who will fix it for me, so I can listen to it again.   I used to love listening to short wave radio.   Does such a thing still exist?

Fargo

During the past couple of weeks we have made numerous trips to Fargo.  Sometimes the trips were for Harold's boss, and sometimes for our own needs.   There isn't much going on in the winters up here in the north country, so "going to Fargo" is always a good option to pass the time.   Fargo is a big wide city, spread out over a great area,  with a population of almost 114,000.  It has been growing steadily for years.  Fargo has just about every franchise store or business you can think of, a great university (North Dakota State University - go Bison!), lots of factories and manufacturing, excellent medical facilities, and great job opportunities.   There are currently over 3,000 jobs available in the Fargo area!  A person could spend a whole day in Fargo browsing shops and stores and restaurants.   This week we went to Fargo 3 times!  Two of those times were for medical tests for Harold's cancer.   For readers of my blog who have never been to Fargo I took a bunch of photos to show what the North Dakota countryside looks like going there, and several photos of Fargo itself.  It is hard to capture the whole town of Fargo in just a few photos, but I hope you will enjoy this little "armchair" tour of one of North Dakota's great places.  What I present here is what we see going there, and back.  Of course in the summer everything looks so much better - but it's not summer yet!

Driving on the rural highways to Fargo is a little less than a 2 hour drive, one way, from where we live.   This is pretty much what a person sees along the way:

Yep!  No kidding!  Large expanses of flat farmland, with a farmhouse in the distance.

Another view.  By mid winter the ditches along the highways are filled with snow that has blown in from the fields.

Is this 365 day corn???  Some farmers didn't get the corn crop harvested before winter set in, so they will have to get it done before spring planting!

Yet another view of the prairie land.  Winter driving can sometimes be impossible with high winds blowing snow across the highways into white out conditions. 

This is a sugar beet piler.   There are many of these in the Red River Valley area.   The beets are stacked in huge piles to be used up by spring by Crystal Sugar Co to make sugar.

Some of the beet piling stations use these fans to blow cold air into the bottom of the pile during the fall.  This helps to cool down the pile of beets so they can be stacked up deep,  and don't rot (piles of freshly harvested beets can get quite warm during the harvest season).   The fans also  keep the beets frozen nicely until they can be used by the sugar company.

This huge beet pile used many fans to cool it down.

Also on the prairie are many churches!  Most of them are Lutheran.   This church is Nora Lutheran church in rural Gardner, ND.

A row of businesses and restaurants just off the highway as you enter Fargo.

Fargo has very wide streets laid out in straight north, south, east, west patterns.  Most of the streets have numbers for 'names', so it is very easy to get around town.

As you get into the "old" part of town, the streets are narrower and the houses are big and old and trees line the streets:

South Broadway St as you approach the university and the hospital.

The front entrance to Roger Maris Cancer Center.   This is where we have spent almost 6 years for appointments because of Harold's cancer.    They are adding on to the building and it is usually under construction of some sort. 

The rest of the Roger Maris Cancer Center.   It is a very big place!

Downtown Fargo - the old part of town.   Cars are parked at an angle.  Stores are old, and very eclectic.  There are some really interesting shops and restaurants in this part of town.  There are several streets in the old part of town, but this is the "main drag". 

 

 

 

Another view of downtown Fargo

As you leave Fargo and drive back towards Minnesota, many of the towns have huge grain elevators like this one.   This grain elevator is in Georgetown, MN.

And that is pretty much what you see going to and coming from Fargo!  It is hard to take photos of all the retail areas and industrial parks because of the traffic.   I tried to take some of those pictures, and ended up with lots of "car shots".    But Fargo has just about everything a person could think of to buy, huge big box stores,  factories, new apartments everywhere, and old established neighborhoods.  Perhaps in the summer when things are prettier I can do another picture article on Fargo.   The city planners employ gardening experts to plant flowers everywhere, and hanging baskets of flowers from every street lamp pole.
     When I first moved up to the northwestern part of the state of MN, I thought the prairie lands were dull.  But after living up here for the past 13 years I have grown to love the prairie!  The vast expanses of crop lands and grasses are quite majestic when everything is growing.   There are lots of prairie birds, and prairie deer.   The prairie is a peaceful place, and the folks who live on it are hard working, friendly folks.   The Dakotas grow much of the nation's wheat and corn.  I bake all my own breads at home, and I can tell you that you cannot find any better wheat than good North Dakota hard red spring wheat.   It makes the BEST breads!
     I hope you enjoyed my little "going to Fargo" tour!