A Beautiful Day On The Shores of Two Squaw Lake

Today was an absolutely gorgeous, warm spring day!  This is the kind of spring day Minnesotans dream of!  I did a little work in my greenhouse, and then decided to take a walk through the woods around Two Squaw Lake on our property before the wood ticks get bad.   Here are some photos I took today.

Harold started the day off by tilling up one of our gardens for the first time this year with the Lo Boy tractor.  He will make several passes over the garden before we plant.  He also did our other garden, but I didn't get any pictures of that.

I am standing at the bottom of the garden and looking uphill.  Harold also tilled crosswise.

While Harold tilled the gardens, I hand dug one side (26 feet) of my greenhouse space.  This is always a job for the first time, as weeds from last fall and even late winter grow, and those weeds are grasses with long roots!  Next I will add some composted manure I got from a cattle farmer, and then plant more seeds here and set out some peppers and herbs and flowers.

The garlic I planted last October made it through the long winter and is up and growing nicely.  It's about 9 or 10 inches tall already!

Some radishes are growing already!  How do you like the cute little marker?  My brother in law bought a whole set of veggie garden markers for me one year that he found at a garage sale.  This is the only one left from the set he gave me 15 years ago!  I have been asking hubby to find a set of drawings on Pinterest and make me some new ones, but he hasn't done that yet. 

The spinach I planted 9 days ago is up and growing!

We have hundreds of holes like this all over the yard.  These are made by birds, especially robins, digging for grubs and worms.   I guess you would say I have "organic pest control"!  Here on our farm everything is organic and we use no sprays because of our bees.  So if the birds want to control grubs for me that is fine.   They're also aerating the soil so I don't have to!  How great is that?!

After all this garden work it was time to take a break and take a short hike down to the lake.

This is the main path to Two Squaw Lake.  The deer and the geese and other birds and animals all use this path.  The geese and deer love to eat the fresh green grass.  I always keep this mowed for good access. You can see lots of deer tracks from the deer walking in the moist soil at the bottom of this picture.  And of course the robins pick a lot of worms out of the soil here. 

You can't see it very well here, but I scared up 5 trumpeter swans.  I was hoping they would fly overhead so I could get a better photo, but they wouldn't cooperate!  There are lots of duck and goose nests in this boggy area. 

This is the lower end of Two Squaw Lake.  It used to be totally filled with tamarac trees back in the late 1980's when Harold first came to this property.

This is the upper end of the lake.  We own a part of the larger end on the right hand side.  Our neighbor owns the rest of the lake.  You can see a beaver house about in the middle of the photo.   Sometimes we see this little guy walking around on land looking for a new tree to cut down.

One of many paths to the lake.   It is always so peaceful on the shoreline.  The surrounding woods and the lake is always full of the sounds of birds.

This is an early wildflower in the woods - hepatica.   It can be white or dark purple or light lilac colored.   It's a tiny flower no bigger than a few inches high, but it grows everywhere.   It is one of the first natural foods for our bees.

Here is some purple hepatica.    The woodland floor is so colorful and pretty with hundreds of these flowers all over!  There is also wild violets and bloodroot beginning to show up.

More paths to hike right now.  This used to be a favorite sugar bush for us for many years for maple syrup making.  But many of the trees are down because of winds and bug damage.

Our house is on a hill overlooking the lake.  Soon all this dead prairie grass will be green again and I will be mowing the two paths of grass to provide a path for us to walk down to the lake, and also for the deer and geese.

The trees are nowhere near to greening up, but the buds are beginning to show.  Things will look a lot different in a few weeks!