A Bloy and his Blog

The sun peeked out from the clouds in the middle of a rainstorm late this afternoon.

See the tips of the trees in the bottom right corner? Autumn is coming…

About two miles north of where I was camping last week, was the Trempealeau National Wildlife Refuge.

read the rest of: Trempealeau Wildlife Refuge

A pretty big winter storm has been hitting the upper great lakes region this weekend.

As Henry David Thoreau wrote, “The Great Snow! How cheerful it is to hear of!”
– from Walden, Former Inhabitants and Winter Visitors.

After I was whining about a lack of winter weather earlier this month, it has been very wintry here over the past week or so. We’ve had a couple of snowstorms and typically cold temperatures.

This was the scene outside my door this morning.

read the rest of: Sunday snowstorm

Over the past several weeks, the weather here in Madison has been very spring like. High temperatures have been up to 20 degrees warmer than average. Snow fall has been virtually non-existent, and lakes in the area are not frozen — a very unusual situation for January. The other day I was outside retrieving the paper, and I happened to notice a whole collection of box elder bugs (who hibernate during the winter) sunning themselves on the side of my condo. With the higher than normal temperatures there are mold spores and other allergens in the air. For about the past couple of weeks it’s gotten bad enough for me to take my daily allergy medications — something I’ve never done in January before.

read the rest of: Waiting for winter

Taken at the Arboretum yesterday.

Yesterday I returned home from a vacation, the main point of which was to visit Cahokia Mounds, in south-western Illinois (about 13 miles east of St Louis).

Cahokia Mounds are the remnants of a native civilization that at one time, was probably home to 10,000-20,000 people.

read the rest of: Cahokia Mounds