A Beautiful Fall Day at Home

What an absolutely beautiful day today in Wisconsin. The temperature is almost up to 60 and it's not even noon yet.  (finishing up the blog at 3 pm at it's 63)

We decided that instead of watching the stupid TV today, we would take off and go for a little walk back behind our house. We are fortunate to live next to the Northeast Wisconsin Land Trust Nature Preserve. It's absolutely beautiful undisturbed land with woods, ponds, and an abundance of wildlife.  We are sooo lucky to have this right at our back door... errrr back yard to enjoy and appreciate. 

There's a couple main trails to walk through, but the rest of it you just got to kind of make your own way around through it.  There are a bunch of deer trails but they lead off into the swamp. 

Today was such a beautiful gorgeous blue sky day. There was no breeze at all, and we were soon hot and sweaty in our winter jackets. We wear blaze orange and take extra care because it is still bow season. Even though they're not supposed to hunt back there, the property does abut close to the DNR Marshland.

The land trust spaces are all of the green sections on this map. The Wisconsin State DNR land is the blue. Our house is located right on the western edge, about where there is a little red X. 

On the property, there are a couple different old foundations left from a couple houses from many many years ago. There's also a big old barn foundation back there too. It had burned down long ago, and only the foundation remains.  Our grandkids call it a "castle" because all the old window spaces look like the jagged tooth spaces like ramparts of a fortress. All of this land was bought up by the Northeast Wisconsin Land Trust to be preserved ---- and never have any new construction or development!

There are some wide open meadows of natural growth as well as clusters of trees here and there.  Some might have been farm land at one time.  The drying wildflowers and grasses make an interesting texture across the meadow. 

The Land Trust people have plans in the future to maybe make a bigger parking area, as well as maybe a handicapped-accessible deck near the pond. There is only room for one or two cars to park by the sign off Jones Ave. But for now everything is all in its natural state. And I hope it stays that. 

Here is the website for the Northeast Wisconsin Land Trust. They own different lands around the state that are put into trust and will be kept as nature preserves and remain undeveloped.

Here is their website 

about this property: 

https://www.newlt.org/oconto-preserve

These noisy honkers are thinking it's time to head south. Even though the weather is beautiful today, they know something we don't know. They know about cold and winter and ice and snow. So they're flapping their little wings and honking their little beaks and heading south... 

After our walk, it was so nice out that we took care of some cleaning up jobs around the yard.  The leaves are almost done falling from the trees.  This might be the last load to the front curb for the city to pick up. 

Here's Steve's two beautiful little woodpiles, sturdily stacked up in two spots in the backyard.  These are from all the trees he cut down last week.

Sometime during the next year they will get transferred over to the neighbor's property where he can burn them for heating his home. It's too green to burn this winter.

And just to show why, here is one of the stumps of the trees that Steve took down. See? They were all rotten in the middle and would have gone over sometime in the near future anyhow. I'm glad he got them down now safely without damaging the cement slab. 

The dogs love to run around the backyard as we work on projects. They both stay very close and never wander away. Soon as I take out the phone and tell Binney that I want to take a picture, I swear she sits and looks at me and says "CHEESE"~!!

Both of them look so pretty against the dried grasses of the autumn terrain. They blend in with the leaves and their little bits of gold fur just seem to add to the landscape. Of course, we don't take them back into the nature preserve this time of year, even on leash. Their fur looks too much like little deer and I would hate to ever think that some crazy hunter would shoot at them.

We are still having a difficult time convincing Finnegan that it is okay to eat dog food. I think he's smarter than us. He has gotten so used to having all the tempting little tidbits of things like fresh meat, salmon, shredded chicken Etc that now he doesn't want to eat his own dog food! 

Actually, I just got done force-feeding that crazy dog his dog food. Last night he ate cookies and pretzels but he won't eat his own dog food. So I fed him about half a can of soft wet dog food a spoonful at a time on the end of a popsicle stick.  I put it into his mouth and then tilt his nose up up in the air until he swallows. But the crazy dog just won't eat it himself out of the dish. As I type this, he walks in here licking his lips like everything is wonderful. Spoiled rotten brat. 

I think this evening we will try to keep the TV off and not watch all the crazy hullabaloo going on. We will wait until all of the votes are counted and there's a final decision made, no matter how many days it takes. In the meantime, I think I will crack open a bottle of my favorite wine, play a few games of Cribbage, and just relax while the world around us goes crazy.

Tomorrow is going to be even nicer than today.