Good morning. The gold of goldenrod on the first day of Fall (yesterday). We all need a little gold in our lives. Hope you have a great day! #gm #coffeechain

It's the first day of Fall. #nature #biophilia

Grandchildren. The start of them. A woman at work said we're going to have to get you some suspenders. LOL. #Family #Life

Good morning. 8 AM. It's 39 out there. Chilly. Sun shining. Slightly foggy. No mail trail again today. An opportunity to take a few pictures. This one, the best one, I think. Noticing bees buried in goldenrod heads They must've spent the night there. There's one in this picture if you look closely. Hoping to spend the day around here cutting and piling firewood and helping Annie with the nursery. Our native plant nursery will be open 7 more days this season. Next Friday our last day. Hope you have a great day! #gm #coffeechain

Good morning. Time is short. It's 9 AM. Sunny out there. Crows calling while I was out taking this picture a minute ago. That's a 388 pound anvil in the back of our minivan. One of Hayden's mentors bought it for him yesterday. He has to pay him back the $1500. They got it from a farmer near Barron. The anvil came to be in 1901. He thinks it was caste in Germany. That's all for now. We're off to figure out how we are going to unload the thing. Hope you have a great day! #gm #coffeechain #countryliving

Good morning. That's highbush cranberry (Viburnum trilobum). Annie took this picture along the shore of Lake Superior yesterday. Before heading here we visited Amnicon Falls first. Walked the trails. Took some nice pictures. Hayden (16 yrs. old) tried to primitively start a fire with a hand drill. And to finish off the visit we sat down in the sun at a picnic table and made and ate sandwiches. While there we threw toffee covered peanuts to a red squirrel living nearby. It would eat a few, then bury a few, then eat a few, etc. I have never watched a red squirrel bury food. Or I have, but not extensively. It was entertaining. Cute. And even better it opened the door to wonder. I wondered what it would be doing at night. What time it would be up. What its winter would be like. After that we drove up to Lake Superior and walked out to the lighthouse on Wisconsin Point. Well, Hayden and I did. Sophie and Annie stayed back at the van. Waves crashed into the big rocks we walked across them. Invigorating to say the least. We also checked milkweed pods in ditches in traveling spot to spot. They're not quite ready to harvest yet. That's it for now. Time to head over to my neighbor's to work on a mail jeep. Hope you have a great day! #gm #coffeechain

A gift from our daughter-n-law. #Bitcoin

Good morning. I went back to October 20th to get this one. They're aromatic asters (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium). Besides the beauty in the photo, it reminds me that we still might have a month left before the permanence of winter begins to set in. I think aromatic asters are my favorite aster. They're tough. They grow in sand and dry conditions. They bring promise to a piece of ground with little promise. Oh, that reminds me. I heard something cool on a podcast the other day. My friend was talking about soil compaction with his partner. And she made the point that the roots of plants are what make water soak into the soil. No roots leads to run off etc. I was like well of course. But I never think of it that way. I like it when people explain the obvious in a way you can understand. It's like the earth is coded to survive. We just don't know how to pay attention to it. Well, we're at war with it. There's that. I mean why not state the obvious. Yesterday I was reminded of the long periods I spent at home with my family. It was in a conversation I had with a coworker half my age. I'm 52. He might be 24. He's got a new girlfriend. Things are hot and heavy. He was quoting St. Paul about marriage. About how it was not up to the man to make sure his wife respects him, but up to the wife to make sure she respects him. In other words, I took it as it's not up to the man to police his wife's attitude towards him. I like discussing ideas like this. It's tough to do at work though. Time is a priority because of our route evaluations. Yet good conversation slows things down, and I like that. Because you're into the realm of the soul. Death, marriage, birth, aspirations, depressions, love etc. I wanted talk about my time at home with family. But this is enough for now. I don't go back to the mail trail until the 29th! So you'll be hearing more from me. I hope you have a great day! #gm #coffeechain

Good morning. Those are sky blue asters. They're blooming right now. We were going to thin them in the spring. We're glad we didn't. A bit messy. We put up with it because of the beautiful blue blooms and buzzing bees. Off to the mail trail. Last day. Then a week off. Hope you have a great day! #gm #coffeechain

Good morning. Time is short. Off to the mail trail. Hope you have a great day! #gm #coffeechain

Good morning. Annie texted this to me yesterday. It's from our front meadow. Monarch enjoying showy golden rod. She said "it's like looking through stained glass." Off to the mail trail. Hope you have a great day! #gm #coffeechain #countryliving

Half inch steel heated, hammered, and honed at home by Hayden (16 yrs. old). #proofofdad #homeschooling #countryliving

Good morning. New England asters starting to bloom. They're always covered in bees. More than the mums we've bought in the past. Much more. Off to the mail trail for 4 days. Then a week off! Hope you have a great day! #gm #coffeechain

Good morning. Photo from Pattison State Park on Sunday. Hope you have a great day! #gm #coffeechain

Good morning. I took this photo at Pattison State Park yesterday afternoon. We drove up there as a family. The four of us. Driving home. The kids sleeping in back. Annie looks in the rearview mirror and says to me, "They are my favorite human beings in the whole world." There is something about getting away from the daily demands and spending time with water and the nonhuman world. Something sublime maybe. I notice more. My attention sharpens to the inner and the outer. There's a lightness and a heaviness to it. Heavy in that it can't be this way all the time. I used to feel the same way when my Grandpa and Grandma would take my mom, dad, sister and me camping as a kid. Why couldn't it be this way all the time I would wonder. Fishing, cooking, playing games, and sleeping together as a family. No wonder it felt right. We lived this way for hundreds of thousands of years. This experiment we're running, or being run on us (one never knows) is unsettling to say the least. Well, that's enough meandering for now. Spitballing. My neighbor is going to help me change the oil and rotate the tires on my mail jeeps in his garage. Thank you for good neighbors. 🙏 I hope you have a great day. #gm #coffeechain #countryliving

From our family trip to Copper Falls near Mellen, WI last weekend. #Wisconsin #countryliving

Good morning. I hope I haven't posted this picture yet. It's the one that jumped out at me this morning. It's a rosin weed (Silphium integrifolium). I planted it along the driveway a few years ago. It bloomed for the first time this year. I planted a couple sickly looking ones next to our mature ironweed a few weeks ago. They were in 2 inch pots. Root bound. Slowly dying. Annie said, "Go ahead plant them. No one is going to buy them." Our front meadow is full of sickly looking plant stories. Sometimes I look at it and say what a mess. But then I remind myself, it's my mess. When I'm in the meadow I am learning. And I become quiet inside. I become unsettled when I start worrying about what people are going to think of it, and of course me. Because I identify with it. Self concern leads to separation, as the Buddhists say. Quick story if you have made it this far. I used to have a life coach. She was a woman in her late 60's or early 70's. She immigrated here with her parents from Nazi Germany as a little girl. We found each other on Facebook. It was through the Ishmael Community (that's how Annie and I also got together in a roundabout way). It always comes back to that damn book. LOL. Anyway our coaching sessions would last an hour. I would drive down to Spring Lake boat landing, call her (she lived in Texas), and she would coach me. It was a master/student relationship. It lasted for maybe 5 years. It ended in 2020 along with a lot of other things in my life. Whenever I would get stuck in our sessions, which was a lot, she would say "would it be okay if life was easier," or something like that. And then we would uncover how I was getting in my own way. I remember it as worthy work. The suffering was worth it. And life would slowly become easier. Sort of like learning about native plants in the front meadow. I believe life was easier when we understood plants. When we lived more primitively so to speak. And that's the vision I try to live into. One where life is a sacred process that I am a part of. The rest will take care of itself, as my coach used to say. I am off today through Tuesday. I am happy about that. :-) I hope you have a great Sunday. #gm #coffeechain

Good morning. Off to the mail. Fifth and final day. Then three days off. Need it. That's a blazing star. I think a meadow. I hope you have a great day! #gm #coffeechain

Good morning. That photo is from 2 years ago right around this time. Black eyed susan and bee balm. I planted my first compass plant in the front meadow at dusk last evening. It was the sickliest looking one we had for sale. Looking forward to planting more. It's a Silphium. Supposed to be well behaved.. Out of time. Time to hit the Mail Trail. Hope you have a great day. 🙏 #gm #coffeechain #countryliving

Today I will be delivering mail in Springbrook, Wisconsin. I will listen to one episode of The Bitcoin Edge. I made up my mind of that yesterday. Need some positivity in my life. 🙏 #Bitcoin