Fall colors

I have never seen so many beautiful colors as we have had this year in Grand Forks. Everywhere I looked there were reds, yellows, oranges and even some green. It is hard to believe that the Red River, that was so cruel to us in 1997, could give us such wonderful sites in this fall of 2010. The pictures I have posted were taken on the green way that was created after the loss of many homes in the Lincoln park area. I have never been there before but I will go back this winter to shoot some winter photos.

4th Crow Wing lake

One of my favorite places to visit is our cabin on 4th Crow Wing lake by Nevis MN. We bought the land 10 years ago and we built our own cabin. It is a cabin and not a lake home. It is a natural lake which means we don't have a sandy beach. I like the natural look and spend a considerable amount of time taking pictures. Everything is prettier there. We have a wetland area between the cabin and the lake. We access the dock by a very long boardwalk that my husband spent hours building. I like to take pictures of the boardwalk because there are trees and grass and natural flowers around it. It i especially pretty in the wetlands in the morning. Sunset gives beautiful colors on the horizon and looking down the boardwalk from the cabin offers many beautiful sights at sunset. In futures posts, I will talk about the beauty of nature in this special spot.

My Mother's hands

When I was a little girl, I liked to trace the veins and bumps on my Mother's hands. Even as a young woman, her hands looked old. As a teenager, I thought her hands were ugly. Now I look at them and think of all the tasks these hands accomplished. She held me as a baby, rubbed my legs as a preteen, when they hurt from arthritis. She baked and cooked wonderful food, hung the clothes on the clothesline, even in the bitter North Dakota winters, Sewed me beautiful clothes, helped healed God's creatures, built a huge tree house, took care of the farm that she loved so much, planted hundreds of trees and flowers. I remember these hands folded in prayer as she prayed for others and herself. When I asked her if I could take a picture of her hands, she asked why and said they were ugly. I told her they are beautiful. I hope my hands look like hers someday.

Library pictures

Where did I get the name Limberlost Lady I have always been a voracious reader. My school was in a large brick building in Lakota, ND. The grade school was downstairs and the high school was upstairs. We didn't have a library in grade school instead each grade had a couple of shelves with books. Each grade I was allowed to go to the next room to find books. By the time I had reached 7th grade, I was allowed to go upstairs to the real library. I was amazed at all the books that there were to read. It didn't take long before I had read everything of interest in that library.Then I found the city library. The librarian would only let me go to my grade section. One day my mother told me that she was going to start cleaning the library that night and would clean it once a week. I went with her and did the dusting. When I was done with my work, I would go through the shelves that I wasn't allowed to look at when the librarian was there. What a treat for me. A whole new world of books opened for me. The shelves went all the way to the floor and I would lay down to see the bottom shelves. There I found it. A dusty book that only had tw0 names listed on the card. A book from the 30's that evidently wasn't popular. The author was Gene Stratton Porter and the name of the book was A Girl of the Limberlost. It is a story of a girl that liked to visit the swamp and became an expert on the names of moths and butterflies. I carefully filled out the card and dated it with the stamp, hoping that the librarian wouldn't know that I went out of my grade level. I returned the book the next week when we cleaned the library. It became my all time favorite book and I now own two copies. These two pictures show the Library in 2007. It seems so much smaller now and the heavy old library tables and large chairs have been replaced by bright colored, child sized , tables and chairs. I am sure hat children are now encouraged to read any book they want, no longer restricted to grade level. Labels: