A Green Christmas???

I do not love winter and I am finding it more difficult every year to tolerate the cold for so long. This year winter may not seem so long as last year, after all last year at this time we had a blizzard in early December and the snow stayed for a very loooong time. This year it appears that we may have a Christmas with very little snow on the ground. Which may make winter seem a little shorter.

We have had snow already but almost all of it has melted away. I know that states south of Wisconsin are used to this sort of thing, but it is very unusual in central Wisconsin, we almost always have white a Christmas.

Here is a snow man that someone built on top of Rib Mountain on the rail of a look-out platform. Merry Christmas little fella...(by the way he has already melted).

Rib Mountain State Park

Like to Ski?...It is also called Granite Peak

Oswald the Good Luck Pig

This little fella is in a small town in southwest Wisconsin called Arcadia. I admit it would be nice if good luck and blessings really did come from rubbing his "snoot". As a matter of fact if the previous statement were true I might consider moving to Arcadia just to be close to Oswald. Sadly, even though it appears that thousands have likely touched his snoot, good fortune does not come from a brass pig.

Much of what we consider luck is often rooted in good choices that have come back to bless us in unexpected ways.

Arcadia has the amazing Memorial Park, with dozens of beautiful monuments; check it out:
Arcadia Wisconsin

Cooper's Hawk or Sharp-shinned Hawk?

Every once in awhile all of the birds in our back yard will freeze perfectly still and remain motionless, for what seems to me, to be no apparent reason. Then we will see a big bird fly off not knowing for sure what it was. The other day a hairy woodpecker was motionless on a suet log and in a tree very close to our house I saw this bird looking side to side and all around for...lunch? He flew away moments after I took his picture with an empty stomach.

The Cooper's Hawk and the Sharp shinned Hawk are very similar and are notorious for hunting in back yards for feeder birds. Sort of like the bully in the neighborhood; except this guy really could end your life. I am pretty sure this is a Sharp-shinned Hawk but is very close in  appearance to the Cooper's Hawk.

Check out the Cooper's Hawk:
Cooper's Hawk

Sharp-shinned Hawk:
Sharp-shinned

A Short In the Telephone Wire

When I was a kid I used to walk bare-footed down to the local swimming pool; ouch. As I recall I was bare-footed almost all summer long, unless I was playing in the woods, or riding my bike to the store; at the store you had to wear shoes to shop. Anyway when I was walking or riding my bike to the pool I would hear what I thought was just a hot or sparking in the telephone wire.

It is funny how that we try to understand the unknown with with what we think we know and understand. I was pretty sure that the sound was coming from the telephone wires after all the sound was coming from over my head...must be the wires. I am afraid not; the sound was coming from something that I did not know anything about; it was a bug. The cicada is a noisy bug with an extremely interesting life cycle and story. A noisy little buzzer.

You know sometimes it just seems like no one even notices. This is the church of a ministerial friend in a city in central Wisconsin. This little church is only a couple of blocks off of a main road in Plover. The pastor has been holding services and being faithful to what he feels God has called him to do regardless of whether or not the city around him takes notice.

There are things that we do that only God notices; things that only God sees. He sees every sacrifice and every effort made to help others in His name. Keep up the good work Bro. Jim; God sees and knows.