Our summer was a summer of below normal temps. A record summer with our cold weather. The fall, above normal temps. We are still in a major drought, with lake levels so low, no one can remember a time seeing lakes so low.

Last week when the nation had its first big snow storm. We did get out first good snow fall of the winter season. We still need a lot more snow though. Here in the north woods we ended up with about 7-10 inches.

The snowmobile trails open this coming Tuesday. The folks are out  grooming the trails, trying to get a good base. But again, we do need more snow to keep the trails in good condition.

Winter time is always a slow time for us working folks up north. And now, sadly we double those hard times. Construction is still very slow. Workers have been laid off all ready for months. It is not hitting just the “small guys” but our bigger construction companies. Last winter guys where going south for work. South meaning, Texas, Florida. I can say one thing for sure, we have not seen no change, it is not getting better up north in Wisconsin. When folks cannot afford to vacation, we cannot afford to pay our bills.

Christmas is coming fast this year. I am counting my blessings even more this year. We have twins in our family, it will be their first Christmas! Our family is heathly, and for the most part we are all happy. My husband is picking up some jobs. And with the snow storm extra plowing money came in. My sister-in-law is right now training and in school for a new job. A job that has benefits, plus good pay.

Winter I do confess is the season I dearly enjoy! I love the silent, peacefulness, fresh snowfall falling ever so slowly.

To all us who love snow, LET IT SNOW LET IT SNOW LET IT SNOW LET IT SNOW LET IT SNOW!

…and I’m not imagining them. Or maybe I am. That’s the problem with ears. They’re attached to the brain. And you know about what goes on in there. Hearing disembodied voices in the kitchen (ahem, dear brother) or hearing knocking on walls at 5 a.m. in the haunted hotel. Any more and I’ll scare myself silly…

…last night in bed, in that netherspace between sleep and awake, I said to Josh, “I’m sure glad I’m not half -man- half -crustacean” (I found this merchandise after the events of last night). Really? I woke up this morning remembering the awful feeling of having a giant blue claw for a right arm…

…and why can’t I dance anymore? I mean, I was never a great dancer, but I could make my limbs move in concert with my hips, etc. etc. I could occasionally hold down a beat. Now it’s most assuredly two left feet…

…just finished Tana French’s The Likeness. Another good psychological mystery from Ms. French. I liked this one better than In the Woods. While it wasn’t nearly as creepy, the sheer suspense of watching someone go undercover as a dead person in her own home made it difficult to put the book down. And I didn’t put it down all weekend. So much for “getting work done.” What does that mean anymore…

…time to rearrange the office to the sweet music of voices outside my window. Wish me luck…

I’ve spent a couple of days recently making seasonal wreaths. I’m not big on Christmas, because I don’t like shopping  – enough said. But the pagan in me loves winter solstice evergreenery, so every year I make wreaths and here’s how it’s done, in case you might like to make a few of your own:

Step 1: Head out into the snowy woods with a pair of garden clippers and a few bags to collect whatever is on offer that looks beautiful and festive.

Snowy woods

Step 2: Bring your bounty inside and arrange it on a nice big work surface. This year I brought in pine, fir, and spruce boughs, some flame red oregon grape leaves, fat juicy rose hips, some cat tails, pine cones, old man’s beard, and some  slender seed pods that I think are the elegant skeletal remains of this summer’s tiger lilies.

Raw ingredients of a winter solstice wreath - pine, fir, spruce, pine cones, sprigs of oregon grape

 Step 3: Assemble your tools. Fotrunately, you don’t need many – garden clippers, wire cutters, pliers, craft wire, plastic tie wraps, and a wreath frame.

All the tools you need to get the job done

  Step 4: Assemble a few choice evergreen sprigs about 12 inches long and form into a small bundle 

Bundle of branches to be tied to wire frame

 Step 5: Attach the first bundle of sprigs to the frame with a tie wrap.

Attach your bunch of sprigs like so - be sure to tighten the tie wrap as tightly as possible with pliers because the branches will lose moisture and shrink over time

 Step 6: Carry on attaching more bundles of sprigs every 4-6 inches along the frame, the ends of each bundle of sprigs will cover up the tie-wrapped base of the bundle that was attached before it.

Attach the next bundle so that it overlaps the first, and continue to do, so until the last one is tucked in beneath the first

Step 7:  Decorate your wreath using the craft wire to tie your ornaments of choice around the wreath and onto the frame at the back. At this point you will have to use some extra wire and tie wraps to get especially floppy and unruly parts of the wreath under control and more firmly fixed to the frame.

At the end of the procedure you will have wreaths that look something like these, although you may be more tidy and careful than me and end up with something slightly less rustic:

Exhibit A: Finished evergreen wreath

Another example, though I swear this wreath hanging on the wall of the porch isn't as lopsided as it looks in this photo!

 The entire ordeal, from searching for your boots, eventually finding them outside (and freezing cold) on the back porch where you left them, shaking the lumps of yesterday’s snow out of the bottom of unpleasanty chilly and now damp boots,  putting them on to head out into the wilds, to finally cleaning up the impressive mess of evergreen needles, clippings and melted snow that now covers  your kitchen floor, takes about 3-4 hours, but it’s fun and makes your house smell fabulously of pine and fir.

If you make or acquire a natural wreath like this, it absolutely must hang outside. If you leave it in a warm, dry house, all the needles will fall out  in no time. Hang it outside in a sheltered spot where it won’t get blasted by the wind, preferably out of direct sunlight. They can last a remarkably long time. My first wreath a few years ago lasted from December until June and when I took it down in June it was only because it was getting ridiculous to leave it out any longer, only a few tips had turned brown!

There was a time when I believed, with the police and the media and my stunned parents, that I was the redeemed one, the boy borne safely home on the ebb of whatever freak tide carried Peter and Jamie away. Not any more. In ways too dark and crucial to be called metaphorical, I never left that wood.

In Knocknaree, Ireland in 1984, young Adam Ryan and two of his friends disappeared into the woods near their home. Ryan was later found standing in the woods, his shoes filled with blood, in a near-catatonic state. He has no memory of what happened in the woods or where his friends ended up, and he’s done everything he can to forget the experience, move on with his life, and prevent people from finding out that he was the boy who came back.

Now, twenty years later, Adam Ryan has become Rob Ryan, and he’s a homicide detective. When a twelve-year-old girl is found murdered in a clearing where Knocknaree’s woods used to be, Rob and his partner (and very close friend) Cassie Maddox are called to investigate, and Rob, wondering if this murder is somehow connected to the long-ago disappearance of his friends, is simultaneously excited and terrified.

What if he gets answers? What if he remembers something he’d really rather not? What if the truth about his identity gets out, and what if the truth about what happened to him is even worse than what he’s imagined for the last twenty years?

Tana French’s debut novel In the Woods is a deliciously creepy psychological thriller of the very best sort. While the whodunit element of the story is certainly important and well-written, the real beauty of In the Woods lies in French’s depiction of the easy, comfortable intimacy between Rob and Cassie—the sort we all feel with our very closest friends but can rarely put into words—and her vivid imagining of the effects the investigation has on Rob. Unable to keep his usual professional distance from this case, Rob finds himself slowly falling apart. A crack here. A slip there. One drink too many some night or other. They’re small things, but he is both painfully aware of them and unable to make himself stop, and they become impossible to ignore.

Not only does French craft a smart, unpredictable, well-told mystery that will keep readers guessing AND bring her characters to life with spot-on descriptions and true-to-life relationships, she does it all with wonderful writing. I don’t always expect that from mysteries, since the linchpin of a mystery really is the plot, and it was such a delightful surprise with In the Woods. I occasionally found myself pausing to savor a particularly beautiful sentence or absorb a vivid description, and that’s the kind of thing that really makes me appreciate a book.

In the Woods is engrossing and frightening in that all-too-possible way, and it will appeal to seasoned mystery fans and cross-over readers alike.  After devouring this great read, I can hardly wait to get my hands on The Likeness, French’s second novel, told from Cassie’s perspective. 4 out of 5.

Check out this book trailer for In the Woods, and visit Tana French’s website for more details.

Last night I stepped out onto the patio to enjoy a little night air and take a gander at the stars and after a few moments I could hear something on the hill behind the house.  I quietly stepped back into the house and grabbed the spotlight, which unfortunately was almost out of power.  I shined the light out at the hill and found lots of deer roaming about grazing. They were not scared by the light and as long as I held still after a moment they would just continue to graze.  For the first time ever I heard them making their throaty grunt noises back and forth with each other and it wasn’t just a couple of times but like they were truly having some type of conversation.  All of a sudden I noticed one of this years fawns was right next to the house about 40 feet away walking right towards me! Thump, Thump, Thump goes my heart as my excitement grows!! My spotlight had died on me so the only thing illuminating the night was the patio lights.  A loud snort came from the hillside and the little fawn stopped, then turned around and meandered back to the bottom of the hill.

Wishing I had eaten more carrots like a good girl and had excellent night vision I thought I could see a big buck standing behind the pool fence about half way up the hill.  It charged upwards to the right side of  the hilltop where I could no longer see it.  After a few moments where there seemed to be allot of movement everywhere I thought I heard something that sounded like  large branches breaking, silence and then breaking branches again.  I realized all of a sudden that I was hearing bucks fighting!  It was an amazing sound and it continued like that for about 15 minutes till my dog woke up and started barking through the patio door. You could hear the stampede of hooves crunching in the fall leaves as they spread out in all directions.  It was quite an exciting night for me on the patio!

This year has been the highest deer population we’ve had on our property.  We’ve always had one Doe who gives birth here every year and I think her fawns over the years have come to know it as a safe haven as we aren’t hunters but rather wildlife watchers.

Above is an example of the Reconyx 60 HO camera.  Because this camera takes 1 picture per second I’ve made a video of the activity on a scrape from November 7th -12th, but you can also see the individual pictures in another gallery.

Video Reconyx 60 HO compilation gallery:

http://thea-creations.smugmug.com/Wildlife/Reconyx-60-HO/9147817_RiwE8/1/712555109_fZZhs

Individual pictures Reconyx 60 HO gallery:

http://thea-creations.smugmug.com/Wildlife/Reconyx60HO/Reconyx-60-HO-Individual/10309260_GgUA9/1/712420742_jSvS6

I bought my first trail camera in Dec 2005 and have since owned several different makes and models.  These cameras have come a long way since I bought my first both in technology  and price. I thought I would do a write-up on each camera and of course I have lots of pictures to share taken by each model.

Before we start though we should discuss some things to consider before purchasing a trail camera. For me the most important thing is picture and video quality. (If it’s an awesome fast camera but the picture quality stinks what’s the point???) Next you need to see if the functions of the camera are able to do what you are trying to achieve. For instance, if you have your camera pointing at a feeder or something that the animals will stop at you wouldn’t need a camera with a super fast trigger speed. However if you plan on using your camera watching a trail you will want a very fast trigger.
Most likely you will have to sacrifice one feature over another somewhere along the way because most cameras don’t have all the features unless you are paying top dollar.  Also be aware that different camera companies seem to use camera terminology loosely.  What one company calls something may be called something totally different on another camera in what it does and/or how it functions.

Here’s what to consider:

Wake up time-

Some cameras go into a “sleep” mode to save on battery life. Wake up time is how long it takes the camera to sense motion and prepare to take the picture.

**Unless your camera is monitoring a feeder I would suggest a camera with no sleep feature or only a 1-2 second wake up time.

Detection Zone- Generally you can have a wide or narrow detection zone and some cameras  have dual sensors.

With a wide detection zone the camera will pick up more movement from side to side

With a narrow detection zone the camera will pick up movement at a farther distance

**You have to consider with a narrow detection zone how far your flash or IR will reach. If there’s a big difference between your detection range and your flash range you might end up with pictures that look like there’s nothing in them because it’s not illuminated enough for you to see what triggered the camera.

And a dual detection zone has both wide & narrow detection:

I prefer a dual or wide detection zone because I would rather have a picture of an animal closer to the camera than something a long distance off that I might not be able to see as well.

You will also find most camera’s seem to detect movement crossing in front of it better than walking straight towards it.

Trigger Speed- Trigger speed is how long it takes the camera from the time it detects motion to actually take the picture.

The faster the trigger speed the better unless you are using your camera over a feeder or something that will cause the wildlife to stop in front of the camera.

Delay Time-Delay time is how long the camera takes between pictures and/or before it will trigger again to take more pictures.

Look for a camera with the least amount of delay time.  Keep in mind wildlife seems to always be moving-you have limited time that the animal will be in your camera’s detection zone.

Flash or IR-

There have long been debates on which is better,  flash or infrared on a trail camera as far as spooking the deer.  The deer don’t particularly like the flash but they get used to it if it’s over a feeder or water source.  I find that for use on trails that once the deer has discovered the camera, quite often they will go off trail just to avoid the camera and then get back on trail.   I move my cameras around frequently because of this. The flash can also emit an audible noise as the flash recharges.

IR on the other hand usually omits a low red glow visible to humans and deer.  This can sometimes spook the deer if they see something glowing at them. But if you have good camera placement the possibility of the deer seeing it can be reduced.

Other than that it’s personal preference.  Do you like color night photo’s or IR?

Pictures or Video with or without sound-

Usually recording time is adjustable from 5 -30 seconds. *Flash cameras can only take Video during the daylight.

Video files do take up more space on your memory card and on your computer and video’s with sound take up even more. The good news is it’s all digital and you delete the bad ones, edit the good ones into shorter clips if need be. You can also save an image from the video clip too so you can create pictures from your video.

Video quality has been getting better over the years and it’s great when you get a good video that shows action that you just couldn’t capture in pictures.

Once again this is largely a matter of personal preference.

My advice get two cameras. One that does great picture and one that does great video.

Stay tuned for part 2 where we’ll have some camera reviews.

Hello world!

Yes, I’ve finally taken the first step and started a blog.  Let’s hope  I can come up with some interesting things to blog about!

I guess I should start off with a little description of who I am.  My name is Thea, I’m the youngest of seven–yes- seven children.  My mother was 40 when she had me and my eldest sibling is 22 years older than I am just to give you an idea how that works!  lol!   I  live in the country with my husband John and our two children,  Lucas and Hanna about a half hour away from where I grew up.

What inspired me to write a blog you may or may not be wondering… Okay, don’t laugh now but I recently saw the movie Julie and Julia and by the end of that movie I wanted blog & learn to be a better cook!  My husband would LOVE it if I tried to make  new recipes all the time… that is if I was good at it.  Truth is I don’t really know, I do cook but I haven’t had a huge interest in cooking.  I keep telling my husband if we got a new stove I would probably be much more interested.  Our current electric stove only has one working burner and is older than I am!

But I’m inspired right? So,  at least that’s a start!

What is my blog going to be about?  The short and simple answer to that is Life.  I want to share with you things that are happening in my world and some things that I’ve learned along the way.  This might be advice on how to handle a situation or a recommendation on a cleaning product.

Well, time to go cook some Chili for dinner.  I guess that wasn’t so bad for a first blog—right? 

This painting has many layers and is getting beyond being rescued so may scan and see how far I can go I can see things in the painting that could go further…

Yesterday morning in Starbuck’s my friend Victoria revealed to me how it has been hard for her to be in this world, to be in a body, and then somehow to do the social thing.  To somehow carry out all the behaviors and recommendations for happiness that the luckier ones of receive from the time we’re born.  …Behaviors that pass for real relating in this world.

I have to say, this has been true for me too.  I got really good at it, except when it failed me and being in this world and in my body would return to feeling untenable.  The pricetag was an authentic life.  It was enough to get me shopping, with or without a dollar in my pocket.

I’d guess it can’t be just the two of us. Maybe it’s ubiquitous? … Life is miraculous yet smooth sailing isn’t really real for anyone.   It’s challenging to be alive, to keep doing and doing and doing, in search of an elusive happiness.  It’s hard work keeping up a good, functional front.  …In itself this isn’t bad, but it’s the choicelessness of it.  And the tragic way it seems to silently become a stand in for real contact with our fellow humans.

Then Victoria told me a story someone had told her once and now I’m telling you.  Are you here?

A man was lost in the woods. Really lost. The woods were super dark and it was cold. Then there was an opening!   He discovered a little, tiny cabin alight from inside. The man knocked on the door. Someone opened it and handed him a lantern.  He felt very grateful and relieved until deep discouragement descended.

“This lamp will never light the whole way, it will illuminate only the one next step in front of me!,” he said.  The benefactor replied “Then take that one lit step. And the next will reveal itself.   Practice this. And, though you may yet not know where you’re going, you are no longer lost.”

Well, like the game of telephone, I probably just put my own spin on the story. But I wanted to send this out into the life brimming and at times lonely reach of cyberspace.  Just in case anyone else in the woods needed a light.

I’ll add that Victoria told me this story to express to me the depth of her visit to Sacred!Centre a couple of weeks ago.  A  small group of us had meditated together for a woman who was up for parole that day after serving 30 years in prison.   …After serving a whole lifetime without any light along the way save what was within the cabin of her own heart.

Victoria handed me a lantern.  She helped bring me back to the clarity that the trueness of Sacred!Centre, what makes it trustworthy, can only be discoverd one mindful step, one in-breath, and one out-breath at a time.   And that as long as a Sangha has this as its guidance, we are no longer lost.
Thank you, Victoria.  Yesterday, you were the teacher.  And our friend,in prison, made parole.

125. In the Woods by Tana French (2007)
Ryan/Maddox Mysteries, Book 1

Length: 432 pages
Genre: Mystery

Started: 16 October 2009
Finished: 19 October 2009

Where did it come from? Bookmooch.
Why do I have it? I remember seeing it around the blogs (don’t remember whose; it was at least a year ago), and people seemed to love it, so I thought I’d try it.
How long has it been on my TBR pile? Since 13 November 2008.
Verdict? Keeper.

A brutal murder
might expose more secrets than
Ryan’s ready for.

Summary: Twenty years ago, three twelve-year-old children ran off to play in the woods near their Dublin suburb. When they don’t return home, a search party is mounted, and only one of the children is found, digging his fingernails into a tree trunk in terror, his t-shirt torn in four diagonal slashes, wearing sneakers filled with someone else’s blood, and with absolutely no memory of whatever happened to him and his friends. That boy has grown up to be Detective Rob Ryan, and although he has never recovered his memories, he’s not particularly traumatized by the event, and he works on the Murder squad with his partner Cassie Maddox with nary a problem. That is, until they get handed a case of a young girl found murdered at an archaeological dig… in the same woods where his childhood friends went missing. Although two decades separate the cases, Ryan can’t quite shake the conviction that they’re connected… and that the latest murder will wind up rattling everything in his life that he had previously thought was stable.

Review: This book affected me more profoundly than anything I’ve read for a long time. I read the first half of the book relatively slowly, taking my time and savoring French’s wonderful way with the language, but then I sat and read the entire second half of the book in one evening… and it may have been the fact that I was up way past my normal bedtime, or the fact that I had been sitting still for so long, or my scratchy contacts, or something, but man, the last hundred pages just absolutely wrung me out, left me feeling sad and heavy and hollow, and with a sore throat like I’d been holding back tears for a few hours. That’s not something I expect from a mystery (not something I expect from any book ever, really), but here’s the thing: relatively little of that feeling had to do with the actual mystery itself.

The wonderful thing about this novel is that while it’s ostensibly a mystery, it’s really a character-driven story dressed up in a mystery’s clothing. I fell in love with Ryan and Maddox very soon after meeting them, and watching the ways the investigation affected them was far more compelling than watching the investigation itself. It’s not that the murder case wasn’t interesting – I’ll cop to watching the odd episode of a police procedural now and again, and In the Woods’s case was well-done, with all of the clues on the table and the solution complex enough not to be obvious, but not so complex as to be implausible. It’s just that Ryan and Maddox are the heart of the story, and they’re enough to keep things ticking along during the inevitable part where the investigation stalls out – in fact, the only parts I thought dragged were the parts where the focus was too much on the details of the police work and not enough on the people doing it. Likewise, the murder is essentially solved with almost 100 pages left in the book, but it doesn’t feel like French is dragging out the denoument – because while the murder’s over, the story wasn’t. The ending didn’t leave me completely satisfied, but it didn’t exactly leave me dissatisfied, either, and I can see that other ways of wrapping things up wouldn’t have had the same narrative power… And judging by how I felt when I finished, power is one thing In the Woods has in spades.

Another thing Tana French has in abundance is a flair for wordcraft. It’s very rare that I write down quotes from the book I’m reading, but this book made me want to. The only reason I didn’t is that I realized by page 20 that there was a paragraph I wanted to copy out verbatim from every page, and that by spending the time copying them down, I was missing out on actually reading them. There’s something about French’s language that is so beautiful and evocative that you just want to roll around in it, let it sit on your tongue and in your brain, wrap yourself up in it like a pile of warm laundry. I can’t quite believe that a story this well crafted and this evocatively written is a first novel – but it is, and I will absolutely be reading the rest of French’s work. 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Between this and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I’m starting to rethink my aversion to detective mysteries. Although they’ve got some differences, if you like one, I think you’ll like the other, and if you like your stories character-driven, I bet you’ll like both, no matter what your favorite genre.

This Review on LibraryThing | This Book on LibraryThing | This Book on Amazon

Other Reviews: Big A Little A, Book Addiction, Book Chatter and Other Stuff, Books and Movies, Books I Done Read, Care’s Online Book Club, Caribousmom, Confessions of a Bibliophile, Crime Scraps, Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin’?, Jen’s Book Thoughts, Jenny’s Books, Kittling: Books, Lesley’s Book Nook, Linus’s Blanket, Ms. Bookish, Musings of a Bookish Kitty, My Random Acts of Reading, NextRead, On My Bookshelf, Paperback Reader, Popin’s Lair, Presenting Lenore, Reading Matters, S. Krishna’s Books, Sam’s Book Blog, Stephanie’s Written Word, Whimpulsive
Have you reviewed this book? Leave a comment with the link and I’ll add it in.

First Line: Picture a summer stolen whole from some coming-of-age film set in small-town 1950s.

Cover Thoughts: Although the book itself was, at any given point, only very rarely creepy, it did have a sinister undertone running through it that is reflected very nicely by the cover. (We’ll ignore the fact that the trees had leaves on them when both incidents occurred.)

Vocab: (see the whole list)

• p. 27: ““Her head’s smashed in, but Cooper found petechial hemorrhaging and some possible ligature marks on her neck, too, so we’ll have to wait for the post for cause of death.”” – A small purplish spot on a body surface, such as the skin or a mucous membrane.
  .
• p. 36: ““Finds,” said Hunt, flapping a hand at the shelves. “I suppose . . . Well, no, maybe some other time. Some very nice jettons and clothing hooks.”” – an inscribed counter or token.
  .
• p. 105: “A rustle, and the beams skidding up to cross on a pair of golden eyes, rocking wild and luminous only a few trees away; all of us yelling, and Jamie leaping up to fire a spare satsuma as the thing bounded away with a crash of leaves.” – A seedless mandarin orange native to Japan and the hardiest commercial citrus fruit.
  .
• p. 110: ““That _________ lad used to be a bit of a bowsie, so he did, but the moment he got that young one in the family way – sure, he wasn’t the same fella at all.”” – a Dublin term-for a scumbag/Kancker/scanger.
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• p. 208: “A drop had got caught in her eyelashes and a black mascara tear trickled to her cheekbone, making her look like a modish little Pierrette.” – the female counterpart of a Pierrot, usually accompanying him, as in an entertainment or masquerade.
  .
• p. 217: ““Little gurriers,” Mrs. Fitzgerald said with relish. “Spitting on the ground and all. My father always said that was a sure sign of bad rearing, spitting.”” – Irish pejorative for a person who is associated with petty criminality.
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• p. 248: ““If that motorway doesn’t go through Knocknaree, and fast,” Sam said succinctly, “the boy’s banjaxed.”” – demolished; ruined.
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