Ellen's 'Migration'

By David Horst
sandhill7@gmail.com

The love of my life and I visited the Green Bay Botanical Garden this summer. As we always do, we went to the domed Stumpf Belevedere gazebo to read the line of Ellen Kort's poetry inscribed there.

Ellen Kort

It was the first time we had been there since Ellen's passing more than a year ago. There was such a powerful feeling of loss that we had to leave the shelter.

At Home with Hummers

Each year nature seems to send a special gift to us up on the sandhill we call home. Last year, it was a bounty of monarch caterpillars transforming into butterflies. In recent weeks, we have been surrounded by frolicking hummingbirds.

Cottonball sky

The sunsets frequently are beautiful up on the Sandhill, but tonight the sky turned alien. Reds, purples, greens. A ridge of cloud containing a cottonball sky.

This explanation from WRFV-TV5 meteorologist Dave Miller:

Park-to-Park paddlers must portage

NEENAH, Wis. — A strong showing is expected for the Park-to-Park Paddle, launching at 9:20 a.m. July 23 from Neenah’s Shattuck Park and organized by North East Wisconsin Paddlers.

Paddlers received plenty of help when the P2P participants had
to portage around the Menasha Lock in 2014.

Kayakers, canoeists and stand-up paddlers will travel 8.5 miles along the Fox River, out onto Lake Winnebago, through downtown Menasha and on to Lutz Park in Appleton by way of Little Lake Butte des Morts and the Fox River. For the second time in three years, paddlers will have to portage around a closed Menasha Lock.

“In 2014, the lock was closed for mechanical repairs,” Jeff Mazanec, president of NEWP said. “This year the lock has been ordered closed by the DNR in an attempt to prevent the round goby from getting into the Lake Winnebago system.”

The small, highly invasive fish was discovered in Little Lake Butte des Morts by two Neenah High School fishing team members late last summer.