The Spring of 2026

I am a born and raised Wisconsin girl. Whenever I run into anyone from the southern states who have never visited here, I get the same response. They think I live in the Arctic and have only cold weather all year long. Wisconsin equals Tundra and the Green Bay Packers. They think we never see any warm weather. Little do they know that we really do have four seasons. Summer can get very warm, sometimes a 100 degrees. Fall is usually nice with beautiful colored trees and mild temperatures. Winter is cold but we usually don't have a ton of snow here in south central Wisconsin. We have wonderful efficient heating systems. I go by how many times I need to have my driveway plowed. I usually only need it plowed twice in the winter and then there is spring. Spring is a mixture of all of the seasons put together. There is a saying in Wisconsin that says if you don't like the spring weather just wait a couple hours. 

This spring is no exception. We have had it all. The month of March has been a challenge. We have had temperatures in the mid-sixties which felt like 80 degrees to us. We have had migrating birds show up. 

We have had sunny days and foggy days. Then when we get comfortable and think our winter is over, BAM we get hit with a big snowstorm. It usually happens around the state basketball tournaments. This year it was the girl's tournament. Fortunately the worst of it didn't happen until after the games were completed. 

The full moon was on March 3. It was clear and beautiful. This was the Worm Moon because it usually coincides with the ground thawing. That means the earthworms can emerge. 

There was still a little snow and ice on the water but it felt like spring was in the air.  The Sandhill Cranes had returned and the world was coming to life.

On Monday of last week it was a beautiful day. Temperatures were in the 60's and it was nice and sunny. I opened all my windows to air out the house. I sat on my deck and had coffee. Life was grand. I watched as the Sandhill Cranes were picking out a nesting spot. The Wood Ducks, the Ring-necked ducks and the Hooded Mergansers were resting after a long migration. The ice was out so they had a landing spot. The Canadian geese and Ring-beaked gulls were also busy flying around.

 

 

Tuesday March 10 was also a nice day. When the weather warms up quickly and there are high winds the ice on the lakes and rivers breaks up. Sometimes it pushes the ice to the shore. They are called Ice Shoves. I heard that there were ice shoves on Lake Winnebago. Lake Winnebago is the largest inland lake in Wisconsin and it is about 45 minutes east of where I live. I thought I would take a drive. It is always amazing to see the beauty and power of the shoves. I wrote about them in 2017. https://www.thecabincountess.com/search?q=Lake+Winnebago The shoves that year came ashore as big sheets of ice. This year they looked like large ice cubes.

Wednesday through Friday were just normal and quite cool spring days. I heard that we were expecting some snow over the weekend, but I didn't pay much attention. There is always a snowstorm during the Wisconsin state basketball tournament so I should have been aware. The storm was to arrive on Saturday. Saturday wasn't bad. It was sunny in the morning but then the clouds rolled in. It started to rain and sleet and then snow. With the rain we didn't have a huge accumulation. I measured about 5 inches, but phase 2 was on it's way. Overnight we got more snow and then the winds started to blow. By Monday, one week after our nice warm day, we had more than a foot of snow. Places north of me got in excess of 24 inches of snow. It was a whopper of a storm. In one day, this is the progression of the storm.

Now it's time to dig out. Schools and businesses were closed. It was suggested that people not drive on the roads because they were dangerous and the plows needed to work clearing the roads. I don't remember such a big storm in a very long time. The good thing about spring storms is that they melt quickly. It is supposed to be warming up again by the weekend. Hopefully the frost is out of the ground and the melting snow will soak into the ground and not cause flooding. 

It is St. Patrick's Day today. Our usual celebration did not take place this year. It is the first time in many years I did not make corned beef and cabbage. I had the ingredients but it got put in the freezer for a better time. As my daughter's mother in law said, "Leprechauns are tricksters". The trick this year was a snow storm. The celebration will have to be at a later date. The little fellow's house looks pretty deserted at this point anyway. Maybe I will get a Shamrock Shake to tied me over. 

We still have two weeks of this month to go. Who knows what will be in store for us. Hopefully it will be sunshine and flower blooms. I guess we will have to wait and see. 

Is it Real or Is it AI?

This winter I have been going through a lot of old photos to keep myself occupied. The winters are long for me, and I hate to go out or drive in the cold weather. I don't need to go out to stores and buy more stuff my children won't want. I don't want to go out to eat alone when I have plenty of food in the house for a meal. Now that it is March, we begin baby steps toward spring. Every few days we get a warm day to give us hope. 

I wanted to share something I discovered. Many of my old pictures are of people I don't know, but those I can identify I want to save. I am trying to identify as many as I can. Some of them are very old and a few were written on. They had the date and sometimes who was in the photo. That is very helpful. Some have been stashed in a box for a long time and have gotten bent or folded in half. I have posted the repaired copies of some of these photos but I want to show you some of the originals and how I fixed them.

The first is a picture of Agnes. It is a picture from my previous blog (https://www.thecabincountess.com/2026/02/agnes.html. The picture had a big crease across the middle and was rather dark.

 This is the corrected version. It is much clearer and the white crease line is gone.

Next is a school picture from the same blog. It is a group shot and came from an old magazine. It is pretty faded so I crisped it up. Then just for the fun of it, I colorized it. I am not sure if the colors are correct but this is how it came out.

This next picture had faded over the years so I just asked to brighten it up. It is of my Aunt Aggie and my grandpa Holger. He always had a pipe. 

Here is another of myself, my uncle Jeff and neighbor Wendy. Somehow this photo got folded in half damaging it. I asked to take the crease out. I didn't ask to clean it up and make it clearer, but I bet it would have.

All this sounds impressive, but it wasn't me. It was AI or Artificial Intelligence. That dirty word that everyone is worried about, me included. If it were only for repairing old photos and giving google like information it would be fine, but it is very sophisticated. We probably shouldn't believe anything we see anymore unless we see it with our own eyes. I won't go into to the pros and cons of AI here. It is too complicated for my brain.

There is an application called ChatGPT. It is the one I used. There are probably more that do the same thing. This one is free. You can go to the app store and download it to your phone. When you click on the app you can ask it anything. In this case I asked to take the crease out of the first and last photo. There is a plus (+) button on the left side. Click on it and you can add a photo from your phone or get a report on something or ask for a recipe. The second photo I asked to crisp up and then the next to colorize it. If the photo is quite bad and some of the face is blocked out, they create a similar face. In some cases, it isn't quite right and it doesn't look exactly like the subject. It isn't perfect, but I suspect there will be improvements everyday. Mostly it is quite amazing.

This is an example of faces not being exact sometimes. This is a school picture where my Aunt Bernice was the teacher. The original isn't clear and from my memory of her, the corrected version of her face isn't quite right. Of course I didn't know her then. This photo was before I was born. It could be spot on and who knows what the children really looked like. I doubt if anyone is alive who would remember so it's a lot better than no pictures at all.

It is very hard to keep up with technology. It is changing all the time. In this case, I was just happy to be able to salvage some of my pictures. 

Agnes

This blog post is about my mother's side of the family. It is about my Aunt Agnes. She was born in 1909 in Pray, Wisconsin and never married. Pray is a small town in central Wisconsin. It was was an important logging area in the late 1800's. Pray is named for the man who owned the first sawmill, not for religious reasons. It had a train depot and my grandpa and a couple of my uncles worked on the railroad. It was an up and coming community and then it wasn't. Now it would be a stretch to say 10 people live there. 

All of Agnes's siblings had a spouse and children to document their lives. In a small way I would like to fill that gap for Agnes. My mom was very close to her oldest sister, and I spent a lot of time with her. I will be interested if any of my cousins have their own memories. She had a long and interesting life that included many people.

 

 

Agnes was the oldest child and my mom was the second youngest of ten children. This photo is of my grandpa Holger, Agnes and her brother Lyngaard. He was 3 years younger. I am not sure when this was taken but Agnes looks about eight and Lyng about five. Grandpa was only in his 30's but looks a lot older. Times were very hard then.

 

This family photo was from September 1932. They were poor but they were all together at this point. Imagine cooking on a wood stove for all these people, carrying water and no indoor bathrooms. 

This next family picture was taken in the 1940's. Agnes is on the far left, continuing in descending birth order to my mom second from the right, and last on the right my uncle Gene. This picture was before all the 4 youngest brothers went to WWII, some were newly married, the two oldest boys were working on the railroad with grandpa and Agnes was teaching.

We all called her Aunt Aggie. She was the oldest and took on the role of caretaker for all of her brothers and sisters. Their mother died when Aggie was just 28. She had more than one chance to marry but declined. I know she was engaged, but as a young person I never heard any details. She wrote in a journal for much of her life. I don't know what happened to those journals, but I am sorry they were lost. I think that since their mother was very ill for years and died so young, Aggie felt responsible for some of her younger siblings. When their mother died, five of the ten children were under 18.  

When Aggie graduated from high school, she went to Marathon County Normal School in Wausau, Wisconsin. I believe it was only a one year program because she graduated in June of 1928. She was 19 years old. 

From that point, she became a teacher in a one room schoolhouse in Pray, Wisconsin. Since she taught all primary grades, she ended up teaching six of her siblings. 

 

The Pray School was in Pray Wisconsin in the Township of City Point. The township included the towns of City Point, Spaulding and Pray. City Point and Spaulding had their own schools. It was built before 1900 and closed around 1942. The few students that were left were transported to the City Point school.

Interestingly I found an autograph book from the 1928-1929 school year. It had two entries written by Aggie's sisters Christine and Bernice. They had to call her Miss Jepsen. My mother said Aggie was harder on her siblings than the other kids. She couldn't show favoritism. These pages say they are sorry she won't be back the next year but my mom, her brother and a future sister in law are in a later photo. I found out that Aggie taught from 1929-1940 except for 1931 and 1936-1938. The very same Bernice who wrote in this autograph book became the teacher from 1941-1942. 

 

My mom is the girl in the middle, her little brother is in the bottom row and far right. Aggie is in the top row and next to her is what would end up to be her sister in law Lillian. My mom was in 8th grade in 1936-1937 and Aggie was not teaching for those years. I think this photo was probably a couple years before that. I don't have an exact date. 

When it was time for high school the kids would board in a town with a high school. Imagine at 13-14 years old going away and living on your own for the week. They would often come home for the weekend, but many times they would not. They didn't have money and lived on what ever was provided by the boarding house. Grandpa would give them a nickel for spending money. My mom said they would get day old sweet rolls and eat them.

The curriculum was pretty hard. I found a lesson plan book from the 1940. They learned to recite poems, act in plays, do the normal 3 R's plus a lot of history and literature. Those of you who attended country school know you learned from the grades ahead of you. I think it made for some pretty smart and well rounded individuals. It wasn't all bad, except for the bathroom facilities and having to stoke the fire in the winter so everything wouldn't freeze. There were no buses and no cars. They really did have to walk a couple miles each way through the woods to get to school. 

When it was time to quit teaching, Aggie moved to Madison, WI. That is where she lived until she died. I don't know what she did for a living at that time, but she ended up working at the University of Wisconsin library in Madison. She loved it there and made many friends. She traveled all over the world. She seemed to enjoy her life. She loved jewelry, colorful clothing and perfume. I wasn't a fan of that perfume. 

She also wasn't much of a cook. I remember having to spend every Christmas Eve with her. I don't remember much about the meals except for one thing. She would always have a jello salad with some type of berry in it. To this day, I don't know what it was. They tasted like puke, and the thought of it makes me gag. I am sure my sister will remember the "puke berries" as well. Aggie was not much of a housekeeper either. She had a lot of books, magazines and clippings from newspapers. I am lucky she did that because she kept and wrote on everything. That has made it easier for me to piece together her story. All my cousins will remember the fawn picture she took. She sold it to a postcard company and everyone had a copy of it. Every drawer and bookmark was a picture of that fawn. 

She introduced me to pizza and shrimp. I thought she ordered "peach pie" but it turned out to be my first slice of pizza. She called it Pizza Pie. I told her I liked the shrimp except for the hard part I couldn't chew. She told me those were the tails and I wasn't supposed to eat them. 

I think she was a mother figure for everyone. When she died in 1995, I was there. Just like my mom at the time of death, she turned back into a young looking version of herself without any stress or pain. It was a comforting thing to see. She was cremated and I went by myself to the funeral home to pick up her ashes. They stayed with me and later we transported them back to the old home cemetery and church in City Point, Wisconsin. She was buried with her parents and grandparents. I go to the cemetery twice a year to put flowers on the cemetery and remember. It is something I will do as long as I can. 

We all choose our paths. Sometimes it isn't the path others think we should be on, but it is our own journey. Aunt Aggie had a rich and full life. She loved all of her siblings and their families, and they loved her in return. You can't ask for anything more.
 

A Fabric Pan Cover

Every time I bring a dish to pass, I cover my dishes with aluminum foil unless the pan comes with a cover. I don't like having to do this. It seems so wasteful. There is also a lot of information about health concerns from overusing foil but that is usually when it's heated. I have used beeswax wraps for small bowls, but I needed to cover bigger pans.

I do roll the clean foil up in a ball and use it in my dryer for static control. That probably isn't safe either but it works well. 

This little project can save a few pieces of foil. There are a lot of things out of our control, but maybe this will help in my small way. I also use compostable garbage bags/zip lock bags and cloth towels instead of paper towels. 

Recently I saw a video about making fabric pan covers. I thought I would try. They would be a secure cover, and they would be washable. 

The first thing I did was go down in my stash of fabric to find something appropriate. It had to be stable and washable. I found a piece of fabric my sister gave me last spring. I had made a tablecloth out of it but had enough leftover to make this project.

I chose the pans I wanted to make covers for. I chose a glass 9 x 13 pan and a 9" pie plate. I measured the pans and added about 2 inches around. I cut two pieces for the 9 x 13 pan. I measured the piece 13" by 19'.  I added a little to accommodate the handles. This step isn't necessary if there are no handles. I also cut two circles for the 9 inch pie plate. These circles were 13 inches.

 I wanted to round the corners on the rectangle so I marked a rounded corner with a plastic cup on the wrong side of the fabric.

Then I put the right sides together and stitched around, leaving an opening of three inches. Through this opening I turned the piece to the right side. This would also make a nice place mat or stuff it for a pillow.

 

After top stitching the piece about 1/2 inch in, I ran a length of 1/4 inch elastic. I cut the piece about 7 inches shorter than the circumference of the pan. In the case of the 9 x 13, I cut the piece 36 inches. Using a safety pin, I threaded the elastic through the placket. I attached the elastic ends together and evened out the gathering. All that was left was to stitch the opening closed.

This is the finished project for a 9 x 13 cake pan and a 9 inch pie plate. This is just a covering for transport. I'm not sure it would keep the cake or pie from drying out. It also would not keep it hot or cold. I think using quilted material might help or sandwiching some wool batting between the layers. I may make a couple more and try to add some padding. 

None of these things will probably put a dent in helping the environment, but it can't hurt. It also keeps my brain working a little bit. That is probably most important.