The Lady Lake Michigan

We have some wild weather in Wisconsin.

A typical month of May here will zig and zag weather-wise – one day it's 78 degrees and you begin to feel like summer is something that might actually happen. The next day you wake up with the sound of your furnace blowing, the air outside chilly, dipped into the low-40’s. I find myself reaching for my down jackets even as May marches on toward June.

On the warm days, like these past few, the garden centers flood with people taking the opportunity to spruce up their lawns and flower beds. The buds get a little closer to becoming full-on leaves, and crabapple trees all over town begin to burst into blooms of creamy white and bright pink. The stores entice us with pansies, other flowers, and even Mother’s Day hydrangeas (that probably wouldn’t stand a chance outside just yet).

Any Wisconsinite will tell you to hold your horses. It’s not a sure thing to put flowers or perennials into the ground before Memorial Day. Frost is usually still in the cards.

Just last week, I threw on my winter parka to walk the dogs. It was a bright, sunny, and beautiful day, but the wind was whipping, the temperature felt more like winter than spring. I decided to head to the lakefront to see what was turning up on the beach.

Luckily, I threw a pair of gloves in my pocket before I left the house for the block-long walk to the lake– I would surely need them later. As I drew nearer to the bluff, I could hear the water roiling and crashing against the rocks. Bursts of white foam-flecked water surged upward as the waves hit the breakwater.

For a non-tidal body of water, our lady Lake Michigan was doing a fine job of creating huge breakers that rolled and tumbled onto the rocky beach.

Usually there is a good expanse of sand where the water meets the land. Not today. The “tide” was way up, leaving behind a huge strip composed of masses of driftwood pieces.