Eyesore or Crystal Cascade: It's in the Eye of the Beholder

Wednesday, February 28, 2010. We'd better enjoy the snow while we can: It's been melting.


If we wait, spring will take care of that snow. February 24, 2010.

It'll take a while for that (two feet or so?) to go, though. Particularly where it's been piled up.


Eyesore, or sound barrier? Depends on your point of view. February 24, 2010.


That's barely a snowman. Snowkid, maybe?. February 24, 2010.

Springtime in Minnesota isn't that picture-postcard-lovely season of chirping birds and brightly-colored flowers you read about. The only bird song I heard today was a crow's caw.

Not that all we have around of an avian nature are crows. There are sparrows too: and chickadees. Speaking of which, I saw a chickadee after church this morning, in the alley west of Our Lady of the Angels church. The alley is covered in compacted snow, some of which has melted and flowed into wheel tracks. A chickadee was taking a bath in one of those little pools.

As I was saying, springtime in Minnesota isn't green grass, blooming flowers and all that. Not until rather late in the process, at least. Mostly it's winter, melting.

This year's snow is really rather clean. Even so, sunlight on the south face of snow banks melt away the snow, leaving whatever dust, dirt and debris got scooped up with the snow. As I wrote a few years ago, introducing a half-dozen photos, "it combines the more unpleasant aspects of winter and summer."

True enough, but a person doesn't have to see things that way. Take what you'll see on the north side of quite a few streets, for example.

I can see it as a mess that'd be a headache for someone who's particular about the appearance of the front lawn.

Or, I could see it as a sort of sculpture: a frozen cascade of crystal.


Frozen cascade. February 26, 2010.

However you decide to see them, those melting snow banks are ephemeral phenomena: they'll be gone, replaced in many places with grass that'll need to be trimmed.

I mentioned, Wednesday, how the chain link fence on the Lake Wobegon Trail bridge over Main is a sort of community bulletin board. Sauk Centre has quite a few places where folks can read about events that are coming up.


Last week this pillar in Jitters Java, downtown, had mostly commercial posts on it. February 24, 2010.

And you'll see the occasional ad for some product. Like Dr. Julian Dubiois, Jr.'s DVD, "A Walk to Remember." (I mentioned it in January.) You can't see the poster for that recording too well in the photo: it's that tannish bit toward the upper right.