Spring in My Garden: Looking Back to Previous Years

Forsythia 'Northern Sun'



Native Hepatica

With temperatures in the fifties forecast for western Wisconsin, the accompanying forecast of winter storm watch for my friends in northern Wisconsin sound like a bad joke.

Almost as bad a joke a the Wisconsin lawmaker who is pushing the bill to require police officers to think about whether they have reason to believe the driver of a vehicle might not be here legally, a law similar to the one signed into law in Arizona this last year.

So the fine broadcast journalists on NPR are interviewing the writer of the bill, Don Pridemore, Republican from Hartford, Wisconsin. They ask him if this isn't profiling, especially toward Hispanics in Wisconsin. He replies that Wisconsin has almost as big a problem these days with Russians coming across our Canadian border. Canadian border? (To hear the broadcast from WPR.org, from 3/21/2011, 7:30 broadcast from Joy Cardin.)
Here I thought we only had to worry about the Yoopers! If my geography serves, Wisconsin can spit into Lake Superior at Superior, provided the DNR aren't looking and we can shake hands with the fine folk in Duluth, Minnesota, but that most of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan stretches across our northern border.

No northern cheeseheads I know are boasting, "We can see Canada from our back porches!"

So, with that winter storm warning, it seems appropriate to warn my good gardening friends and relatives, "Keep your eyes open. Those Russian mafia types are here to eat our cheese, drink our beer, and dig invasives from our gardens! There are just a few days of ice pack left on Lake Superior!"