Tucked in the center of the Crossroads at Big Creek preserve is a tiny (postage stamp sized) remnant of a boreal forest. “Boreal” is a word which means north and to botanists and ecologists, the term “boreal forest” refers to a sub-arctic ring of evergreens that circles the pole just south of the tundra in [...] Read more »
Door County’s Pioneers were Music Makers too…
“I feel sorry for the pioneers,“ a young visitor to The Historical Village at The Crossroads says as he pulls his earbuds out of his ears. “It must have been awful to live without music.” It’s true that European settlers in Door County did without radio and i-Tunes, without Idols, rock concerts or dancing with [...] Read more »
From Greenhouse to Vintage Wisconsin Gardens at Crossroads
At last it is a lively green outdoors at Crossroads at Big Creek, but it’s been green for some time in the Greenhouse at the Collins Learning Center. Plant starts for our Heritage Garden, greens for UW-Extension nutrition classes and vegetables destined for the Christ the King/Holy Nativity Church garden and the Community Gardens have all [...] Read more »
Flowers and their Friends
Finally… growing season has begun at Crossroads at Big Creek and the plants are “as welcome as flowers that bloom in the spring,” but several of our visitors have mentioned they are less than thrilled by the insects the flowers attract. Truth is, most of our favorite flowers depend on insects. Unless you suffer from [...] Read more »
EGG Stravaganza, the Night Sky and Hikes
Since time immemorial, spring has been a time of celebration and this week, during which Passover and Easter are celebrated by religious groups throughout the world, Earth Day is also on the calendar. At Crossroads at Big Creek, we generally wait till May for our Earth Day celebrations, but in common with all of these [...] Read more »
Suckers Running in Big Creek, Door County Invasive Species Team Meeting, Hikes
The fish already have started up Big Creek and any day now, these suckers will be spawning in earnest here at Crossroads. While we may be impatient for the sucker run, our excitement can’t compare to that of the early loggers in Door County. In 1881, a newspaper editor, Charles I. Martin, wrote a book [...] Read more »
Dr. Roger Kuhns on the Geology of Door County, Master Gardener Greg Meissner on Landscape Design and more this week at Crossroads
We haven’t yet put the snow shovels away and we don’t plan to do so any time soon, but at Crossroads at Big Creek, we are beginning to notice little glimmers of spring. The chickadees and cardinals have been singing their spring songs, the sun is higher in the sky, the daylight lasts a little longer (which means our solar panels [...] Read more »
