The Blog that was Long Overdue
2020. Whew. What a summer. What a year. What an adventure. I have been meaning to write to you for months. I was going to write in September and tell you how deeply grateful we all are for the community [...]
Spring 2020: The Weirdest One Ever
I have sat down to write to you a dozen times in the last few weeks, but it always ends the same. A fragmented idea, a few sentences, and then an unfinished word doc crowding up my desktop. However, that [...]
Dear Bernard
Dear Bernard, On the day you were born it was a sunny Saturday in October. Your dad spent the whole day hauling leaves. Your mom was coming off of a busy week at her Eye Clinic (Fall Frame Sale!) You [...]
The Five Minute Update from Brookside
Wondering what has kept us so busy over the last few months?
The Monarch Butterfly Nursery at Brookside
What started with one monarch caterpillar named “Bear” and a repurposed flower vase turned into a nature-loving, science-class inspiring, eco-friendly operation of hatching monarch caterpillars into monarch butterflies and letting them go into the nature that we love. We [...]
Minnesota’s Second Best Season
It’s with mixed emotions that we check another Minnesota summer off the list. Because summers here are SO FUN. And also because the end of summer means jumping back into the routine of school and work. And, although we know [...]
Spring is in the Air
It’s spring time at Brookside, and because we live in Northern Minnesota we know it’s going to be short. And while most Minnesotans just find this to be the price we pay to enjoy the best summers on Earth, we [...]
We Went on a Family Vacation: All You Got Was Kitchen Shears
The Wallenberg and Keller families are right in the middle of developing our family vacation traditions. Really, we’re our own target market….except for that whole NO free time in the summer. So, what do you do when summer vacations are [...]
It’s Winter….but we are (Always) Thinking Summer
It’s cold. And snowy. And the sun sets at 5:11 pm up north these days. So there is nothing we like to do more [...]
Birthday Sunsets
My word for year #34: Create