Folks up here call it “heart attack snow.” You might have heard the term before, or muttered it yourself halfway through a too-long driveway with a too-small shovel. It’s the kind of snow that’s heavy like wet cement and twice as stubborn. You don’t so much shovel it as you heave it like you're bailing out a leaking canoe.

The Trees We ChoseThe first thing to know is this wasn’t inevitable. The emerald ash borer didn’t choose Lincoln Park. We did. Not deliberately—not with malice—but through the usual compound habits of cities: fix what’s broken, cheap and fast, move on.

There’s a little creek that runs behind our apartment. It’s not much to look at, especially in the colder months when the trees are bare and the water runs low, shallow and brown. But it’s a fixture now, the kind of thing that sneaks its way into your routines without much fuss. I didn’t think much of it at first.

A few months back, a neighbor told me that Duluth always has two false springs. He said it with a kind of worn certainty, like it was something you just come to accept after a couple decades on the hillside. That first warm spell in February or early March that gets the sap flowing, makes the chickadees a little more conversational. Then the cold returns, sometimes bringing March’s heaviest snow. But eventually, around mid-April, the snowpack relents for good, the buds stretch, and spring settles in.

I’m getting back into worm composting. Not scaling up. Scaling down.A decade ago, I was living in a rental house with no yard and too many roommates. I started worm composting out of necessity. Just a couple plastic bins with holes drilled in the sides, under the kitchen table. I didn’t have space for outdoor compost, and I didn’t want to keep throwing food scraps in the trash. So I learned the basics: red wigglers, carbon-rich bedding, bury your greens, don’t let it get too wet or too dry. It was simple, low-budget, and just functional enough.

Spending time near water—whether it’s Lake Superior, an inland lake, or a quiet marsh—means sharing space with ducks. They’re just there, part of the landscape, dipping under the surface, paddling through the reeds, or flashing their wings as they take off in unison.