Happy belated birthday to mi esposa, Julie Zickefoose, who is an amazing person doing amazing things—some of which I'll share with you now:
She loves things like baby sea turtles (above) and baby box turtles which she tended for years until they were ready for release on our farm (below).
She teaches our kids about the truly wonderful things in nature. Like tadpoles (above) and badlands (below).
She's as at home hanging with birding glitterati (above) as she is sitting on the kitchen floor, in a winter power outage, making suet dough by headlamp (below).
She can rock out with The Rain Crows (above) or zen out in her kayak, barely speaking for hours on end (below).
She's not afraid to take chances, like photo-bombing with the local coppers at the county fair (above) or snorkeling in shark-(and dork-)infested waters (below).
She gets as much joy from her garden pod full of flowers (below) as she does in a really great piece of North Dakota strawberry-rhubarb pie (above).
And she dearly loves her friends, human and otherwise....
Happy birthday, Zick! May you live as long as (or longer than!) our old driveway oak.
