Musings

Mined leaves?

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It never occurred to me that leaf miners (if indeed these patterns are made by leaf miners) would chow down on water plants. Here’s the proof!

Photo safari

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Our photographic safari to Seney Refuge with KW and GG produced several hundred images from four still cameras—one apiece! Note our New Camera, delivered here courtesy of Amazon right after we arrived. It has more zoom and wide-angle capabilities, and faster shutter cycling (whatever that’s called); generally, a huge pleasure. The only major (if this indeed is major) drawback is that the lens cap needs a tether (no camera store for 90 miles or so). We’ve become habituated to the small cameras with no separate lens cover, and struggle to remember….

As to critter sightings, mostly birds and rodents. Did see Sandhills this time around, but no super photos, just ones where you can see the red eye patch and general shape, but no details. (You see, the new fab camera’s modest-capacity chip had been filled by then.)

Of special note: we enjoyed our first picnic out of the New Prius!

If you didn’t know us, you’d think from this entry (New this, New that…) we are big consumers, when in reality, we spend much of the year not buying much besides groceries and paying utilities and the like.

Party time!

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Visitors in town today! We’re laughing and telling stories and laughing some more! (And doing a bit of drinking and eating and drinking, too!)

Maintenance, various

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Guess what we’ll be doing? Yes, exterior painting—the screen porch trim—and staining—the whole house. We figure if we stretch it out over enough days, it won’t seem too formidable.

Now, to the store to get a 12-pack for post-scraping and post-painting and post-staining downtime!

Fire & water

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Manistique Lake’s levels are lower now than ever in my memory, and this is the beach (much narrower) we would run up and down as kids when we wanted to keep playing in the water, but we were assessed by the watchful mother (rarely father) as having the dreaded “blue lips.” The remedy for this condition was to wrap in a sun-warmed towel and make several speedy sand-tossing-by-toes circuits until circulation had been restored and we were allowed to return to the water.

Awoke last night over and over again because the wind switched yesterday to the north, bringing the smoke smell to the house. (Earlier this year we smelled the smoke from the South Georgia fires—in Atlanta, now we get the smoke from the Sleeper Lake fires.) It doesn’t smell so bad at midday, but we expect that to fluctuate.

Dry weather

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Over the weekend, I watered the Provider’s garden daily—well, parts of it. I found it very zen. They’re back from a Canadian jaunt—all the way to Quebec, and I’ve lost my job….

Dry, dry, dry here. No need to mow the lawn.

Forest fires north of Newberry, apparently triggered by lightning. Well over 10K acres ashed, and no sign of the blazes abating.

Bird sightings

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Over at the Seney Refuge, late in the afternoon, but by no means at sunset, we saw the usual complement of birds, and not much else on the long loop of the driving tour (skipped the welcome center; we’ll stop next time). A couple of turtles. Very few Canada geese. Several family clusters of trumpeter swans, heads stained orange-brown by the tannic waters. Almost no ducks, grebes, or coots. Water levels are low, as across the UP and into Ontario. Not good for nesting. Or myriad other things.

Update to yesterday’s story

Ah, that “mallard”—wrong! It was a male ring-necked pheasant! I finally got a good look at ’im. Now I know why the “duck” walked/ran so far!

Ya gotta give me a break on this mis-ID; I haven’t seen a pheasant in a while—vigilant wildlife officers and hunters have intentionally extirpated them in Georgia. After all, they’re not native to the Americas.

Spooning

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All my life we’ve been finding artifacts in the lake. Today’s most interesting find was this spoon, unfortunately plain, lacking a monogram or any maker’s mark that I spotted.

As I ascended the bluff from the lake, I startled a critter that ran away from me through tall grass (unmowed), then scuttled across the mowed trail that links the steps to the lake with the houses. From the sound it had a woodchuck size, but moved pretty fast and noisy for a woodchuck. It was larger than a rat or rabbit, and lower to the ground than a deer. As I got to top of the steps, I saw the critter just before it disappeared around a corner. Male mallard. I would never have guessed!

Critter sightings

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Here in the Northland, we’ve been greeted by various species of wildlife. Two fawns came gingerly through the backyard. We saw a woodchuck considering crossing the road over near Curtis. We’ve seen Canada geese here and there. Same with seagulls, robins, cardinals, and assorted other birds. In the lake we saw minnows, but no leeches (thankfully).

Without a doubt the most exciting critter sighting was the bat that appeared in the bedroom about seven the other morning. A bat’s better than coffee to get your blood flowing and your brain percolating as the sun rises! I’d been awake for a while reading, so if s/he had been there, s/he had been absolutely quiet. I have no idea where they’re getting in; each year for the last three years we’ve had one visit.

John, enjoying pre-coffee morning ablutions downstairs, flew up the stairs after I screeched, to find me crouched near the floor (it’s a low-ceilinged room), as the bat tried perching on different walls. The Guru saved me, getting a paper grocery bag and gently capturing the bat without harming it, carrying it carefully outside, where it took off into the early morning sky, probably saying to him/herself, well, I’ll try somewhere quieter to nap the day away!

Watermelon

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Nothing says summer like eating cold, juicy watermelon.