Musings

We’re getting toward the end of the lupine, with many fully in seed pods. A few are still opening at the tips, however.

Farm news: ML and DL have installed a new dock! It’s a beaut! Smells like fresh lumber.

I channeled Diana the Huntress (21st century version) and stalked the shallows for the lithe and limber lacustrine annelids, finding eight in about ten minutes and removing them from the breeding pool. And the lake. It may have been the perfect stick I found for catching them and tossing them into the brush that brought me luck. But not them.

The late afternoon became overcast and waves of drippy rain, straight down, so the windows all could remain open.

Posted at 7:19 PM | 2 Comments »

On warm days like this, we are taking advantage of the insulation that this cottage now has that it didn’t when I was a youngster. By that I mean that we close the windows late morning and “keep the cool in” until late afternoon. The temperature on the porch, with the lovely new ceiling fan (last summer?, I think), does drift with the day, being cooler than the house in the early morning, and much warmer by late afternoon, when the sun streams in. Today’s popup storms brought the temps down for a while in the mid-afternoon, but the skies cleared and all was soon toasty as normal.

BTW, I’m pretty sure this is feverfew; it’s not from our place.

Posted at 11:14 PM | Comments Off on Probably this is more info than you care about

The black edges and blotches on the basil plants seem to have retreated, I think due to the slacking of the daily rainstorms. Almost time to make some tomato sauce! [And I have a stash of canned San Marzano tomatoes for delectable flavor, too!]

The sun catches the ferns by the back door just so in the mornings….

And by the time mid-afternoon arrived, so had cloud cover, and by cocktail hour the rain arrived. Not a hard rain, mind you, and perhaps not enough to set the basil back.

Posted at 6:59 PM | Comments Off on Fingers crossed

Pink is not a color I gravitate to, however, today’s best photos show pink…here in a lupine.

And here in the sky…glorious sky! We ate out on the bluff, and stayed out watching the light change until the skeeters began to feed on us.

Posted at 9:52 PM | 1 Comment »

While out on a lunch/errand run, we stopped and the Guru sent Droney aloft.

We figured the weeks of rain have made mud in the swamps that drain into the river—this is the Manistique. At the water’s-edge, we could tell the level had dropped several feet in the last two days or so. These are changeable times.

Meanwhile, I braved the clouds of skeeters to get a few flower shots. When I finished focusing, I looked at my legs and smashed the critters front and back (shorts were a dumb move for this stop). I ended up with blood smears up and down. A quick wash and all I have to do is worry about nasty microbes taking up occupancy in my soft tissues. [Ick.] Moving on…this is bladder campion.

Posted at 7:35 PM | Comments Off on Mini air-adventure

This fawn sighting is from yesterday, overlooked due to poor monitoring by yours truly or it would have appeared (ahem) then. The photo is by the Guru. The fawn was nowhere near this close when I saw (spotted? hahaha) him/her. Kudos to the Guru for this digital capture.

These potentilla blossoms were not mewling and strolling away (like the Odocoileus virginianus of yesterday), so I managed to capture them in all their glory. What gutsy insect is eating the petals?

Turns out that Potentilla is now Dasiphora…geeze, can’t those taxonomists settle on genus/species???? huh????

Posted at 9:34 PM | Comments Off on Observations, localized

Here’s the best of the now-blown peonies. Peonies trigger thoughts of this place, and my grandmother’s flower garden. She had a special pair of scissors/trimmers that she used to cut flowers to make bouquets in the house. They were decorated, clearly a lady’s tool.

I think of these yarrow as wild flowers, but I read that there are domesticated varieties. These look like the wild ones. I thought these were moths on the blossoms, but maybe they’re something else.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Farm flowers

I made a big rice salad for our contribution to the potluck Fourth celebration across the way. I used these garlic scapes among the many veggies I added.

Our hosts always supply brats and weiners grilled to full tastiness. And home-baked beans. Guests bring the rest. Extra yummy this year, I thought.

Great company, too. Always great fun to catch up with people we see just once a year.

No sparklers even, and we saw the fireworks on Sunday night…but I still thought about this being the anniversary of the founding of our nation while I chopped veggies…I find these strange times, and tried to be buoyed by the tendency of institutions to perpetuate themselves in much the same form.

On the way back to our place the moon seemed to reign over the orchard and the lake.

Posted at 10:00 PM | Comments Off on Fun and festivities

We have had sunshine and clear skies since we arrived, although we understand that the previous days—weeks, even—were rainy. We could see coming around Lake Michigan/Green Bay that Lake Michigan is high(er), and that creeks and rivers we crossed were full—not over-flowing, but there is also standing water in fields and forests.

The equation here that extended wet periods, especially in spring/early summer translates into insects. This type: fine; skeeters, not so happy-making. [Deliberately not mentioning ticks—haven’t seen one yet.]

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Insect report

Peonies! We made it back to the Eastern Time Zone, and around to the cottage, and discovered the peonies are out! Beginning to get scraggly, but. Yay!

The last event of the evening, were the fireworks across the lake that began at dusk. By the end, it was pretty dark, and the reflections on the lake were superb. There wasn’t much breeze and the smoke from the beach-fire went almost straight up. And the skeeters—yikes! Plenty of rain this spring, including the last few days, we hear, and bug-breeding has been rampant.

Posted at 10:22 PM | 1 Comment »