Musings

Darned muggy today, and too hot to cook, really. But I had a chunk of pork shoulder that needed to be prepared—didn’t want to do the freeze/thaw dance with it, and besides we did need something for our Saturday night meal. I managed to turn it into simple-recipe stovetop BBQ without overly heating the house. Trick: I started early, and by 9am the pot was turned down to simmer, and by noon, the pot was in the fridge so I could remove (some of) the partly congealed fat before reheating it for dinner. Yum.

Posted at 8:04 PM | Comments Off on Tasty menu

Here, the typical laundry routine is this: put clothes in washer and activate, take off to do errands, return in 30 minutes (or so) to put selected items (most of the loads) into the drier, chill for a while, remove and fold, then return home…to put damp/wet stuff out to dry and the rest away.

New wrinkle: during the items-in-drier phase, send Droney up. Here’s a high view of our lake from approximately above the laundromat. This is a totally different part of the lake than where our place is, and I’m glad to have this angle-visual to tuck into my geography-brain.

The sky is a strange overcast, just what we experienced; that kept it from getting as hot as it would have…but low 80s is darned hot around here, and it isn’t cooling much even now.

Posted at 6:48 PM | Comments Off on Laundry routine

We headed out early, down the Garden Peninsula to the ghost town of Fayette. Here’s the business part of town, where workers made charcoal pig iron for 24 years. The market began to decline and the hardwoods they made the charcoal from were no longer nearby…and, pfft, an industrial town went out of business.

I always take harbor-pilings photos. The water seemed higher than the last few years.

We made our return via Kitch-iti-kipi, the Big Spring. Love the raft ride, powered by park visitors’ arms.

More trout(?) that I ever remember seeing swam in the depths as we made our slow crossing and return.

Hot day; good day to avoid outdoor chores by going sight-seeing!

Posted at 9:16 PM | Comments Off on Excursion SW day

As I put skin cream on them earlier, I thought a bit about hangnails. Not a hot topic, I know, but they are curious things…a little extra skin growth, not enclosing the body as it normally does. Somehow, when you clip off the hangnail and cease antagonizing the area, it’ll go back to being flat skin. Me, I get hangnails when I do a lot of cooking/cleaning and my hands are wet, kinda-wet, damp, a bit dry, that kind of thing for a while. We did a bunch of cooking on Sunday and Monday, and presto! I have hangnails all over. They’re healing, however, as I’ve kept my hands out of water (mostly) since Monday…and also the cream.

So, I’ll try for a tenuous parallel: the aphids are so dense on some of the lupines that there is a sap-fall on the leaves…at least, that’s my interpretation of this scenario. The parallel falls apart when you consider that this lupine’s aphid density is ever so much higher than my hangnail count, and thus the affliction is a greater problem for the lupine(?).

Out of curiosity, do other primates suffer from hangnails?

Posted at 6:18 PM | Comments Off on Hangnail curiosity

Lordy, lordy, we were in the vortex of people-here/people-leaving. This clover-visitor was off that axis.

The peonies in our part of the property are darned perky. The earliest bloomers are already fading toward white/the lightest pink. Cycle of life.

Have I noted this before? Show-stopping light here!

Missing our now-absent visitors and the one we saw briefly today…sigh—moving on. Luv.

Posted at 10:20 PM | Comments Off on Emotional motion

Of course, first we had coffee, not shown, most of which we enjoyed sitting outdoors in this area. Then, our guest got out some fantastic black pepper bacon and cooked batch after batch on this camp stove/their camp table, meaning neither closed-in, traditional kitchen (our house, their camper) acquired a lingering bacon aroma. (Yay.) On the regular burner, she did a big skillet of scrambled eggs. And a fantastic brunch was enjoyed by all.

We independently nibbled (and sipped) through the rest of the day until we sat down to a FEAST. We brought out salads that didn’t get consumed yesterday and added new salads and miscellaneous veggie dishes. Meat courses were ribs (not shown; bought thoroughly cooked, and reheated), and my version of Irish stew (lamb, Two Hearted brewskis, potatoes, rainbow carrots, oddments—in the iron dutch oven). Pretty sure the white carrots tasted funky, kinda like slightly acrid parsnips, but no one else was bothered by them.

In short, a good-eating day, with plenty of visiting and page-turning, and the like. Near perfection—low-stress and fabulous fun all day.

Posted at 8:54 PM | 1 Comment »

Cooking down some Zin and fresh sweet cherries to make a sauce to go with the (charcoal) grilled lamb….

Oh, man, it was so tasty, it made the moon rise.

Luv.

Posted at 10:59 PM | Comments Off on Oh, man…

Train and…reflections.

Fern and…forest-floor floral friend.

Waterfall and…reflection.

Stars and…you know.

Lovely day to take a long, slow train trip, a slightly hustling walk (The Foot, of course) during…intermission(?), and the same long, slow train trip back. Not a loop; instead, an up-and-back.

In a foreign country!

Great fun!

Posted at 9:23 PM | Comments Off on And…

I’d like to think I’d recognize the names of several of the large freighters that use the Soo Locks, but not the smaller ships. We climbed to the top floor of the viewing platform to get a great angle on the lock-action.

We could see the huge Edwin H. Gott freighter rising ponderously in the second lock over, and watched the Sam Laud prepare to enter the lock (up/westbound) right in front of us, then ease in, staying close to our side. The Gott I’d heard of, but the Laud I don’t remember. The disembodied voice on the speaker said the Laud was smaller (river class, I believe) and thus was used for the smaller harbors, and consequently repeatedly has grounded. Oops. Downside of smaller harbors….

Started chatting with the folks on both sides of us and a lady by herself to our right said she was there to pick up her husband the captain of the Laud going off a 60-day shift (for 30 days off!). Sure enough, on the deck, as the Laud slowly rose, we could see a guy with a backpack and duffle waiting for the deck to reach the level of the sidewalk. Then he debarked, showed papers to an official, then walked through the fence-gate, and he and the lady were smiling and in each other’s arms.

Posted at 9:41 PM | Comments Off on Sault story

Pretty sure this is the Heracleum that is not friendly to the skin–sap makes the human skin photosensitive, causing blistering and burning (wild/cow parsnip).

A couple of years ago I saw one flourishing over the hill, but this one is by our beach!

Pondering how to carefully remove the plant with no…downstream negative effects…no burns, skin blistering or brown streaks that can last over a year!

Moon over Whitefish Lake. Which used to have whitefish in it, I have read. Most people don’t call it that anymore…because? no whitefish? I prefer the old name to the modern one: South Manistique Lake.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Appearance and disappearance