Musings

The story of today is right here. Rain. Drippy rain. Not so cold, just continuous moisture. Good for the late garden plants. But.

So, we hopped in the Prime, and headed out to defray boredom. First stop: winding drive down to Seul Choix Point and its lighthouse on the north shore of Lake Michigan. The latter dates back to 1892, and is still used, but most navigators are using digital/satellite systems, making the light more confirmation than a sole guide.

To me, this kind of view is Essence of UP. Maple trees bending to make a tunnel over a gravel road through the forest that I can toodle along, with a smile on my face. Special this day: drippiness.

We popped out on the Lake Superior shore near Marquette. These are two of the Picnic Rocks in the Marquette Harbor.

And this is the view southwest into the upper harbor from Presque Isle Park, a rugged point extending into Lake Superior. This is an immense ore dock. Rail cars are moved out onto the top of the dock, and their loads are dumped into spaces in the dock, then emptied into a ship (called a boat around here) in 20-ton lots. The name is “ore,” and I think of ore as the material that is rock-with-mineral as it is mined from MotherEarth. But, here the “ore” is taconite, pellets of 70% iron that has been separated (mostly) from the rock that contained it at or very near the mine.

Posted at 9:46 PM | Comments Off on Essence of UP

Today was a Foley food mill day. And in autumn, that means…

…applesauce! You keep processing and squeeze the last juices out of the peels—and that yields a nice pink color not yet visible in the sauce. Tasty!—and with a minimum of added sugar.

Picking the broccoli for dinner tonight, I saw the sun had come out to highlight the blossoms. The plants are getting ready for winter!

Posted at 7:07 PM | Comments Off on Autumn harvest

I was just getting ready to settle down in a comfy chair with my first cuppa when I heard this critter just outside the window by my chair. Of course: photo time! This was through the screen, and pretty early on an overcast day, so mostly it just proves there was a pileated working on the hemlock.

A little later, down by the lake…very quiet (tiny off-shore breeze, so only the teeniest shusssshing waves), and very overcast. Stayed overcast all day, and cooler than we’ve seen since right after we got here. The fall color is beginning to show up stronger, but still the leaves are overwhelmingly green.

Posted at 7:24 PM | Comments Off on Rat-a-tat-tat

Oh, I thought, so picturesque…the crocks on the neighbor-deck with a new-fallen leaf.

Then, later, I looked under our maple, and sure enough, this is the day the leaves began to fall. There were the odd two or three here and there before…but today they came down by the dozen. And not because it was super windy, or even more windy than usual (mostly).

Down at the beach, I caught the eagle soaring out of a tree back from the beach, and looping around the point to leave me alone. Eagles are loners, most of the time.

Follow-up on the weather: sometime before sunset, the weather went from hot/rather humid, to cooling off more than it has in quite some time (very early in Sept). It’s now in the lower 60s out…and dropping. Extra blanket tonight!

Posted at 9:06 PM | Comments Off on Change day

My, we’ve been sticking close to home lately. Not exactly sure why…. Just darned pretty weather may be most of it. So warm lately that we’ve been pouring the dishwater on the basil and the July-planted potentilla.

On the beach, these tracks…I want to say raccoon because of size, location, but are they really? I think of the “heel” area as more elongated, but maybe just variation in stepping means it doesn’t show? Not to worry….

Also on the beach, this flower. They’re here and there around the property. I think of them as some kind of aster.

Posted at 6:50 PM | Comments Off on Close to home

Our cozy living room….

An artsy shot of one side of the log playhouse…sized for kids.

Veggies fresh from the neighbors’ garden, and headed for our dinner table: kale, tomatoes, maize. Yum.

Posted at 6:52 PM | Comments Off on Diary using photos

I went out while the coffee was dripping to catch a few shots of the fog obscuring the trees on the other side of the field. I thought I’d improve the framing by getting the legendary hillfort basil in the foreground. So often a surprise…this time…

…on the left lateral branch of the ancient apple tree…a chipmunk feeding or stuffing her/his cheeks…and, in the distance, a deer, after snorting, turning her/his back and running away, white flag high.

Later I returned to the basil, trying to decide when to make pesto, or a basil purée…not today, but soon…. [Perhaps you can discern, under the right-pointing leaf, a daddy-longlegs (or spider with similar physiology).]

Posted at 9:20 PM | 1 Comment »

Morning chore: helping neighbors remove dock. It’s in sections, but still heavy. My job was to take photos (easy!). [Weight on The Foot issue….]

Midday we made a fast trip to Manistique (groceries, ya know)—and Droney made a run over the lighthouse and got this view back at the river mouth.

We took the (old) woods road back, following the river inland. We stopped at a park and got a Droney-view of the river. This river drains “our” lake.

Such a simple, yet grand, day!

Posted at 9:02 PM | Comments Off on Chores

Out picking apples to make apple sauce…and look what I found! The same tree had another big puffball, too. I found none under other trees.

Little rollers coming in this afternoon; kinda breezy, but, as I mentioned yesterday, no Florence!

Posted at 6:36 PM | Comments Off on Giant puffball!

I’m not sure that the spiders who festoon the window screen are all that successful. Makes a pretty pattern, however.

We took a pre-cocktail stroll down to the beach to see the waves rolling in (kinda). They were pretty tame compared what Florence is kicking up in the Atlantic!

I spotted a swimming leech from the dock and zipped back to dry land to divest myself of shoes and socks. Took me a while to find it again. Several attempted tosses and I lost “him” in the water, then found “him” again a few minutes later. Still wasn’t sure if I managed to throw “him” out of the water (hope so).

And, yes, the pebble was in the shell when I found them among the wrack.

Posted at 6:24 PM | 1 Comment »