Musings

I’m proud of myself. I headed out to the deep morning shade to find and remove phototoxic cow parsnips. This one is old enough to bloom, and is on the neighbor’s side of the fence. I figure it likely spawned the ones on our side of the fence. Bye-bye, mama.

This evening, we took advantage of a free concert at the Erickson Center. This is most of the crowd, and I’d say it’s very large for the middle of almost-nowhere. [Don’t ask me about the cement pad—don’t know what it’s for; the band played from an elevated, roofed stage behind where I was standing.] Darned fine Celtic and Celtic-inspired music by a trio from the Marquette area.

Posted at 9:38 PM | Comments Off on Win-win

This venerable maple is quite the host. The berry bushes, loaded with fruit are perhaps five feet above the ground. And I think that pileated had a mate (or offspring?) around the backside of the trunk, based on the abundant bird-chatter I overheard.

Posted at 8:38 PM | Comments Off on AirBnB (ish)

Last evening, and all yesterday, we had persistent haziness. Seems unlikely it was smog, and I detected no smoke smell, so if it was that, it was from far, far away. So, does that mean it was…suspended moisture?

This morning, the haze remained, but the sun did burn through, although tinted orange by whatever it is in the atmosphere. A persistent semi-cloudiness held on, although it was plenty sunny if you abandoned shadiness.

Too hot today, although we’re expecting a cool-off over the next three days. Fingers crossed the meteorologists and their models are correct.

Posted at 5:42 PM | 1 Comment »

We headed to the Refuge today, anticipating clouds of biting insects, leaving us with the pleasure of remaining in the vehicle during the entire driving loop (7 miles), and thus protected from their damage. Ehem, air-conditioned vehicle—high today in the mid-80s (hence the pleasure). Which is darned hot here. And it’s humid.

A visit to the Refuge is often about pattern recognition. The first photo has white dots. In the foreground they are water lilies. In the background, they are swans. It seems to be water lily season right now, as we saw rafts of them in some areas, as in the second photo. White dot recognition lesson over.

We also saw other waterfowl: loons, Canada geese, ducks…not a lot of variety or head-count, however. We looked and looked for turtles, increasingly populous over the last few years. We had not spotted any in the spring…perhaps too cold? Well, today was not cold. We finally found two, but most of the “turtle logs” previously likely to support turtles were bereft. We don’t know if there was a die-off, or…?

Posted at 5:34 PM | Comments Off on Driving Refuge visit

I had thought this pair had moved on; today the (I assume) fella serenaded me with their rough call. They had moved on when I returned ten minutes later, perhaps flown to a nearby pond.

We boarded the pick-em-up and headed down the road. A couple of the rivers we crossed were the Sturgeon and the Little Smelt. Yay for fish.

This is the mouth of the Escanaba Marina channel; it opens into Little Bay de Noc. I proposed to the Guru that there must be a good Little Bay de Noc Noc joke, but I couldn’t think of one. [puh-dump] And, yes, there is a Big Bay de Noc.

We returned through the woods and got out on the bridge over the West Branch of the Manistique.

Posted at 6:56 PM | Comments Off on Bits of our day

I made squirrel cage in ATL when I caught squirrels stealing my almost-ripe tomatoes. But, in reality, the yard’s too shady for tomatoes to thrive. With a pickup, you can move a screen cube (minus one side) a thousand miles and not sweat it.

Last evening I spotted a black-capped chickadee fluttering around the cube, perhaps somewhat distressed, and then realized another was INside the cube. Oops. I tipped it over and released the trapee, then righted it again. I probably should have shored up the bottom with soil so that can’t happen again. Turns out it is no longer a SQUirrel cage?

Also, while I was listening to the coffee maker wheeze and spit, and waiting for it to finish, I watched a deer stroll by the south side of the cottage, not terribly worried about danger, and perhaps unable to hear the coffee maker.

BTW, the water barrel is full for the first time this summer (I think), proof we received considerable rain a day or two back.

Posted at 8:17 PM | Comments Off on Wildlife notes, limited edition

Almost ripe is not ripe enough. That lower berry is getting there. A bird may well nab it before it’s fully ripened. Greedy buggers. [Black raspberries.]

I’m working on late-day sun protection for the “sun” porch, since we’ve lost so much of our vegetative protection to MaNachur. Seems pretty uptown for this cottage.

Posted at 7:00 PM | Comments Off on Timing

Checked out the mouth of the Manistique today. This is looking upstream at the US2 bridge. The dead vegetation in the water stands on what were the banks of the river several decades ago and dramatically indicate that the water is still quite high. And this was before it rained today haha.

At the other end of the dock we saw three…well, yachts. One had this fancy treatment of all the mooring lines. I have heard mariners have plenty of free time; perhaps this is an example.

Posted at 6:11 PM | Comments Off on Highwater biz

We received a bit of rain this afternoon, but I didn’t think it amounted to much, so I checked the soil profile. It was lightly moist deeper than I thought. So: yay for MaNachur. [The sandiness of the soil makes it look drier than it is.]

The new moisture should help these grapes along. They’ll never get very large; these don’t. However, they do seem small for mid-July, reflecting the recent dryness.

Posted at 8:44 PM | Comments Off on Ag check

I tried to beat the heat and walk in the shadows, and pretty much accomplished that. And found this shorn and rotting tree-stub way in the woods lit by a nomadic, momentary shaft of sunlight, perhaps this stump’s last blaze of glory.

Posted at 8:29 PM | Comments Off on Anthropomorphizing again