Musings

Did that title catch your eye? What I mean is that the humidity and murkiness evident first thing in the morning (here), and obscuring the far shore, heralded in a hot, moist day, good for reading and low-key activities all afternoon. And sipping ice water…that kind of day-drinking.

My morning beach tour became a leech-hunting expedition. I found the Garish Green Sand Shovel mostly buried in the uppper-beach sand on my first tour. It’s perfect for leech-tossing. The storminess of previous days sent lots of the boneless critters toward the beach, where I pitched them onto the beach, then tossed them to the off-beach vegetation. I returned a bit later to get a second harvest, as I found so many on the first visit. I think the total was two dozen. No lie.

Posted at 5:59 PM | Comments Off on Day drinking

The weather flip-flopped all day. This was at 6:18am. Dry, with strange orange layer along the horizon to the north, and solid cloud-cover above.

By 10am, it was pouring, with thunder and lightning to keep us alert. That’s how the day went. Right now, it’s fading off a rain/thunder/lightning phase.

I’m glad to have the rain, although less excited about the accompanying audio track.

Posted at 10:10 PM | Comments Off on Changeable

Potluck tonight. All good, as usual, with an outstanding tart cherry pie for dessert. Superlative.

The meal was followed by a peek at the stunning sunset.

Posted at 9:10 PM | 1 Comment »

My, the lake was quiet this morning.

I even saw large bird tracks on the sand bottom. My bet is sandhill crane tracks.

Posted at 9:23 PM | Comments Off on Pacific, but not the Pacific

Today, the sun rose, as it does.

Then, my activities were hijacked by The Rhubarb Situation.

My cousin discovered that the red dots on the leaves of our rhubarb were in all likelihood a fungus, and spores…and, well, we may not be subsistence farmers, but Things Needed To Be Done. Now.

Thus, rhubarb hijacked my day. The upshot is that my rhubarb patch is picked over, and the stems processed into sauce, and the leaves (and their spores) sequestered in a gar-bag, sealed up ready for The Dump.

All good, except that isn’t what I had planned for my Friday. Not that Other Activities were more rewarding, or whatever. Just, it’s that my choices had been confiscated. Such is life.

Posted at 8:56 PM | Comments Off on Rhubarb Day

My theory is it’s just one crazy deer. A deer ate the trillium by the NW corner of the cottage. A deer ate the tops of the ferns in front of the cottage. A deer ate two of my in-bloom peonies (yesterday). A deer ate the tops of some of the lupines. None of this happened in any of the years I’ve been here. What gives? I think it’s one deer, and that animal is strange/barmy.

Not wanting to lose any more peonies, I used some of the branches we’ve cut out of the apple trees to make a kraal of sorts to protect a plant, not livestock, but you get the idea.

Posted at 8:49 PM | Comments Off on Construction project

Lighthouse sequence. The structure is on the end of a breakwater at the mouth of the Manistique River. It is 35 ft tall and made of steel. It was first lit in 1916, and automated in 1969. Safety first.

Wide angle.

Wide, with red osier dogwood in foreground.

Not so wide, with sign and seagull (or tern or whatever it is; we always called them gulls).

We encountered wet roads, then rain, on our return drive; however, no rain fell here at the cottage, sadly.

Posted at 7:57 PM | Comments Off on Various truths

The field before sun-crest.

The field after sun-crest.

Ferns in the woods.

Ferns by the cottage.

Chives, picked for tonight’s stew. [The flowers are for show; those stems are not tender enough to eat any more.]

Posted at 8:41 PM | Comments Off on Marking time

Fern frond.

Potentilla blooms.

Peony blossoms.

Posted at 8:25 PM | Comments Off on Botanical samples

You can look at the early sun…

…and you can turn around and see what it’s lighting up.

Here’s late-day low-angle sun backlighting a rhubarb leaf.

It’s only right to celebrate the sun on the longest day of the year.

Posted at 9:12 PM | Comments Off on Sun-shines