Rainy day
Monday, 26 June 2023
We did a wee bit of time travelling this evening and watched “Yellow Submarine.” I’m sure I never saw it before. Great music; I sang along with all the songs!
Musings
Finds
Saturday, 24 June 2023
Before the heat came on, that is around 8:15am, I was removing grasses from around the peony and found these rosebuds! Later I found two blooms. These are small roses, less than two inches across and a slightly different pink from the peonies.
In the heat of the afternoon, we took a jaunt to Naubinway to King’s to get smoked whitefish for dinner. After we secured our purchase (and we could have had menominee or lake trout or I forget the other local fish), we meandered down to the dock…and found the Ida S., all buttoned up…for the season?…permanently?
Kinda hard to believe all these little towns along the Lake Michigan shore used to have many active fishing boats, shipping their catch toward Chicago and Detroit. Most of the fishermen were immigrants, Europeans who knew the fishing trade of the Atlantic or Mediterranean. Some Portuguese and Italian surnames still remain, for example.
Just that fast
Tuesday, 20 June 2023
Ya leave for two nights and the critters and varmints and infestations set in. Aphids are sucking the juices out of (a minority, I admit) the lupines. Arrgh; it’s tough to be a human molding the world. [Hello, Anthropocene.]
My latest mystery
Monday, 19 June 2023
In my admittedly sketchy attempt to obtain and retain Upper Great Lakes headlines, I vaguely recollect a story or mention of cruise ships, perhaps looping from Chicago to Mackinaw Island and back, something like that. So I shouldn’t have been surprised to see this towering maritime vessel, but I sure was. It was anchored just off the mouth of the Manistique River, and thus offshore of the celebrated city of Manistique. I’m pretty sure that orange central vessel was transporting cruisers…but what did they come ashore to do? Shop Main Street? Visit the Thompson Fish Hatchery? Wander the aisles of the hardware store (as we occasionally do)? What?
Quite a day
Sunday, 18 June 2023
With our fine cuppsa-joe in hand, we strolled across the Fox River bridge rather early in the morn, meeting these googly-eyed statues of two of the four fox-sons of Papa Charlemagne. The St. Charles (Illinois) Chamber of Commerce website tells the story of Charlemagne’s command to his offspring to take care of the EuroAmerican settlers of the valley. I find it a fanciful and strange tale.
Upriver a short way, we came across this statue, also with rather paternalistic words, although I rather liked the figure’s presence.
We continued up the riverwalk to the older train trestle (green), now with a walking bridge nestled alongside (brown). Our friends said long ago when they were children, the daring among them might cross on the trestle…this was long before the river was cleaned up and the walking trails developed. And condos built and development and resurgence…and gee, it’s great someone spent tax dollars to clean up the river….
In the afternoon, we attended a fine party and BBQ, and still later, we caught the smoke-altered sunset en route to our overnight location in Wisconsin. A great time was had by all.
Minority cultivar (?)
Friday, 16 June 2023
Here’s another garden escapee that is surviving in the tall (unmowed) grass: bachelor’s button (BB). Our specimens all look like this, which is like only a minority of the photos that Goo summons up to a search for BB. Perhaps it fell out of favor in the gardening community?
Not my field…oops, my field
Monday, 12 June 2023
I know of Impressionist paintings. This looks like an Impressionist photo…same vibe anyway.
Pink/red
Sunday, 11 June 2023
The lupines are just so lovely. I like this bicolor specimen, and I’m not a huge fan of pink. It’s okay, even lovely, but not usually a favorite. Perhaps its the pairing with magenta that sparks this for me….
The BBC published this map showing wildfire data from NASA and “firms” data from the first eight days of June. There’re far more fires than I gleaned from news reports…they’re all over…well not ALL, but many scattered places.
Shipping and sugarplums
Tuesday, 30 May 2023
Both of us were in the mood to take a break from chores-about-the-property, and I got texting to friends…and when the dust settled we took off eastbound to see them and to do errands. First stop was lunch at a small burger place—with car-hops!—where we could watch a very local ferry zooming back and forth from mainland to island (both Michigan territories) and back. [Note phone check before driving away.]
It’s not quite that simple, as the route, short as it is, crosses an international shipping route. Here’s a Great Lakes freighter upbound toward the Sault Locks. It’s the John G. Munson (made of steel and self-loading; built 1952; 102′ mid-section added 1975–76; owned by Canadian National Railway Co.; IMO: 5173670), if you can’t read the name. Out of Duluth, and most certainly headed back there. [Apologies for cutting off a sliver of the stern.]
We did our other errands and headed for our fun fun socializing stop. We chatted about a huge range of topics, including what this shrub is. iNaturalist (free app; recommended!) says Amalanchier species, commonly known as serviceberry and sugarplum…and many other names. Happy agreement among us with the app ID.
On our return leg, we made a quick end-of-road stop to look across the shipping channel that the Munson will soon pass through. The other side is another country, Canada. Did I know this?—that scholars have coalesced around the hypothesis that Canada is a corruption of the St. Lawrence Iroquoian word kanata, which means village or settlement. Town and country, yup, so efficient, our neighbors to the north….
And just like that, we returned to the cottage, unloaded and stashed all our new possessions, and settled back into our normal evening routine…albeit no longer with any new “Succession” episodes in our future. Oh, Shiv.
Two voyages of exploration
Wednesday, 24 May 2023
First produce from the property. Yay! These were easy finds, right next to the chives up by the garage. Both species are likely escapees from my great-grandparents’ gardens.
Had to go to town and the Guru was off doing Man Business, while I wandered the parking lot of goodies, an outdoor showroom, basically. I was not shopping. I was collecting information. This beauty was larger than most of the similar vehicles on this lot. The smallest ones were like two-seater golf carts. This is nothing like that.
And neither is its price tag. Yikes. This is way more than our also brand new pickup when we bought it back in 2019. However, this Can-Am beast comes with “all options,” which is totally the opposite of our pickup. Still.