Musings

Decorated, decorative wall. Turquoise…lichen?

Simple ID: red red red hibiscus.

Posted at 8:06 PM | Comments Off on Closeup milieu

Wandering the neighborhood, I saw far more parent-children walkers than normal. Then I got to the firehouse and saw they were having an open house. And it made sense.

Even with the low overcast.

Had to include this spiral gardenia. Smelled terrific.

Posted at 9:41 PM | Comments Off on Open house

To avoid Delta exposure, we went to the drive-through at the pharmacy. Turned out to be a poor choice. It took on average ten (!!) minutes per vehicle ahead of us. Same to take care of us. May try a different pharmacy next time. We were in line long enough that a rain storm came up.

Unusual sprouting trunk. Effectively a natural form of coppicing.

Posted at 9:15 PM | Comments Off on Drive-up adventure

If I recall the figures correctly, I saw a report today that indicated that Americans who got the “original” Covid19 infected, on average, 2 to 3 other people. This nasty Delta variant, well, on average, 5 to 7 peoople are infected per afflicted person. This is why hospitals and health care workers are overwhelmed. By almost entirely, the unvaxxed.

BTW, while in the UP, we’d see maybe one or two other people in the grocery store wearing a mask; here: pretty much everyone is wearing a mask, or double masks. The latter is my style, these days.

Been walking early, trying to avoid the sun’s rays…and the heat and sun damage they bring…just too/so uncomfortable to wear long sleeves and long pants, and I do not like to slather on zinc or other barrier preparations on a daily basis.

Jealous of the in-laws who have a coffee maker they can trigger remotely as they make the final leg of their morning walk. Me, I do it the old way—well, with an electrified coffee maker…so, dating to late last century. Heh.

Posted at 9:06 PM | Comments Off on Nowadays

Yesterday I mentioned urban gathering. Here’s some straight-up urban agriculture. Cukes on the left, and maize, tomatoes, and okra on the right. [A neighbor garden.]

On the other hand, I have “regular” basil, Thai basil, and a scrappy mint plant. Only herbs…no veg. Too much shade for the sun-demanding species….

Posted at 9:13 PM | Comments Off on Good eating

Sunday morning early. Quiet. I’m passing by the Middle School, which opened last week. I see a ladder and a pair of legs, knees down, in a leaf-dense bush…shrub.

I keep walking, and I see it’s a woman. In a fig tree. It’s fig season, I think. This is my second picking, she says. Gleefully.

[Photos no relation to the story. Hibiscus and glinting sun. Today. No figs.]

Posted at 8:30 PM | Comments Off on Urban gathering

I never heard of “the twisties,” a term commonly used by gymnasts and in the news after Simone Biles used it. She meant that despite all her practice and experience, her brain no longer knew where she was in space as she did a vault or other maneuver. The potential penalty for a gymnast can be serious injury; SB managed to land safely, thankfully. The twisties are difficult to banish, to overcome, and to conquer. As Emily Giambalvo put it in a WaPo story, “Simone Biles said she got the ‘twisties.’ Gymnasts immediately understood” (28 July)

And after experiencing the twisties once, it’s very difficult to forget. Instinct gets replaced by thought. Thought quickly leads to worry. Worry is difficult to escape.

I’m wondering if it has a faint relationship to when I mistype a (common) word, and my fingers/brain repeat this error until I super concentrate and somehow return once again to the correct letter order.

Or perhaps more likely, this finger-blip is nothing like the twisties.

Posted at 7:38 PM | 2 Comments »

The guy cutting the neighbor’s hay (not the neighbor, he’s in his 90s and now delegates this chore) must have a day job, as I only hear him in the field in the evenings. Like now.

The hay quality is pretty poor, but he must find it worth it, as it takes a pass to cut and windrow the hay, and another pass to bale it, plus driving about the field wrangling the bales—big, round ones, and taking them to…market?…to his cattle? That’s a fair amount of fuel.

Posted at 6:29 PM | Comments Off on Bucolic observations

Laundry day means laundry and gro-shopping, all in one speedy 35 minute window (plus drive time). These days all we do at the ’dro is wash ($5 per triple load; we did two), then bring the damp fabric piles home to hang out. [Yay for MaNachur’s dry cycle.] We don’t have much line, so we used convoluted algorithms for carefully doubling up the sheets (old country technique).

Posted at 8:22 PM | Comments Off on Retro strategies

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