Talking fencepost
Wednesday, 2 June 2021
The story of rural agriculture decline in marginal areas like the central Upper Peninsula in one image; that’s what this decrepit fencepost “says” to me.
Musings
Great day
Monday, 31 May 2021
I’m calling it a moon walk. To a swamp and back.
Then, we ventured over toward Canada (border still closed), and watched this upbound freighter motor along. The landmass to the right is Canada. The closer island to the left is USA territory, or more truthfully, birdlandia.
The freighter has made the turn to head for the open waters of Lake Superior, and the sky shows many rain streaks. It eventually reached us, and we retreated indoors. With our whine.
So much fun to see long-time friends again, and to give and receive hugs. We laughed and told stories like always and my heart is well warmed.
Shades of blue
Tuesday, 25 May 2021
I know this as forget-me-not. [Internet search….] Taxonomically, they are the Myosotis genus. I think this is M. sylvatica, and native to Europe, however frequently I find it around here. Probably another escapee from the great-grandmother garden. Like the lupins.
Totally different scale; could be a farm complex on the prairie during the green season. But, no; up here by the sub-tundra, under a threatening sky that only produced a few drops of rain and no storm.
Layers of history
Thursday, 20 May 2021
Today I walked around the old economic heart of A Real City.
The Beating Heart was these falls, the Upper Saint Anthony Falls, now marred? by a lock and dam.
The power the river generated, and this is the Mississippi so it is a mighty generator, ran the Gold Medal Flour mill on the south/west side…
And the Pillsbury mill on the north/east side. This is the underbelly of the mill complex. [Note fisher-person.] Now the mills are no longer milling, and this sacred place of the people who were here before the EuroAmericans arrived is irretrievably altered.
I quite enjoyed walking across the curving Stone Arch Bridge that seems to connect the two mills. It’s a pedestrian bridge now, although it was built for rail cars. The water on the left is the lower end of the Pillsbury millrace (it seemed to me), and the bridge crosses the main channel of the Mississippi.
And all this? Yup. Couldn’t have put it better myself.
Crossing the plains
Wednesday, 19 May 2021
Steady eastbound motoring brought us from pastured beef with oil drilling, to pasture plus some row-crops (seemed almost exclusively wheat), to less and less pasture and more and more crop-fields.
Somewhere in there, the oil machinery disappeared, and then we got a few wind turbines. A few of these old-style windmills were scattered throughout.
Now, no photo, we’re in almost entirely row-crops, and no cattle/pasture whatsoever. Rain expected overnight, which is good as it is a bit dry; however, accompanying tornadoes are not desirable.
A more precise title might be along the lines of “Central continental longitudinal topographic and land use drift,” but, duh, too unwieldly.
Great skies
Tuesday, 18 May 2021
View south down lake from north end of Flathead Lake.
No sky in this shot, but JOHNS Lake! We only got a few more miles up Going to the Sun Road before we had to turn back, as it is not yet open for the summer season.
McDonald Falls, through vegetation.
Random view from east side of Glacier National Park. [Apologies; forgot to color correct.]
Vernal lake/pond on upper plains, with mountains in the right distance.
Penguin at Cut Bank.
Rainbow in far eastern Montana. Not caused by fracking.
Clear skies
Monday, 17 May 2021
Sometime today, yesterday’s Cascades became today’s Rockies. These long lakes are all fake, or perhaps more kindly, they’re reservoirs. With abundant power generation. I’ll take the reflections.
This murder scene welcomed us to tonight’s overnight housing.
When I first arrived, as part of the dying fish tableau, I watched a male mallard preen before departing. And among the plants, several Arctostaphylos uva-ursi, which I know as kinnikinnick (from the Algonquian referring to the plant’s use as a smoking substance).
If I understood the weather prediction correctly, places we’ve been today and will visit tomorrow will have snowfall Wednesday after we are out on the Great Plains.
Breaking our fast
Friday, 14 May 2021
We planned to lunch IN A RESTAURANT today (yes, first time since…) before the mask mandate change. We planned to sit on the deck. Turned out the deck tables were already occupied when we arrived (plus, in the full sun!), so we sat INDOORS. The tables were arranged for 50% capacity, and we had our space. Everyone I saw wore their mask except when they were eating. Including us.
We ate with a view of the Olympics—so clear!—and of the mouth of Lake Washington Ship Canal—plenty of traffic in and out. The open water to the right (outside photo view) is Puget Sound and salt water. The Canal connects the the freshwater Lake Washington (follow the water to the left for a ways) to the Sound. The Ballard/Chittenden Locks enable boat passage as there’s a 20-foot difference in the elevations of sea and the lake. The Locks block the migrating salmon so the lock complex includes a fish ladder. The water passing through the fish ladder has to be “adjusted” (long story elsewhere) to include salt water to provide the proper scent for the fish to want to jump jump jump jump jump up the ladder to their spawning grounds. Constructing the Canal decreased the water level in Lake Washington by almost 9 feet, so I imagine there was some hue and cry from landowners whose docks became useless. But construction began in 1911, so maybe there was more rah!rah!rah! and less dissent about such changes to real estate value etc. I’m just guessing. You can find more info on all this on the web; ’sup to you.
My seafood salad includes smoked scallops. So very yum. What a great meal to be our first IN IN IN a restaurant since, well, you know.
Mole negro Sunday
Sunday, 9 May 2021
Mole negro (say: moh-lay nay-grow) is a famous sauce native to Oaxaca, Mexico. We made it (more or less) the way it is made today, so it includes Old World ingredients not available in the prehispanic kitchen, like almonds and chicken. We processed a long list of ingredients this way and that, often with toasting, ending up as three different purees, plus chicken stock (upper left). The immersion blender got a huge workout, as it was the processing workhorse.
The final assembly began with the toasted then reconstituted dried chiles (right foreground), pureed, pureed, then more pureeing, and finally sieved to achieve succulent smoothness, then adding stock and simmering down. To that, we then added the upper right mixture, colored principally by roasted tomatoes, but also including tomatillos and toasted bread crumbs. Plus other lovelies. And more stock and simmering. Next, we added the lower left mixture, three kinds of nuts plus roasted plantain, and toasted spices like anise seed and raisins and sesame seeds and cinnamon bark (not a lot, but still). And stock, followed by simmering, of course. The final add was “Mexican chocolate,” which includes more cinnamon, and is not super sweet—still, it does include sugar. And more stock and further simmering.
At the end, the harsh sharpness that the chiles initially had was gone, and their biting heat was tempered. The twenty-four (or so) ingredients had become one amazing, complex sauce.
So very yummy. Probably won’t make it again from scratch, yet a lovely experience. And the eating—well, incomparable.
Could be
Saturday, 8 May 2021
Possible North American entry for “Most Eclectic Grocery Shopping Selections, Six Items Maximum”? Upper left, that’s a jackfruit. I hear this is the season for them…. Not to be confused with a durian.
This jackfruit came from Mexico, and is labelled “The Original Party Fruit.” Flavor analysis: “Sweet with hints of mango, banana and melon.” Opening suggestions include using an oiled knife to combat stickiness. And, and, and, it’s a great meat substitute; not sure how a fruit is meat…perhaps we’ll open it Sunday.