Tuesday, 26 October 2021
I think I’ve noticed this before. Still, in this light and with all the bright green growth from this season, the corner 2-and-3 frames look fantastic.
Made a run to Little A-Town to see the Gray Sisters and their people. Lots of laughs and good times. En route home, we heard the first half hour of Game 1 of the World Series. Braves did darned well in the first inning.
Sunday, 3 October 2021
I’ve been keeping an eye on this project. At first, I just saw guys and heard sawing. Then, poof, walls and siding, but no roof. I thought it was a camp cabin, but now I think it’s a garage. There’s already a structure in the woods behind it, but it doesn’t look cabin-y either. Outside the frame to the right is another garage, pretty large. So: all garages, no domiciles? I await developments….
Tuesday, 14 September 2021
From afar, I have been seeing construction vehicles on this stretch of the BeltLine for weeks, and today there were very few pedestrians around, so I went down to take a quick peek. That strange narrow addition to the wide sidewalk? That’s where many runners trod (although not this guy), to avoid the hard concrete…and it looks like they’re adding a strip of a bouncier surface…which is a bit late, but darned appropriate. The space to the left of the sign is allocated for the planned parallel streetcar line…which is coming no time soon, as near as I can tell.
We’re almost half-way through September, and the light is changing…and so’s the vegetation. Jessayin.
Friday, 27 August 2021
In Joshua Rothman’s “Thinking it Through” (New Yorker, Aug 23rd), I came across the term motivated reasoning. He writes that it’s when your gut tells you what to think and your mind then figures out how to think it (paraphrasing).
Earlier on the Gail/Anthony/Tony show, I had seen a clip of a woman at the mic at a school board meeting on mask-wearing by attending children, who declared, “Science is not facts.”
Sounds like motivated reasoning.
Saturday, 14 August 2021
When I see this design on the chimney, I think microscope. On a table. Or looming above one.
See it? See something else?
And now for something completely different…
Saturday, 31 July 2021
Long before the present owners bought the place, this was the driveway to Hope’s cottage. It was white inside and out, with a long south-facing porch, and there was a closet in the back that had many puzzles we were allowed to select from on rainy days. The living room had a shelf with all the Wizard of Oz books in hardback, each with a different color cover; I was quite surprised later to find out that most people didn’t know there was more than one Oz book—the one I liked best was pale lilac…yes, I liked it for the special color rather than the contents. Anyway, much of the interior had beadboard for paneling, and it was the first building I remember noticing it. Hope taught me to make potato salad in the kitchen. One potato and one hard boiled egg per person, and one of each “for the pot.” Still a good ratio. Hope’s husband was in a wheelchair from mid-life (polio? dunno), and she needed to support the family, so she began a diaper cleaning service called what sounded to me like Di-Dee Wash that catered to households in the wealthier suburbs of Detroit. She did very well. Hope was a friend of my grandmother’s from college days, and that’s why she had the cottage on the hill and across the road from my grandparents’ property. I recall hearing that part of the original building had been a chicken house, thoroughly cleaned and moved and painted to become part of the meandering layout of the cottage.
Thursday, 15 July 2021
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.
Friday, 25 June 2021
In general, humans tend to pattern recognition.
Here’re a pair of architectural detail patterns, the kind that aren’t typically included in a book of architectural details. I especially like the flanking solar lights.
Friday, 4 June 2021
Another foggy, dewy morning, with wisps generated by the arrival of Mr. Sun. This is a few minutes later, when the fog tendrils had disappeared, and the sun highlighted the dew-outlined spider webs across the field. Lovely effect.
We left the compound, and headed up to the mouth of Hurricane Creek. At present, it’s flowing straight into Lake Superior, with its tannic taint clearly evident in the crystal clear lacustrine waters.
We walked the 1.5 miles along the Norse Country Trail* to the Au Sable lighthouse.
On the way back, I detoured to look at this shipwreck. Those are large iron rods that held the wooden beams together protruding above the water.
I also spotted a few of these gorgeous endangered pink lady’s slippers (Cypripedium acaule). They’re orchids and
In order to survive and reproduce, pink lady’s slipper interacts with a fungus in the soil from the Rhizoctonia genus. Generally, orchid seeds do not have food supplies inside them like most other kinds of seeds. Pink lady’s slipper seeds require threads of the fungus to break open the seed and attach them to it. The fungus will pass on food and nutrients to the pink lady’s slipper seed. When the lady’s slipper plant is older and producing most of its own nutrients, the fungus will extract nutrients from the orchid roots. This mutually beneficial relationship between the orchid and the fungus is known as “symbiosis” and is typical of almost all orchid species. [USFS link]
This one had me stumped. I don’t remember seeing it or looking it up before. It’s Polygaloides paucifolia, commonly called gaywings. Given that its range is eastern North America from Georgia north to the Hudson Bay and inland as far as Minnesota in the USA, I should be familiar with it. So, have I forgotten? 😎
* Why is this stuck in my head? Of course, it’s really NORTH Country Trail. No Viking hikers sighted.
Tuesday, 11 May 2021
New sports fields at the high school. I assumed the matching rust color in the building and “grass dirt” was deliberate. And, yes, I found that ball trying to escape to a nearby forest and tossed it on the field, where it rolled to the line between the fake grass and the fake soil.
Alley view. I stayed in the alley and minded my Ps and Qs.
Ah, there’s that across-lake mountain view, with cloud-caps.