Musings

Darned muggy today, and too hot to cook, really. But I had a chunk of pork shoulder that needed to be prepared—didn’t want to do the freeze/thaw dance with it, and besides we did need something for our Saturday night meal. I managed to turn it into simple-recipe stovetop BBQ without overly heating the house. Trick: I started early, and by 9am the pot was turned down to simmer, and by noon, the pot was in the fridge so I could remove (some of) the partly congealed fat before reheating it for dinner. Yum.

Posted at 8:04 PM | Comments Off on Tasty menu

As I put skin cream on them earlier, I thought a bit about hangnails. Not a hot topic, I know, but they are curious things…a little extra skin growth, not enclosing the body as it normally does. Somehow, when you clip off the hangnail and cease antagonizing the area, it’ll go back to being flat skin. Me, I get hangnails when I do a lot of cooking/cleaning and my hands are wet, kinda-wet, damp, a bit dry, that kind of thing for a while. We did a bunch of cooking on Sunday and Monday, and presto! I have hangnails all over. They’re healing, however, as I’ve kept my hands out of water (mostly) since Monday…and also the cream.

So, I’ll try for a tenuous parallel: the aphids are so dense on some of the lupines that there is a sap-fall on the leaves…at least, that’s my interpretation of this scenario. The parallel falls apart when you consider that this lupine’s aphid density is ever so much higher than my hangnail count, and thus the affliction is a greater problem for the lupine(?).

Out of curiosity, do other primates suffer from hangnails?

Posted at 6:18 PM | Comments Off on Hangnail curiosity

Lordy, lordy, we were in the vortex of people-here/people-leaving. This clover-visitor was off that axis.

The peonies in our part of the property are darned perky. The earliest bloomers are already fading toward white/the lightest pink. Cycle of life.

Have I noted this before? Show-stopping light here!

Missing our now-absent visitors and the one we saw briefly today…sigh—moving on. Luv.

Posted at 10:20 PM | Comments Off on Emotional motion

Train and…reflections.

Fern and…forest-floor floral friend.

Waterfall and…reflection.

Stars and…you know.

Lovely day to take a long, slow train trip, a slightly hustling walk (The Foot, of course) during…intermission(?), and the same long, slow train trip back. Not a loop; instead, an up-and-back.

In a foreign country!

Great fun!

Posted at 9:23 PM | Comments Off on And…

Pretty sure this is the Heracleum that is not friendly to the skin–sap makes the human skin photosensitive, causing blistering and burning (wild/cow parsnip).

A couple of years ago I saw one flourishing over the hill, but this one is by our beach!

Pondering how to carefully remove the plant with no…downstream negative effects…no burns, skin blistering or brown streaks that can last over a year!

Moon over Whitefish Lake. Which used to have whitefish in it, I have read. Most people don’t call it that anymore…because? no whitefish? I prefer the old name to the modern one: South Manistique Lake.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Appearance and disappearance

On a quiet evening, a stroll can be so rewarding. The lake was quiet. [Last night we heard a loon.]

But not too quiet. Doe and fawn also out for a stroll….

And the peonies are beginning to open. Just yesterday they were closed buds.

And the lupine field remains gorgeous. Look at the color variation. I think this year my favorites are the dark purple-blue ones and the bicolor variants.

Posted at 6:56 PM | Comments Off on Evening stroll

We began the Plant-the-Enchanted-Basil-Forest-Project in earnest today. We got the plants, three big pots, yesterday. Today, we removed most of the floral flotsam and jetsam that had reoccupied the Botanist’s garden mound. And the quack roots. Many quack roots. Given how dry the soil was (need rain!), I also dumped half the rain-barrel water that’s accumulated since we arrived on the mound, to de-dustify the soil. It’ll wait overnight for completion of prep, then….

Tomorrow we will plant!

Because the plants are so lush, we pruned them back to allow the roots to develop when they get in the Real Earth, and used the “clippings” to make pesto for our (dry) mini-raviolis.

Life is darned good.

Posted at 9:15 PM | Comments Off on Quack reference (no ducks)

Yeah, pure Michigan. Like the idea, but I haven’t yet been willing to put this stuff in my gullet. Not likely to change that opinion, either.

Moving on, yeah, the fish-flies are still here, and this one wanted to be my best friend. Pooooooooof, I exhaled, and it was gone, off to find another sponsor in this hard, hard world.

Droney captured a lovely, still-sunny moment. Lordy, lordy, the lupine are lovely. We are enjoying them to the n-th degree!

And, we reunited with our good friends (sigh; love them!) who have looked after our place through the winter doldrums and captured-and-eliminated many rodents who sought to reside in Our House (aka cottage), against Our Wishes, through the winter quiet. We reoccupied The Cottage without much competition from Rodents or Bats, in great part thanks to the efforts of ukelele-playing Puppet-Woman, whom today we recognized as Saint UPPW….

Posted at 10:08 PM | Comments Off on Moving right along

Our lovely neighbors have a super porch, and sometimes we join them for “porch-time.” You may call it cocktail hour.

Tonight was a porch-time evening, and we listened to distant thunder-booms and enjoyed the relative coolness. And the company, of course, especially the company!

Thanks again for the hospitality!

Posted at 8:46 PM | Comments Off on Socializing

Someone thought this lone, highlightable, benefit might cinch a deal—fast. Turns out maybe the rate’s too high or something else, as this sign has been posted for a while.

Yeah, and a flower photo. Interesting color. Light plum? Blushing orchid? Rosy something?

Posted at 7:58 PM | Comments Off on Wordiness