Musings

I walked later than I would have preferred (heat, humidity), but that’s the way it goes sometimes. Because it was later, I found shadows, which is to say: I found more sunshine along my route. With this shot, however, I think in terms of shadows. What does this indicate about my personality or world-perspective? Unk.

And I did find some gorgeous flower posing, thank you Mr. Sun.

I assumed, given the amount of spring tree trimming and cutting, that our neighborhood had been cropped into great shape until, what?, perhaps this fall. But, no. I encountered at least three different tree-reduction crews today. And I assume that was a small sample of those roaming Our Fair City.

Posted at 8:08 PM | 1 Comment »

How many insects? I get five. Trumpet 😏 your count!

Posted at 9:04 PM | Comments Off on 😉

Took sage advice and left the house early to walk, even before coffee. The sun was just barely up, and mostly skimming the tops of the trees until late in my stomp. Which meant I could walk in shade. Yay. And cooler. Double yay. A successful strategy! As this plant is using.

Posted at 8:49 PM | Comments Off on Working the angles

We had a great evening celebrating our three Atlanta family June birthdays. We were tasked with bringing the mint chip ice cream, which the Guru selected. Only the fact that he chose Tillamook, and it is not green caused extensive discussion. Seems like purists would be fine with white mint choc chip ice cream.

Posted at 10:14 PM | 1 Comment »

I know it’s obvious that a walk in an urban neighborhood is a different experience than a walk in a rural place.

I’m pretty sure this is evidence of a movie/TV shoot being broken down. Takes many, many cables for the many lights and cameras. I saw at six guys doing the breakdown, making these careful coils of cables. Also, about seven houses facing this park had bunting and lawn decorations, plus “homemade” signs about never forgetting 9/11. I’ve never seen such decorations in real life.

And a pretty. With a typical surprise insect.

Posted at 6:16 PM | Comments Off on A movie world

At the tail end of our two-day car adventure (after well over 6k miles of travel) we got to endure several traffic slowdowns coming into our hometown (three stretches, and an estimated 30 minutes increase to travel time, so not too bad—except we were tired and ready to be home). It’s rare that we get stuck in rush hour traffic (RHT)…it was during the rush hour, but it was coming INTO town, so it’s a slightly different flavor of RHT than typically occurs.

Pretty sure this is ragweed. No pollen yet, so no sneezing.

Posted at 8:04 PM | Comments Off on Trip-end tale

Today was Day 2 of three garden-work days. I’ve been doing the usual spring reclaiming of the rhubarb from a non-optimal situation. Plus, it’s really dry this year, so I’m very glad to see the plants looking this good, or this plant—the others are less robust, and the smallest one has merely five small leaves.

Essentially, the crowns need to be transplanted to a new location where they have more sun exposure. Perhaps this fall.

Posted at 8:54 PM | Comments Off on Freeing the rhubarb

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.

Posted at 6:54 PM | Comments Off on Lakeside adventure

I know these as horsetails. Plant scientists call them Equisetum. As kids, we used to pull them apart at the joints. We had no idea that the dark bands are (technically) scale leaves. Or that the horsetails reproduce by spores.

I think this is a branched Equisetum growing with forget-me-nots. Charming textural combination, no?

Posted at 7:10 PM | 2 Comments »

The other day I swept the house. If you’re thinking of moving furniture and the motor noise of a vacuum cleaner, you have the wrong idea. No, I swept the building exterior, that is, the cobwebs and what they’ve caught away from the eaves and windows and sidings…a quite different activity. And now I see I need to do it again. We have a lot of gnats (which do NOT bite or sting, thankfully), and their little gossamer bodies get caught in the webs.

While the above is clearly lupin, I don’t know what this is. I found it on the edge of a wet ditch (essentially a swamp environment). I was too confident that I could ID it from the blooms. Nope. I’ll have to go back and look for the vegetation.

Posted at 7:08 PM | Comments Off on Micro-environments