Musings

Our cottage sun-up is delayed by the woods. This was at 7:12am, and filtered through an apple tree.

Midday, I was out assessing the rhubarb crop, and found this grey treefrog hanging in the shade.

When I returned later to do the picking, it had relocated. I picked eight stalks, and took the resulting rhubarb sauce to a potluck next door, along with some boughten (as my child-self would have called it) ice cream. Success!

Returning from socializing at 10pm, I had to photograph the moonrise. Note a few pixels of reflection off the lake through the trees.

Posted at 10:24 PM | Comments Off on A very good day

The earliest of the apple trees opened today. Most of the trees in the orchard are still in bud. The Siberian apple is one of the ones that are abloom, and I’m wondering if the pollinator trees are opening first. Certainly, I’m glad it’s warm enough that the pollinator insects can be active.

Posted at 9:05 PM | Comments Off on Timelines

This morning, I walked through the woods to the other side of the point. There’s no beach, so no beach strolling, just picking my way through the woods avoiding trilliums (most not blooming), ramps, sticks, muddy spots, and the like. The lake looks swollen to me, even without the beach-less margin. In fact, “high water” does not even come close to the present condition.

The ferns continue to unfurl, as you’d expect.

In the field, I found the first lupine bud, a bit ahead of the masses.

Posted at 10:01 PM | Comments Off on Conditions

Relatively overcast at 8:44am. By the way, that’s the stump of a huge white pine that had two main trunks. It became storm battered and had to be cut down so it didn’t fall on the cottage. This was some years ago. The chainsaw guy had been cutting trees in the woods and elsewhere for decades, and said it was the largest tree he’d ever cut down. I think it was planted in my great-grandfather’s time.

This was just a few minutes later, and you can see the sun was making inroads on the overcast. The cottage looks much better from this distance rather than closer up.

1:26pm. Sunny and almost totally cloudless. That’s a large sour cherry tree, with a gap in the middle. It has lovely dead-white blooms. You can see that the leaves are barely showing pretty much everywhere. (Evergreens don’t count.)

A vulpine visitor came through about 6:40pm, first heading west on a deer trail, then turning north on the driveway, here. If you read the title and get curious, thanks for sticking through the tedious-yet-informative weather-and-vegetation photos. 😉

Posted at 9:16 PM | Comments Off on Vulpine visitor

We made it! We found daffies looking at the lake…

…and ramps and fiddleheads in the woods…

…along with the earliest trilliums…. All a wonderful balm for my soul.

I tried for an artsy shot of the cabin-to-lake view, and flubbed. You can see the rain barrel is not yet in position, and there are many untackled chores you can’t see (thankfully), many of which eventually got eliminated from the to-do list. We are so happy to be here and the sun warmed the front porch enough that we sat there between waves of chore-ing and to dine tonight, just soaking in the bird calls and the aura of agreeableness.

Posted at 9:31 PM | 2 Comments »

Bug pile, east Defiance, Ohio.

Construction crew, southwest Archbold, Ohio.

Train, west Archbold, Ohio.

The Bridge, Straits of Mackinac.

Lake Huron, view east from St. Ignace.

Posted at 9:34 PM | Comments Off on Progress

Today, I learned that along the eastern flank of the eastern Carpathians are an arc of salt springs. I was looking at ones near Hoisești and Negritești. Both have nearby Chalcolithic and Bronze Age settlements, which, of course, is why I found out about the saline seeps.

Posted at 8:46 PM | Comments Off on Cause ‘n’ effect

Apian proof. [See yesterday.]

Posted at 8:53 PM | Comments Off on Bumbler

This was the sunset-ish view out the back; however, just after this we went out to repark both vehicles, and I caught the western view as I drove through the neighborhood, and I saw bright orange-red down near the horizon and almost half-way up the sky. That color makes this look faded and boring. Which it isn’t.

Posted at 10:05 PM | Comments Off on Sky-view

At 6:50am, the sky had more light than color. The season is marching on.

Posted at 10:28 PM | Comments Off on Slow change