Musings

Noting that the meteorologists predicted fabulous weather in our part of the world for the latter part of the week, we hit the road this morning headed for the mountains. First sight-seen: a fancy-painted (ok: wrapped) GooStreetView vehicle. Given how much I use that data, I’m okay with being in a few shots. I’ll remember to look in a month or two…

Our first real stop was our fave mountain bakery, just at the west end of the…

Cherohala Skyway.

Beautiful high-elevation views along most of the western Skyway. We ate the first half of our tasty bakery sandwiches here. Breezy, but sunny and not too chilly.

Stopped at Stecoah Gap to eat our second sandwich half. And I walked a good twenty-five feet along the AT.

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Ta-da! First walk in a month. Two big fat miles. At faster than 20-minute miles, so healthy.

I even found the odd flower, and this ready-to-open camellia bud. Interestingly, the flowers were totally white. No pink rims, as you might expect.

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I used the GooPhotos wayback machine and dredged up this image from fifteen years ago. Taken with a Real Camera, and not a phone. It’s First Pond, across the road from the house I grew up in and in the interior of the section…in Midwest township and range territory.

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These were coming down and coming down and now the back yard is carpeted at least three deep in supple golden leaves.

I found these elsewhere, and particularly liked the scalloped, serrated margins. And the goldenness.

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From northern Ohio, we pushed south, beginning while it was still full dark. Here’s a maple tree we found in Kentucky.

And its samaras.

Eventually we made it to ATL, with traffic problems here and there necessitating a creative route home. The Guru is stupendously good at serendipitous routing. I am unaccustomed to this view of downtown and some of midtown.

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I said goodbye to the grove for this year. Notice how many leaves are hanging on.

I said goodbye to the barrel reflection, and dumped the barrel and rolled it inside for the winter.

We crossed The Bridge to return to extended temporary trolldom (trolls live beneath the bridge, ya’know).

And we said hello to dear young newlyweds at Farm Club, northeast of Traverse City and highly recommended. What a starter, no?

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Just a few of these left…what an exquisite lacy silhouette.

Today was overcast, so this photo is from another morning, with early light on the upper branches of this, the Ghost Elm…ghost because it’s dead and the bark has sloughed off, and the wood is silvery, and it’s dead most likely because of dutch elm disease. [In elementary school, I did a presentation on DED; big hit with the kiddies, as I recall (sarcasm).]

Time to say goodbye to Ghosty, as we’ve begun a process to get the tree guy to down it strategically without also imperiling our electric service line. I think it used to be in the yard of the Red House, which burned in about 1960, barely within my memory.

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Such a gorgeous morning, I had to visit the beach and greet the sun.

Just me and the foam. Solitude. Peacefulness.

For the record, plenty of leaves are still on in the maple woods, and even green, but they are thinning.

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Without doubt, the most beautiful part of today was the extended morning fog, caused by the sun after our overnight frost. A friend says this, our first frost, is perhaps six weeks later than average. That’s a huge discrepancy. Anyway, we’ve been enjoying the relative warmth.

Usually the sun hits and doesn’t climb very long before most of the fog dissipates, leaving a few lingering wisps that then disappear. Not today; the fog was uneven on our property and hung around for quite a while.

We did two big(?) chores today. This morning we did laundry, which had been delayed because the “dro” was closed on Friday when we intended to do it, and the sign indicated it’d be closed all weekend. And the other dro has no change machine, so we had to wait until Monday, that is today, to return to the first choice dro. Got the wet clothes hung out for the sun to dry, and then trimmed barberries, two wheelbarrow loads worth of errant branches removed. As the sun started dropping most of the clothing was still damp, so I distributed it around the sun porch with its abundant solar gain (and a ceiling fan). It looks like the aftermath of a clothing explosion. And now it’s mostly dry. One triple load’s worth.

Posted at 7:18 PM | Comments Off on Quotidian tales

We had another gorgeous morning here in the North Woods, or maybe the North Woods and Fields and Lakes.

I set my goal with prepping a new bed for two rhubarb crowns that are being smothered and otherwise slowly snuffed out in their current location. I hope this will work, otherwise I’ll be transplanting them again.

In my recollection, I spent the most time and energy on moving soil and combing through it to remove roots and rootlets, so as to reduce competition by quack grass and other floral familiars.

Tomorrow, weather permitting, I’ll attempt an actual transplant.

To finish up the narrative of the day, the afternoon weather became dicier, with overcast and some raindrops, so I made a large pot’o’chili, which we greatly appreciated as we watched the sun fail to warm the sunporch sufficiently to allow opening the doors to let warm air enter our main living space. If that makes any sense.

Posted at 8:26 PM | Comments Off on Onward, phased