Musings

Our morning air began with haze and pre-sun-fog, then the sun burned off the fog and we were left with…

…haze, giving a strange quality to the bridge crossing despite the Great Lakes breezes.

Still hazy into the nothern Lower…my, how green the plants are…it has not been a dry summer. Dry here and there in the spring, but not in the summer. [So far.]

Finally, pretty darned clear in northern Ohio. Good old flat northern Ohio.

And southern Ohio…the red sun is from the haze, and we can see some in the oblique, low-angle rays. Yet, it seems far clearer than in the Upper Peninsula.

Wonder what we’ll see tomorrow as we continue south….

Posted at 8:37 PM | Comments Off on Haze variation

I saw this photo and thought I could identify funky cauliflower shapes in the unopened buds. I didn’t have that reaction to the actual flower (what does that say about me?). So, I checked out scientific names, and it turns out that they (Daucus carota and Brassica oleracea)are not closely related at all. Ancestral populations suggest origins in temperate Europe and southwest Asia vs very southern and western Europe, so no huge spatial overlap.

End economic botany discussion.

Posted at 7:55 PM | Comments Off on Visual crossover

I’ve been waiting for one of these misty mornings, when all is still and it seems like I am looking at another version of this world. I keep thinking that the air is different, perhaps holding more secrets.

I had been thinking about cutting this dead branch, but, now, how can I? It is such a fine place for the spiders to catch meals.

Posted at 7:10 PM | Comments Off on Yawning, anthropomorphizing

Our fine socially active day included a lovely beach- and fire-side evening with lots of laughs and even a yellow-blooming plant identification (I’ve already forgotten the name—oops!). Bonus, we saw this sunset glow on our walk back to our place.

Posted at 10:06 PM | Comments Off on Many bonuses

Road sign, heh. A bird’s dust bath. Must have been darned energetic to clear away that much gravel.

I’ll throw this in. A double-wedge of illumination on the swamp ditch, plus artsy tree branches.

I can tell the sun’s moving away from full summer mode. The low angle light in the morning continues much later. Which I appreciate in my attempt to walk in shadow.

Posted at 8:15 PM | Comments Off on Road sign, plus

In the interest of doing things differently once in a while, I took my walk this evening and enjoyed the protection of long shadows from the westing sun. I also scared up three groups of deer. This group—two does, two large fawns—crossed the road at a fast pace, digging into the moist sandy deposits along this stretch of road. The deer weren’t that large, and the depth is an indication of their speed.

Posted at 8:38 PM | Comments Off on Evening activity

Rain rain rain…overnight and into the morning. Not a deluge, but enough that the ditches filled in the swamp, and water backed up onto the road in this low spot.

I think this is a trapper bridge, but maybe it’s a fisherperson bridge. In either case, it crosses the opposite ditch at another spot and it’s now almost submerged.

No rain predicted overnight; it’s a good thing. And to think, just the other day I was planning to save the dish water for outdoor plants unless it rained.

Posted at 9:31 PM | Comments Off on Splish splash

Last evening, and all yesterday, we had persistent haziness. Seems unlikely it was smog, and I detected no smoke smell, so if it was that, it was from far, far away. So, does that mean it was…suspended moisture?

This morning, the haze remained, but the sun did burn through, although tinted orange by whatever it is in the atmosphere. A persistent semi-cloudiness held on, although it was plenty sunny if you abandoned shadiness.

Too hot today, although we’re expecting a cool-off over the next three days. Fingers crossed the meteorologists and their models are correct.

Posted at 5:42 PM | 1 Comment »

We headed to the Refuge today, anticipating clouds of biting insects, leaving us with the pleasure of remaining in the vehicle during the entire driving loop (7 miles), and thus protected from their damage. Ehem, air-conditioned vehicle—high today in the mid-80s (hence the pleasure). Which is darned hot here. And it’s humid.

A visit to the Refuge is often about pattern recognition. The first photo has white dots. In the foreground they are water lilies. In the background, they are swans. It seems to be water lily season right now, as we saw rafts of them in some areas, as in the second photo. White dot recognition lesson over.

We also saw other waterfowl: loons, Canada geese, ducks…not a lot of variety or head-count, however. We looked and looked for turtles, increasingly populous over the last few years. We had not spotted any in the spring…perhaps too cold? Well, today was not cold. We finally found two, but most of the “turtle logs” previously likely to support turtles were bereft. We don’t know if there was a die-off, or…?

Posted at 5:34 PM | Comments Off on Driving Refuge visit

I had thought this pair had moved on; today the (I assume) fella serenaded me with their rough call. They had moved on when I returned ten minutes later, perhaps flown to a nearby pond.

We boarded the pick-em-up and headed down the road. A couple of the rivers we crossed were the Sturgeon and the Little Smelt. Yay for fish.

This is the mouth of the Escanaba Marina channel; it opens into Little Bay de Noc. I proposed to the Guru that there must be a good Little Bay de Noc Noc joke, but I couldn’t think of one. [puh-dump] And, yes, there is a Big Bay de Noc.

We returned through the woods and got out on the bridge over the West Branch of the Manistique.

Posted at 6:56 PM | Comments Off on Bits of our day