Musings

I’ve been trying to snap this cluster of white birch trunks for a few days, and every time I bring them into focus they have a beige/brown cast on the screen that I don’t see in reality. I know I can remove that in post, but I kept trying to find a situation where the camera wasn’t “confused” by the color. Finally, this oblique angle (both me and the sun) produced relatively true color.

And this is a close-up (duh) of a mullein (Verbascum thapsus) leaf (top surface). The fuzziness appears like another world’s surface.

Posted at 6:34 PM | Comments Off on Photo phun

When the Manistique River is high this time of the year, the lake it flows from must be high, too? Roight? And it is. And it has been. For years. We go from drought years to this in, what?, just a few years…and this high-water has been with us for, what?, a decade?

The lake it flows from is a shallow lake, big and shallow, and the speed boaters always had to take that into account…like anchor their boats well off-shore (takes some depth for those big motors) and take a dingy in, and the like. Well, those folks like the high levels. The rest of us watch our property wash into the water and disappear. Not happy-making.

In short, Lake Michigan is high. The feeder rivers that flow into it are high, and everything upstream is water-filled. Welcome to climate change, this local version right at present.

Today’s official palate-cleanser flower….

Posted at 8:32 PM | Comments Off on Water! Essence of life.

I have only a wee-teeny meteorological knowledge of clouds, and that weensy database includes no name for this pattern. I hereby name it a radial cloud pattern.

Posted at 9:09 PM | Comments Off on Going with the descriptive

I still don’t know what this sapsucker was up to with the wing held sideways. S/he eventually stuck the beak under the wing in a normal manner when preening, then flew off, but s/he held the wing-out position for maybe two minutes without paying attention to it. Not hurt; a yoga stretch, perhaps?

I called these harebells the other day, but I think they’re garden bluebells gone wild.

First photo: not a woodpecker; second photo: not a harebell. I’m living and learning. 🤨

Both photos qualify as snapshots and no more. The first was through the screen/window, and the second just would not expose better.

Posted at 5:37 PM | Comments Off on Not a…

Green as in: well before harvest time. Green apples.

Green grapes.

Okay. And a fine view of the blue sky, white pouf-clouds, and the grey-turquoise lake. With red chairs.

We are lucky living in this colorful place.

Posted at 5:10 PM | Comments Off on Green season

Fancy a human-made landscape? Here’s a transformation of tundra-swamp into open water…albeit shallow. When it was built in the 1930s, none of this vegetation in the water existed. Now, MaNachur is turning it back into swamp via mats of reeds and lilies and the like.

For now, trumpeter swans gracefully feeding. Shallow, no?

Posted at 6:07 PM | Comments Off on The shallows

Mighty tasty black raspberries.

Lovely lake. Open sky.

Winsome woodchuck. [But a big eater. S/he moved on from the lawn to nab flowers. Rrrrr.]

Or maybe it’s more the images than the adjectives.

Posted at 8:10 PM | Comments Off on Power of adjectives

We escaped the Metro. We found blue ridges. But not The Blue Ridges. Pretty pretty pretty.

On the move snaps can be blurry…or capture surprisingly pleasing not-what-I-was-hoping-for shots.

Posted at 9:22 PM | Comments Off on Getaway

I was heartened when I saw SOME overcast.

Turns out it was ephemeral.

And loaded with humidity.

Today, I’m in love with air-conditioning.

Posted at 8:25 PM | Comments Off on Shafts and beams

Now, I got going PRETTY early, but not SUPER early, and when I was in my first ten minutes and ramping up the ol’ heartbeat, I saw the sun was up enough to be in the rays, and I knew I had to head down over the ridge into no-rays territory, as in: no rays so just a WEENsie bit cooler.

No-rays means MOSTly no-rays: see! Ray action! And at the foot of the tree, a helpful marker. Aha: paperbark maple. Never recall seeing that name before. Must have, and it just didn’t register…too darned many darned plants out there to remember the names.

Posted at 9:20 PM | Comments Off on Working the angles