Tuesday, 9 July 2024
Around here, June was a bust for rainfall…we received close to zero-zilch. The last four days have more than made up for that deficit and launched us most of the way to our July average to boot.
The tough part is that it is darned humid outside (outside meaning: beyond the air-conditioning).
Monday, 8 July 2024
Our Left Coasters departed today, and left behind this image of the gorgeous 4th fireworks across Puget Sound.
Saturday, 6 July 2024
This picture and last night’s picture were taken one day and five-and-a-half minutes apart. We had rain in the late afternoon, which, I’m guessing, sapped some of the dramatic color.
Friday, 5 July 2024
And from the sky descended an airplane carrying precious cargo…loved ones visiting from the Left Coast.
Thursday, 4 July 2024
Look at all the visual contrasts! Color, shapes, living vs inanimate—the whole shebang!
Fireworks began precisely at 9:15pm, and they’re now booming in various locations in the southern direction…with nothing sounding in the northern quadrants. This is audio contrasts?
Saturday, 29 June 2024
Sometime in the dark hours, I woke up and was fuzzy about why I woke up. Soon, I realized there was a snuffly noise outside…pretty sure it was a deer, perhaps the doe we’ve been seeing, calling to her wee fawn (tracks just over an inch long).
By dawn, we had rain.
Then, it stopped for a few hours and I went down to the beach.
Sometime around two, more rain came in, with lightning, thankfully in the distance. Just after three, the power went out. And the rain quit. So much for the mint sauce I was planning to make for our communal dinner.
The power came back on about 7:30. I was so happy.
Wednesday, 26 June 2024
Oh, and another fatality in the lake in the food web shifts accompanying the zebra mussel infestation—no live clams, only clam shells. The mussels cluster on the clams, and pfft, the clams don’t survive.
Tuesday, 25 June 2024
The grass came on fast this year, and is much taller than in recent years. Why?
Here’s why. There was very little snow last winter, as in multiple locals have told me they used their snowblowers only twice…twice total. That’s in contrast to near daily or even twice a day. No snow.
So, when the temps began to rise in the spring, the soil got warm faster, and the grass began growing earlier, and it “went tall.” Normally, it is unable to span this path when it lodges. Also, we usually can look over the grass heads and get glimpses of the lake. Not so this summer.
We had rain overnight and in the early hours of the morning, but then most of the clouds scooted and I waded in the lake. Yes, the clear water looks beautiful, but it’s clear because of the infestation of zebra mussels (native to Eurasia, brought in ballast water to the Great Lakes, then spread by fisherfolk and boaters). Zebra mussels are filter feeders removing plankton and whatever from the water. This does help the eagles and other predators to see prey, however. The mussels therefore upset the food web big time.
Sunday, 23 June 2024
Our lake is shallow; I always heard the deepest place was 15 feet—sometimes 12. Off our beach a short ways is a rock bar perhaps five feet below the surface where fish sometimes congregate. This morning, fisher-guys were out there. Turned out they were from our neighbors’.
Very happy for the young guy in front—he caught a 3-lb, 22 inch walleye! The fellow in back showed him how to fillet it after they got the requisite proof-of-fishing-success photos on land. That is a big walleye for the young fellow to take downstate (on ice), and contribute to his family’s dinner.
Saturday, 22 June 2024
Today’s theme was rain. Not merely wet. Not sprinkles. Rain. And continued rain. Which is good for the natural world as things were a bit dry.
Unrelenting rain days like today when I was a kid we played war on the “sun” porch with five decks and perhaps four kids…that takes a while…as in: the game may never end. Or we did picture puzzles; we had maybe twenty to choose from and we never got through them all in a single summer. Thankfully, there weren’t enough rain days for that.
There were more geese on the sand beach, impossible to pick out in this murky photo, including as many as a dozen goslings.