Musings

I was too lazy to head to the beach to watch the sunrise, but did get out to see the sun crest the treeline. Nice.

Now this is unexpected: a few lilac blooms in OcTOWber! They do smell like spring.

Posted at 9:34 PM | Comments Off on Expected, unexpected

Nice carpet of beach foam this morning…or only a welcome mat, perhaps.

Posted at 8:46 PM | Comments Off on Free-form foam

No saturation boost; this is what I saw. 🌅

Posted at 8:51 PM | Comments Off on Stunning sun

We finally got out from under the cloud cover associated with Helene, and had smooth sailing under blue skies…very pleasant. We crested a hill, and Eden was marred by a fog-belt. Turned out it was right over Sturgeon River, and when we cleared the valley, we enjoyed unbroken blue skies again. 😎

We dined this evening on a spring green salad with chunks of smoked whitefish…surely five-star dining for this part of the world. The orchard grasses are browning out, but the trees remain overwhelmingly green, with some brown-orange tinges.

Posted at 7:09 PM | Comments Off on Fish tales

I learned that the world’s longest lived vertebrate is the Greenland shark, Somniosus microcephalus. They can reach at least 400 years, and perhaps 500—that’s half a millennium! The latest research (thank you NYTimes Tuesday Science stories), discussed by Jonathan Moens, has discovered that this species has huge genomes, with about 6.5 billion DNA base pairs (humans have less than half that). This makes these sharks more genetically resilient (read the story for the details), and thus likely contributes to their longevity.

Still reeling about the (possibly) 500 year lifespans.

Posted at 9:40 PM | Comments Off on Not my photo

I’m really noticing the daylength getting shorter.

Posted at 8:53 PM | Comments Off on Seasoned

We tried to see the eclipse…the partial eclipse of the moon…nope: too much cloud cover. It does seem a bit brighter where the moon is supposed to be, though?

Posted at 10:24 PM | Comments Off on Moon-watch

Here’s the color the sun left before the moon rose.

Posted at 10:56 PM | Comments Off on Pink-gold-orange

Striding along under this lovely, towering magnolia, a high branch dropped a leaf that landed on my hat. It was not a small leaf, and it landed with a small thud. My neck is fine; I just shook that floral debris off and continued my walk.

Posted at 7:10 PM | Comments Off on Floral irritant

I was rather struck by the delicate shade of these blooms. It took my mind off how hot and humid it was today. I’m going with climate change. Also (in a run-on style), we’ve heard reports of Michigan having a bumper crop of apples this year; not here, we have only a very few apples that set. In contrast, last year we had a bumper crop here.

Posted at 10:28 PM | Comments Off on Variations in conditions