Musings

The inception: a loud pop (blown tire).

The outcome: just fine.

It was okay because we weren’t on I-75, there was a wide shoulder, and it was a rear tire (so it didn’t affect steering).

The big plus was a tire place (actually several, but we only needed one) a mere three miles away.

And we needed new tires, anyway.

They promised they’d finish changing, balancing, etc. the four new tires by 3:30. In fact, we were on the road again just before 3pm.

Also, we’re on track to get to our previously planned hotel stop at a reasonable hour.

Posted at 7:33 PM | No Comments »

I did a morning errand down one of the main arteries nearby that is four-lane, two each way. However, today it was only one lane each way, with large trucks parked every eighth of a mile or so blocking the center pair of lanes. As near as I could tell, they were checking the storm drains below the street, or perhaps blowing them out. They had big pumps or motors making a fair amount of noise, and the truck guys were standing at a control center on the front of the trucks monitoring operations. At least, that was the impression I got.

Posted at 9:17 PM | No Comments »

We drove to Athens to enjoy family company and a lovely luncheon. This caprese salad is made with basil from their garden—knock-out good!

On our return, we approached this looming cloud, and eventually motored through a deluge…

…and, on the other side, by the time we reached our neighborhood: dry roads.

Posted at 7:34 PM | Comments Off on Friday adventure

I was up early, and decided the moon needed to be captured, in that digital way we do these days. If you can see an irregularity to the left of the trail above the grass, it is a deer, ears and face peeking through the tallest stems.

To accompany my “moon shot,” I walked around the other side of the cottage and caught the sky-color to the NNE. This was moments after 6am.

I went back around the cottage, and my grass-obscured amigo/amiga had come out to meet/greet me….

Okay, enough tall tales of moon-above and inquisitive deer, here’s the beach at 9am, all glistening in the early-day sun.

We closed out our holiday with a lovely potluck, great food and fabulous socializing. Once again, odds are I won’t stay awake for the fireworks to start (approaching 10pm?).

A sidenote: while we were chatting with a loooooong-time friend ensconced in a National Forest in Oregon at the end of a trail (but high enough to have cell service) about 7:45pm, two spotted fawns and a doe wandered by, and went down the path you see in the morning deer shots…. Full circle?

Posted at 9:01 PM | Comments Off on Celebrating being HERE

Did that title catch your eye? What I mean is that the humidity and murkiness evident first thing in the morning (here), and obscuring the far shore, heralded in a hot, moist day, good for reading and low-key activities all afternoon. And sipping ice water…that kind of day-drinking.

My morning beach tour became a leech-hunting expedition. I found the Garish Green Sand Shovel mostly buried in the uppper-beach sand on my first tour. It’s perfect for leech-tossing. The storminess of previous days sent lots of the boneless critters toward the beach, where I pitched them onto the beach, then tossed them to the off-beach vegetation. I returned a bit later to get a second harvest, as I found so many on the first visit. I think the total was two dozen. No lie.

Posted at 5:59 PM | Comments Off on Day drinking

Today, the sun rose, as it does.

Then, my activities were hijacked by The Rhubarb Situation.

My cousin discovered that the red dots on the leaves of our rhubarb were in all likelihood a fungus, and spores…and, well, we may not be subsistence farmers, but Things Needed To Be Done. Now.

Thus, rhubarb hijacked my day. The upshot is that my rhubarb patch is picked over, and the stems processed into sauce, and the leaves (and their spores) sequestered in a gar-bag, sealed up ready for The Dump.

All good, except that isn’t what I had planned for my Friday. Not that Other Activities were more rewarding, or whatever. Just, it’s that my choices had been confiscated. Such is life.

Posted at 8:56 PM | Comments Off on Rhubarb Day

My theory is it’s just one crazy deer. A deer ate the trillium by the NW corner of the cottage. A deer ate the tops of the ferns in front of the cottage. A deer ate two of my in-bloom peonies (yesterday). A deer ate the tops of some of the lupines. None of this happened in any of the years I’ve been here. What gives? I think it’s one deer, and that animal is strange/barmy.

Not wanting to lose any more peonies, I used some of the branches we’ve cut out of the apple trees to make a kraal of sorts to protect a plant, not livestock, but you get the idea.

Posted at 8:49 PM | Comments Off on Construction project

Lighthouse sequence. The structure is on the end of a breakwater at the mouth of the Manistique River. It is 35 ft tall and made of steel. It was first lit in 1916, and automated in 1969. Safety first.

Wide angle.

Wide, with red osier dogwood in foreground.

Not so wide, with sign and seagull (or tern or whatever it is; we always called them gulls).

We encountered wet roads, then rain, on our return drive; however, no rain fell here at the cottage, sadly.

Posted at 7:57 PM | Comments Off on Various truths

I offer another attempt at capturing subtleties of the rising sun—less successful, yet with some unexpected details.

In the afternoon, I undertook a chore using a tool borrowed from our kind neighbor. I used it to prune wayward branches higher than I could reach from the ground. It has an extending handle, and the business end has a saw and a slicing mechanism activated by a rope, both VERY sharp and VERY effective. [Note that the plug-in hybrid is being charged…there’s no electricity in the garage, hence the temporary location by the cottage.]

Posted at 8:50 PM | Comments Off on Working on new skills

My sweetie took me out to lunch at our favorite place in Manistique. I like it because I can order a whitefish dinner (with salad bar that includes…tahdah…pickled beets…yum) and The Guru likes it because he can order an all-day omelette.

We lunched out because the morning weather was overcast and damp, and not good for mowing, which is almost always (and in this case) Job#1 upon cottage arrival. As the afternoon went on, the wind dried the grass (mostly), and the sun came out—yay. And we mowed about half of the grass—not the total grass, but the grass that we mow. …honoring (AKA bowing to) the tyranny of mowing….

Posted at 8:18 PM | Comments Off on Avoiding, then…