Musings

This morning we toured the Vermont side of Lake Champlain. At the first stop, we found a canoe named Fiona, outfitted for a long-distance paddler, it seemed, or at least serious fishing.

At the next stop, I found ripe Rubus odoratus, the purple-flowered raspberry. I don’t remember sampling one before. It is nowhere near as tasty as the domestic kind, but not awful.

At the next stop, I spotted this special boat used by the North Hero Fire Department.

At this stop, we watched this ferry that crosses to New York state loading cars.

On a totally different note, don’t you notice these orange and white barrels? This is a construction site in Winooski, so after we left Lake Champlain.

Posted at 7:56 PM | 1 Comment »

I’m “battling” the deer for the black raspberries. The empty socket is one that I scored. Yum.

I especially enjoyed the sixty-one afternoon minutes I spent chatting with a far-away friend, watching the lake and gulls and clouds while listening and conversing. And I’m not much of a phone-talker.

Posted at 8:17 PM | 1 Comment »

When I was “little,” that is: of the age to play with critters like this, I would have been bothered by the sloppy molding and painting on these lions, and I would have ignored them.

Posted at 8:38 PM | Comments Off on Ark plus one

Plants don’t have this kind of cognition, but I swear these daisies were posing.

Posted at 8:37 PM | Comments Off on Anthropomorphizing (again)

We arrived at the cottage just before 5pm, after a straightforward drive up from Ohio, and only a dozen-minute delay at the bridge-crossing toll booth.

One of the crucial cottage-opening activities is to air out the place, which is easier upstairs with a fan. The big bedroom has a pair of under-eaves windows facing south, one shown here, and a pair of higher windows in the end wall. It’s not an optimal flow-through situation, but a fan does help to make it work.

My apps indicate it may get down to 62°F overnight, which sounds impossible to Atlanta-in-July-oriented ears. Hallelujah.

Quick note: smoke-at-ground-level predictions on airquality.weather.gov suggest we’re fine for a while here…yay.

Posted at 9:06 PM | 1 Comment »

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 | Comments Off on Unplanned adventure

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 | Comments Off on Slow-down info

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