Rainy day
Monday, 26 June 2023
We did a wee bit of time travelling this evening and watched “Yellow Submarine.” I’m sure I never saw it before. Great music; I sang along with all the songs!
Musings
Rant about water, various
Sunday, 25 June 2023
This yesterday-photo better illustrates the lake level than one from today would. Today has been breezy and variable, with 8-inch rain—as in drops eight inches apart…meaning enough to note but not enough to make any difference to the vegetation or even a measuring device. Note that there is beach, or enough sand exposed to be called beach, for the first time in, what?, two decades or more? I forget.
In my youth (yes…), the beach at the point (this view; this point) was sometimes twenty feet wide. You might be thinking “climate change” and that probably is not wrong, but more, it is the result of the lake outflow being far more heavily restricted, which has the effect of raising the lake levels. For years, it has been much higher, like on the order or two feet, than in the past. This means increased erosion, among other things.
Our lake is shallow, historically usually less than eight-to-ten feet across much of the basin (which is on the order of three by six miles), so people with their big speed boats, that is: MUCH bigger than the rowboats that we used to use, have been much happier with the greater depth, while…blah blah blah. I’m for the historic levels, but I’m probably in the minority of landowners with lakefront property.
Just that fast
Tuesday, 20 June 2023
Ya leave for two nights and the critters and varmints and infestations set in. Aphids are sucking the juices out of (a minority, I admit) the lupines. Arrgh; it’s tough to be a human molding the world. [Hello, Anthropocene.]
Ate too much Chinese food
Saturday, 17 June 2023
Saw lots of green growing plants outside the car windows today, row crops to forests, with several kettle moraines for good measure. Here’s a yucca from the garden we ended up in.
Apologies for the repeats
Thursday, 15 June 2023
I’m still enjoying the lupine lusciousness in the orchard…and I’m “sharing” it with you.
Not my field…oops, my field
Monday, 12 June 2023
I know of Impressionist paintings. This looks like an Impressionist photo…same vibe anyway.
Growth curves
Wednesday, 7 June 2023
Chives! And blooming! So…delicate. And once snipped, they are a great contribution to salads…veggie sides…chili…and so many more dishes.
Rhubarb! I transplanted these two autumns ago, and the collective wisdom of the internet indicated that I should wait two years before picking. It is time! And these are exceptionally fine stalks…time to pick a new batch…cautiously, so as not to over-harvest. [Restraint!]
In product-to-come news, these are “wild”flowers from a gift seed packet from the baby shower last month…day three since first observed germination…. Not edible, but beauty and aesthetics are also important…. [The sand grains look huge!]
Ecotonic
Tuesday, 6 June 2023
Nothing looks quite like the swamps (local term; specialists may use another term, I dunno) of these parts. Perhaps no open water, like this example. Cattail swards. Skinny pines etching the sky. Calls of ravens or crows, sometimes both, with small twinkle-toned birds flitting here and there.
Varmints and pests
Sunday, 4 June 2023
This morning I did some grass-whacking around this planting, and oh. my. heavens…the lovely lilac scent. It inspired and lulled me.
Varmit count: 1; one woodchuck…no sign of woodchucks before this afternoon visit. Go away! You are not wanted here.
Pest count: hundreds; scads of carpenter ants serially invading the porch. And removed in discreet (kinda) dustpan loads, at approximately half hour intervals. This is what we do for exercise. Heh.
Lake tour potential
Friday, 2 June 2023
There’s a hole in the boat! Well, yeah: catamaran…by definition a vessel with twin, symmetrical, parallel hulls. Less draft and less resistance plus greater stability than a monohull.
This one docks in Munising, and takes tourists along the Lake Superior shore to view the Pictured Rocks—multi-colored sandstone cliffs with blue and blue-green waters lapping at their knees (as it were).
We didn’t take a boat tour today (our mission was farther along in Marquette (new watchband)); perhaps we will sometime soon.