Musings

I experimented with stage lighting in portrait mode on this blooming beauty. Interesting, but only momentarily. Sometimes that’s enough…although I’m not feeling it today.

Posted at 4:27 PM | Comments Off on Lighting experiment

I did pick a picture, massaged it. Thought it over-saturated, yet interesting. Couldn’t figure out what to write, and was tired, so I just went to bed.

Apologies.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Delayed post

This was the height of my gardening success this year…this blooming basil (in front of the taxus or whatever that evergreen is).

I guess we were on the move at the wrong times, and the weather wasn’t wet/dry at the right times.

Posted at 8:25 PM | 1 Comment »

I do like our primary bedroom en suite shower view. That’s a redbud waving at you.

Posted at 9:06 PM | Comments Off on Not peeking

The motel that brought us to this spot: in need of updating. Their problem: the “bones”/structure of the property: unalterably lacking. Yet…the view: wow.
Credit to the management for tending to what they can.

Here, the valley-mountain topography offers a beautiful morning-moment that we don’t see in the UP or at home. A supremely unimpressive motel, and a terrific Appalachian morning-view.

Posted at 7:01 PM | Comments Off on Reaching for…(not perfection)

With the exception of a delightful interlude in A-Squared, we have been logging mile….

…iterspersed with rest area stops. During those I found a few dramatic sunlight moments. Or semi-dramatic. These were both in Ohio.

Posted at 6:33 PM | Comments Off on Light along the way

Closing the cottage requires a long, long to-do list. Check, check, and check. The most time-consuming activities center around the water system, draining and setting it up for winter cold in such a way that no pipes or valves are cracked or broken. However, there are myriad other chores, plus it’s nice to get the floor swept and other cleaning accomplished that isn’t strictly necessary. We did everything we could think of. Bien hecho.

Posted at 9:55 PM | 2 Comments »

Single best visual find in months: the icy cap on these wee mushroom caps. What texture! What subtlety! What ephemera!

This, on the other hand, is mostly a color mosaic. I’m amazed how many leaves are still on the tree, and still colorful, with that blanket of the fallen foliar fragments.

Posted at 9:16 PM | Comments Off on Floral organics

I awakened at my usual time, around 6:30am, and stumbled downstairs. Actually, I had to make sure I didn’t stumble, because it was dark dark dark—as in, yes, it’s dark at that hour, but it was also dark because the power was out.

So, I went back to bed. Where it was warm.

Later when there was some light outside, I got up and made a fire in the stove, and we began to feel like things would be okay when I remembered we had some essentially instant Starbucks we got as an experiment. This was easier than looking in the way back of the deepest cupboard for old stove-top based coffee making technology.

Sometime after 11am, the electric returned—and stayed on (several early restarts had no staying power). The photo is later, almost 2pm, when the snow had changed to rain, and the white-stuff was half-melted. It stayed windy all day, and there’s more wind and white coming. We do have enough firewood (albeit damp). And dry birch-bark fire starter. We are tough cookies.

Posted at 8:05 PM | Comments Off on Autumn saga

This has been one of my favorite shots this year to get at the progression of the autumn leaf color changes. There’s so much less green than five days ago, and the leaves are blown onto the road.

And this is the lake from the beach, always a go-to shot for me. It often portrays/offers a kind of peace, I think, despite cold raindrops (not really rain, just drops—and not mist).

Yesterday afternoon, I started a fire in the wood stove (which, it turns out, is a coal model, by Kenmore), and with no good keeper wood (only damp pine), I loaded it and left it to burn itself out even before we went to bed. I think the temperature indoors reached almost ninety big F degrees, and the walls and floor were thoroughly warmed. Even with outdoor temps in the upper thirties overnight, the indoor temp only dropped to sixty-six by the stove by the time I got up (late, about 7:15). Today, we’ve used our small electric heater, and are comfy.

Sunshine visited us several times (vaguely present in first photo), and rain drops blew around periodically—an unsettled fall day. We’re looking at closing up the cottage and leaving on Friday. In the meantime, snow is predicted overnight although we’ll see if it gets cold enough at elevation; otherwise it’ll be rain, as it has been during the daytime.

Posted at 5:39 PM | Comments Off on We shall see