Sunday, 1 August 2021
Our fine socially active day included a lovely beach- and fire-side evening with lots of laughs and even a yellow-blooming plant identification (I’ve already forgotten the name—oops!). Bonus, we saw this sunset glow on our walk back to our place.
Saturday, 31 July 2021
Long before the present owners bought the place, this was the driveway to Hope’s cottage. It was white inside and out, with a long south-facing porch, and there was a closet in the back that had many puzzles we were allowed to select from on rainy days. The living room had a shelf with all the Wizard of Oz books in hardback, each with a different color cover; I was quite surprised later to find out that most people didn’t know there was more than one Oz book—the one I liked best was pale lilac…yes, I liked it for the special color rather than the contents. Anyway, much of the interior had beadboard for paneling, and it was the first building I remember noticing it. Hope taught me to make potato salad in the kitchen. One potato and one hard boiled egg per person, and one of each “for the pot.” Still a good ratio. Hope’s husband was in a wheelchair from mid-life (polio? dunno), and she needed to support the family, so she began a diaper cleaning service called what sounded to me like Di-Dee Wash that catered to households in the wealthier suburbs of Detroit. She did very well. Hope was a friend of my grandmother’s from college days, and that’s why she had the cottage on the hill and across the road from my grandparents’ property. I recall hearing that part of the original building had been a chicken house, thoroughly cleaned and moved and painted to become part of the meandering layout of the cottage.
Friday, 30 July 2021
I never heard of “the twisties,” a term commonly used by gymnasts and in the news after Simone Biles used it. She meant that despite all her practice and experience, her brain no longer knew where she was in space as she did a vault or other maneuver. The potential penalty for a gymnast can be serious injury; SB managed to land safely, thankfully. The twisties are difficult to banish, to overcome, and to conquer. As Emily Giambalvo put it in a WaPo story, “Simone Biles said she got the ‘twisties.’ Gymnasts immediately understood” (28 July)
And after experiencing the twisties once, it’s very difficult to forget. Instinct gets replaced by thought. Thought quickly leads to worry. Worry is difficult to escape.
I’m wondering if it has a faint relationship to when I mistype a (common) word, and my fingers/brain repeat this error until I super concentrate and somehow return once again to the correct letter order.
Or perhaps more likely, this finger-blip is nothing like the twisties.
Wednesday, 28 July 2021
Laundry day means laundry and gro-shopping, all in one speedy 35 minute window (plus drive time). These days all we do at the ’dro is wash ($5 per triple load; we did two), then bring the damp fabric piles home to hang out. [Yay for MaNachur’s dry cycle.] We don’t have much line, so we used convoluted algorithms for carefully doubling up the sheets (old country technique).
Monday, 26 July 2021
Road sign, heh. A bird’s dust bath. Must have been darned energetic to clear away that much gravel.
I’ll throw this in. A double-wedge of illumination on the swamp ditch, plus artsy tree branches.
I can tell the sun’s moving away from full summer mode. The low angle light in the morning continues much later. Which I appreciate in my attempt to walk in shadow.
Thursday, 22 July 2021
The story here: I spotted many “black”birds congregated in the top branches of this dead elm. But. I took so long fumbling with the phone to get the camera on and pointed, that many flew off to the left. Another time.
Here I attempted to capture the visual contrast of the darkness under the trees, and the light in the distance in an open meadow(?). I like that dark under zone, which really isn’t well illustrated here.
Update: The haze I reported on Monday is Rocky Mountain fire smoke, even though I couldn’t smell smoke (too high? too dissipated?). It was even hazier today. Still no smoke smell.
Wednesday, 21 July 2021
I’m proud of myself. I headed out to the deep morning shade to find and remove phototoxic cow parsnips. This one is old enough to bloom, and is on the neighbor’s side of the fence. I figure it likely spawned the ones on our side of the fence. Bye-bye, mama.
This evening, we took advantage of a free concert at the Erickson Center. This is most of the crowd, and I’d say it’s very large for the middle of almost-nowhere. [Don’t ask me about the cement pad—don’t know what it’s for; the band played from an elevated, roofed stage behind where I was standing.] Darned fine Celtic and Celtic-inspired music by a trio from the Marquette area.
Thursday, 15 July 2021
Almost ripe is not ripe enough. That lower berry is getting there. A bird may well nab it before it’s fully ripened. Greedy buggers. [Black raspberries.]
I’m working on late-day sun protection for the “sun” porch, since we’ve lost so much of our vegetative protection to MaNachur. Seems pretty uptown for this cottage.
Saturday, 10 July 2021
First data point: green white pine cone. Parsed, this means a new, this-year’s pine cone, essentially ripening.
Second data point: we attended two (!!!) social functions today. Vaxxing makes this possible in these pandemic times.
Thursday, 8 July 2021
The coast in this case is the Mother Lake, that is: Lake Superior. Great view from Crisp Point Lighthouse.
We worked our way east from there. This is Little Lake, which is a little lake, quite round, right next to Superior, with a short connecting waterway that cuts through a dune. Little Lake was and is a safety harbor for small boats that faced bad weather. I was surprised to see the diversity of plants in shallow water from the dock. Two loons noted our arrival from close to shore, working their way farther out as we hung around.
Next stop: mouth of the Two-Hearted River. That’s it in the foreground, with Superior behind the sand and stone.
The Two-Hearted water is tinted by its time in cedar swamps in the upper catchment. It is not dirty.