Monday, 7 June 2021
Today was Day 2 of three garden-work days. I’ve been doing the usual spring reclaiming of the rhubarb from a non-optimal situation. Plus, it’s really dry this year, so I’m very glad to see the plants looking this good, or this plant—the others are less robust, and the smallest one has merely five small leaves.
Essentially, the crowns need to be transplanted to a new location where they have more sun exposure. Perhaps this fall.
Saturday, 5 June 2021
First drama was a population explosion, overnight mind you, of tiny gnats…which meant the spiders got busy, and the porch was decorated with web-caught and un-caught gnats.
Second drama was a lowering sky to the southwest…which meant it slid past us to the south, but it wasn’t clear whether it would follow that usual pattern or not for quite a while. As I was out walking.
The third dramatic event was that we attended a live music event! Meet AnnMarie Rowland, singer, song-writer, story-teller, and writing teacher. Covid struck and separated the Michigan native from her love, a Canadian. Now, all is well. She got a special exemption to travel to Ontario late last summer, and they got married, and now she can easily border-cross. As she said, “Sixty years old, and I HAD to get married!”
Thursday, 3 June 2021
We did get rain during our small dinner party on the “sun”porch, but only enough to almost make the upper surface of the hillfort garden-let damp.
I am my husband’s smart speaker. I’m smart (asserted modestly), and I speak (undeniable). [I’ve been hearing too many prompts on the radio….]
Wednesday, 2 June 2021
The story of rural agriculture decline in marginal areas like the central Upper Peninsula in one image; that’s what this decrepit fencepost “says” to me.
Monday, 31 May 2021
I’m calling it a moon walk. To a swamp and back.
Then, we ventured over toward Canada (border still closed), and watched this upbound freighter motor along. The landmass to the right is Canada. The closer island to the left is USA territory, or more truthfully, birdlandia.
The freighter has made the turn to head for the open waters of Lake Superior, and the sky shows many rain streaks. It eventually reached us, and we retreated indoors. With our whine.
So much fun to see long-time friends again, and to give and receive hugs. We laughed and told stories like always and my heart is well warmed.
Friday, 28 May 2021
I walked along this fenceline, in the woods (which we call The Grove), and scared up a deer when I entered the grove. It ran without looking back like they sometimes do. When I exited the grove, far right, I was looking around, then looked down, knowing there are spiny raspberry canes in the area, and, whoops, I almost stepped on a fawn! I quickly made a left turn and left the wee one. And it was small, the spine perhaps a foot long, so pretty darned young. I have every confidence that mom will return.
Been quite a while since this white birch came down and brought the fence with it. The chores never end around here.
Tuesday, 25 May 2021
I know this as forget-me-not. [Internet search….] Taxonomically, they are the Myosotis genus. I think this is M. sylvatica, and native to Europe, however frequently I find it around here. Probably another escapee from the great-grandmother garden. Like the lupins.
Totally different scale; could be a farm complex on the prairie during the green season. But, no; up here by the sub-tundra, under a threatening sky that only produced a few drops of rain and no storm.
Saturday, 22 May 2021
Leaves are still emerging by the pond.
The marsh marigolds (Caltha palustris) are blooming in the swamp.
The lilacs are just opening in the stand that shields the outhouse.
The lupins are just beginning to show color in the orchard.
The Canada geese are unsettled and still flying north in Vs.
This venerable cedar shows damage from the spring ice break-up, which coincided with two days of strong (like 40-mph) winds that drove giant ice “cubes” way up above our beach, like I’ve never seen before. Trillium is for scale.
Friday, 21 May 2021
This trio and our neighbor duo welcomed us to the cottage. We made it! Great fun taking “the long way” via Seattle. Especially enjoyed being two days ahead of a foot-and-a-half of snowfall at Glacier.
Thursday, 20 May 2021
Today I walked around the old economic heart of A Real City.
The Beating Heart was these falls, the Upper Saint Anthony Falls, now marred? by a lock and dam.
The power the river generated, and this is the Mississippi so it is a mighty generator, ran the Gold Medal Flour mill on the south/west side…
And the Pillsbury mill on the north/east side. This is the underbelly of the mill complex. [Note fisher-person.] Now the mills are no longer milling, and this sacred place of the people who were here before the EuroAmericans arrived is irretrievably altered.
I quite enjoyed walking across the curving Stone Arch Bridge that seems to connect the two mills. It’s a pedestrian bridge now, although it was built for rail cars. The water on the left is the lower end of the Pillsbury millrace (it seemed to me), and the bridge crosses the main channel of the Mississippi.
And all this? Yup. Couldn’t have put it better myself.