Musings

Another super-variable day (gauged by the weather). Began rather clear. Love the water-barrel view of the pending dawn.

Midday, I walked the swamp. The clouds look more threatening than they were.

And later, lots of blue. This view is up the trunk of a maple, showing the still green interior leaves, with a hint of the coating colors on the exterior.

I found this a disjointed day, feeling mostly either like a Friday or a Sunday, although it did feel like a Saturday for a bit, too.

Posted at 9:18 PM | Comments Off on Sky watch

Sometime during the night the wind went silent and I found the change almost eerie. For today, almost entirely sunshine! Yay!

Nurdles are lentil-sized plastic buttons that manufacturers buy to transform into bottle and other shapes to hold their products. An estimated 53 BILLION end up in the ocean every YEAR. Critters think they’re food, and you know there is nothing good about that.

If you can’t find it in yourself to worry about nurdle pollution, think about the plastic bits that are torn and worn away from the whipping action of weed-eaters.

Back to a positive note: sunny day! ☀️

Nurdle photo-story by Annaliese Nurnberg and Gianmarco Maraviglia, “‘Mermaid Tears’: A photographer documents one of the most dangerous marine pollutants,” in the Washington Post, dated 5 October.

Posted at 5:47 PM | Comments Off on New vocab: nurdle

Daylight began with piercing quiet and heavy ground-fog.

As the day progressed, overcast and intermittent precip alternated with streaks of sunshine—you can see one of the latter illuminating a sand dune in the distance.

Today’s big chore was heading to town for groceries and a raid of the hardware store. Instead of the direct road, 44 miles round trip, we took the long way, up to Lake Superior in a big loop—a detour that took us 111 miles. Well worth the miles of mud puddles and bumps on the unpaved stretch between Grand Marais (where I took the photo) and Deer Park. Great names, no?

I walked subsequently, toward the end of the daylight portion of the day, when it was windy and sunny and surprisingly pleasant, quite the opposite of the morning.

Now, as darkness closes in, it’s less windy and threatening rain. Soooo good to be indoors.

Posted at 6:21 PM | 1 Comment »

Wishing to give the new fitness device (misleadingly called a watch, which is accurate in that it does tell time, yet has a fuzziness similar to a smartphone—which is far more smart than phone) a tryout, I got out pretty darned early, and paced myself, ending up with a mostly sunny three miles. One darned gorgeous fencerow maple.

And a tree skeleton—an elm, I’m guessing. Rain most of the overnight hours, hence intermittent puddles and mud.

I worked very hard to turn this into moose tracks, but the overwhelming evidence of an adjacent cattle pasture and a vague recollection that moose tracks look like giant deer tracks, and thus are much narrower…forced me to accept the domestic nature of this evidence.

Although clouds were coming in, we went over to the refuge to drive the loop. We did see a few ducks, geese, and swans at a distance, but this dirty great blue heron (?) was the most interesting specimen we spotted. A quiet day for critters.

Dramatic maroon leaves on this small tree.

And the autumn mushrooms are about…or at least they strike me as a different assortment of species from the springtime crop. Or my dataset is skewed and, most likely of all, my observations are based on ignorance.

Posted at 5:03 PM | Comments Off on Fall colors, shapes

We managed to time our run to early-vote* to between rain bands. Sally, doncha know. Some rainfall was windy and would have been yucky to venture out in.

But it stayed wet even so, witness that magnificent droplet on a wee magenta-pink basil blossom.

* Not lucky that we had to vote because John Lewis died, and we need a representative to finish his term.

Posted at 8:50 PM | Comments Off on Lucky day

I think of Cincinnati as the place where we have to slow down…either on I-75 or by taking an evasive route because the traffic flow on the Interstate is hosed. That is: greater and metro Cincinnati. This time problems were downhill into town and across the I-75 bridge over the Ohio, so we checked out some of the old timey infrastructure along our alternate route. We had a good time on the grey roads!

Back on the Interstate zoom zoom, we encountered this…in Tennessee?. Some miles along, we found cattle transporters with moo-capable cattle, yet this specimen was the most unusual.

We arrived in ATL under changeable skies. Spotty rain inbound…and of course rain during part of the unloading. Of course. We are home and all is well. Yay!

Posted at 7:41 PM | Comments Off on Yay!

I was outside doing an outdoor chore (rhyme!), and noticed this grey cloud to the north-northwest. Sure enough, ten minutes later it was over us. Ten minutes after that, it had moved on to the east.

And ten minutes more, we had some sprinkles (not enough to dampen the ringfort, but, hey, rain is rain).

Posted at 6:51 PM | Comments Off on Predictable?

When the Manistique River is high this time of the year, the lake it flows from must be high, too? Roight? And it is. And it has been. For years. We go from drought years to this in, what?, just a few years…and this high-water has been with us for, what?, a decade?

The lake it flows from is a shallow lake, big and shallow, and the speed boaters always had to take that into account…like anchor their boats well off-shore (takes some depth for those big motors) and take a dingy in, and the like. Well, those folks like the high levels. The rest of us watch our property wash into the water and disappear. Not happy-making.

In short, Lake Michigan is high. The feeder rivers that flow into it are high, and everything upstream is water-filled. Welcome to climate change, this local version right at present.

Today’s official palate-cleanser flower….

Posted at 8:32 PM | Comments Off on Water! Essence of life.

I have to say that I tend to enjoy drippy rain. White-noise drippy rain. Today’s lasted, off and on, until about 5:30 pm, when the sun came out and the temp began to elevate. I hear even more bird calls now. And, as you can see, the rain barrel is full…plenty to last us a few days until the meteorological report predicts sprinkles, as I only have to water the basil…and mint! Peppermint! This summer’s science experiment (thank you, Sweet, Kind Neighbor, who induced my snippings to send out roots after I had failed to do so).

I see a stand of goldenrod (Solidago spp.) has pushed well above the grass head near the garage. Only they’re not yet golden. Time, magic time, will change this.

Title refers to a common phrase around here that goes something like…if you don’t like the weather…da da da.

Posted at 7:25 PM | Comments Off on …wait ten minutes

Spartan! Yeah, an ag school…different kind of maize here than at that big, noisy school down the old Indian trail to the southeast.

Sheriff…as in behind the law on top of the bridge.

Cloud cover looks a bit thicker than it was. Just want to mention: temp about 69°F. Soooooo fiiiiiine.

Posted at 9:18 PM | Comments Off on S is for…