Monday, 5 September 2011
From Athens, Friday; the old Snow Tire recapping building has been massively repurposed…dine at The National next time you’re there…and enjoy freshness and flavor excellently blended.
Our late afternoon was too exciting as bands of rain from Stormy Lee came through. Fortunately for us, the wind and tornadoes missed our neighborhood.
Monday, 29 August 2011
Buildings at Whitefish Point, on a sunny day, recently.
I spent quite a while today confused about why the flooding was so bad in VT—and not in NH. My sense of geography is not the best, as I tend to think of those two states as joined at the hip, as it were—at least sharing a river. As in, place where rainwater drains from the landscape.
Late in the afternoon, I finally investigated, just a bit, discovering that the track of the center of the storm went through VT—and not NH, hence the differential.
All of this pales when I consider The Real World.
Saturday, 13 August 2011
My Mowing Man got chased indoors by a cloudburst, and when it passed the sky silhouetted the orchard, and looked far more interesting than this photo showed.
Friday, 12 August 2011
Manistique bears its contradictions without apology—or perhaps simply without awareness.
Its Ben Franklin sells a wide variety of non-grocery items and has this loverly offering, which I hesitated to attempt to date based on the packaging, preferring to let it remain a mystery (against my archaeological instincts). And behind it, with a sample just visible on the wall, is an extensive section of quilting calicos, some of which are exquisite.
Just this summer, Jack’s, a grocery store, moved to a new building, from in-town one block off the main drag to the east margin of town. The new building demonstrates the epitome of contemporary grocery-ology. The deli section is huge, and you can get more than thin-sliced ham and potato salad dosed with glop in a dreadful shade of pale yellow. I tasted a delicious apple-raisin dessert, and saw many tasty-looking dishes (but no sushi; this is the UP after all). Over in the wine section, I noted a few bottles that were upwards of $30 along with a range priced below that; I cannot imagine such a selection in the UP of a decade ago, except perhaps tucked in a dusty corner in Marquette (a college town after all).
I suspect the bankers financing this new-Jack’s are holding their breath, as it was just announced that the city’s largest employer (I’m pretty sure), the paper mill, will be closing soon. On the other hand, perhaps the real customer for this upscale merchandise comes almost exclusively from the outside, that is, seasonal visitors with credit cards linked to distant zip codes.
Perhaps, though, my concept of the UP’s economics are dated, and Manistique’s new Jack’s is the current status quo for the eastern UP.
Back to this immediate area….
I seem to be unable to resist commenting on the weather many days. Today, it’s well worth some attention. About 4:30 in the afternoon, as we were returning from Curtis and rounding the east end of the lake, we transitioned from dry roads into a gusting rain in about a hundred meters. The cell tossed aloft leaves ripped from the trees, and, in another quarter mile, dumped sleet (oops) hail with the hard rain. Ice nodules banging on a vehicle’s metal skin take me back to a sleet hail storm in the Mixteca Alta that left us sitting in our seats as the sun that followed illuminated a sparkly, white, slippery landscape, easily seen from our position trapped at the bottom of a clay-slicked dip between moderate hills. After several hours, and with three guys nudging the Land Cruiser when it threatened to slide off the road in the process of moving forward and upward, we did make it out; I did not look forward to sleeping in the vehicle.
We took refuge beneath a tree on a side road, gambling that our arboreal shield would stand as it protected us from the brunt of the potentially metal-denting sleet hail. After about ten minutes the worst was past and we turned around and forged on. As we came down our road, we only had to steer around one downed tree, and the gravel bore many leaves and small dead branches, reminding me that the Prius is not an off-road vehicle.
When we got back to the house, of course the power was out. I say “of course” because, as our neighbor noted the other day, “It seems whenever we have a zephyr, the power goes out.” Our real dilemma, beyond the freezer and how much water was in the pipes, was that we’re garden-sitting for that same observant neighbor, and his corn is ripe, and the raccoons will be camped out by the electric fence, and would probably check it to make sure it was live, each and every night after dark. So, we discussed just how unpleasant and possibly necessary it might be to camp out in the garden, even in the rain, to fend off the varmints.
Fortunately, we called in the outage (as near as I can tell no one else did), and in less that an hour a power truck arrived from Newberry. We spoke with the fix-it duo, and they checked down the road for the problem. Perhaps a quarter hour later the power came back on, and we headed out to check the garden’s power, and met the truck returning to make sure we had electricity. They told us that apparently lightning had struck a transformer just up the road. I figure maybe eight customers were affected, and no one else had called, perhaps thinking the outage widespread, or, equally likely—we were the only ones present to notices. So, we were very glad we had called.
The power was out just over two hours, I discovered when I reset the bedside clock. Contemplating a night of outdoor vigilance, it sure seemed longer.
I am reminded that I do not like to awaken to a bat flying about my bedroom. Not that I harbored doubts. The valiant John trapped our latest nocturnal visitor behind the glass when it flew to the screen of an open window. The disconcerting part is that we can no longer find it trapped between the glass and screen. More research needed.
Sunday, 7 August 2011
Early mid-morning I noticed a light rain falling, with no wind, so I kept the windows open.
The Forager-Horticulturalist’s garden is, I’m sure, soaking it up.
Friday, 29 July 2011
Another three(!!) inches of rainfall last night, and this baby is busy!
A couple of months ago, the water was flowing into the sump pump pit like this and the power went out. For over three days. Not fun. Not one bit of fun.
So, we are very happy that the electricity is still on, despite two nights of sometimes intense lightning.
Of course, we are also very happy that we still have power to run a houseful of fans, so we can attempt to stay sane in the heat/humidity that we air-bathe in constantly.
When I was a kid, Dad showed us the pump pit, how deep it is and how the water comes in. We were allowed to lay on the side and dangle our arms down and check it out. Then, we were told to stay away from it (not quite on pain of death, but you get the idea). No playing in this area.
See, kids do listen when they’re told serious stuff.
Thursday, 28 July 2011
No kidding. And it’s raining again.
That’s the overnight rainfall. I checked with the soil probe, and the whole soil column is now wet (down at least 15″), whereas it was dry for much of that prior to this…weather event. The rain must have been soaky enough that there’s no standing water in the yard or driveway.
Wednesday, 27 July 2011
Surprise of surprises! A soaky rain graced us in the late afternoon! I see the outdoors as more green than blue-hued, however.
Sunday, 24 July 2011
In this weather, there is one quiet time of the day, magnified this morning by Sunday silences.
We have the fans off just in the morning transition from ceiling-fan-cooling-the-house-down and inside-fans-moving-the-increasingly-stagnant-and-hot-air-around times.
This picture was closer to dawn than quiet time, but captures the essence of the change-over.
The other clue to our day here: no cloud-cover as we had most of the last two days. So, we’ll be hotter today, and with yesterday afternoon’s brief showers, we’ll be more humid, too.
Good thing the beans are picked!
Friday, 22 July 2011
Somehow, with all the weather craziness, perhaps, the Japanese beetles (Popillia japonica) didn’t arrive soon enough to truncate the grape crop along the back fence. The Botanist has three different kinds of grapes trained along the wires, and this is the Concord (dates back to ca. 1850, says WikiPee), so when it gets ripe it will be deep purple.
We have temporarily escaped the bull’s-eye of the heat dome, and both the heat and humidity are now tolerable. In fact, I picked the beans this morning a half-hour later than the last two mornings. The number of beans is steady, however. I also watered the second planting of beans and the green peppers. Yea! for garden produce!