Musings

We took a mid-day jaunt to enjoy the (newly rejuvenated) AC in the pickup during the heat of the day, in a generally southerly direction. Do that far enough and you encounter: Lake Michigan.

With small beach-wash zones of aging zebra mussel shells. Invasive species, oh yeah.

We poked around an eventually covered some miles on Batty Doe Lake Road. We thought the side road to the lake looked rather private, so we never saw the lake, but we spent some miles on the road including crossing a huge puddle that was larger than it was deep (we checked with long sticks), and with a good stony bottom rather than much—so: crossable, we judged, and the stalwart pickup (with street tires) crawled through without problem. Yay!

We don’t know when the road was named and could only speculate on what “batty” meant when the name was chosen. Crazy? Loony? (Wrong species). Just strange? (Like chronic wasting disease?) Yeah, we batted around a few ideas; perhaps all were batty.

Some stretches of Batty Doe Lake Road connected active limestone quarries. Limestone dust is almost white, and rather dramatic. We were lucky we encountered no mining vehicle convoys that would have intensely dusted us. Or any other vehicles.

And almost home, we watched this osprey with a fish balanced on a high branch, just looking around. We only saw it because our out-for-a-walk neighbor had spotted it, and we saw her in that looking-up/phone-up photography pose that points to Something of Interest. My theory is that the catching and flying took rather a lot of energy, and we caught the osprey in the resting-before-eating phase. [Without a cocktail, is such a pause still eligible to be called cocktail hour?]

Posted at 6:47 PM | Comments Off on Batty Doe, for starters

Not far from here is a house that has an incorporated train car. No one even visits the house anymore (don’t know the back story, but I’m guessing aging owner(s), plus this year’s special complication: Covid19), although someone local does mow the lawn. Anyway: train car house.

This is in the corner of a field that has been fenced off from the rest of the field with a small orchard. I’m guessing old chicken house, but maybe it was geese or turkeys. In any case, the building and the fruit trees seem no longer maintained/used.

Posted at 7:45 PM | Comments Off on Disused buildings

We took a drive up on the plains to throw off a building affliction of cabin-fever (hahaha). The plants have filled in so much since I began visiting decades (cough cough) ago.

We encountered pretty full campgrounds by Lake Superior, including many tenters, and goodly crowds at all parking lots we went by with foot access to the beach. That’s far more people than we saw in the early summer when the same campgrounds were almost empty; granted: some were closed at that time.

We checked out blueberry plants by the Fox River (Hemingway was here, or dreamed he was here), and, as we’ve been told: lotsa no-berries. And here: no berries. Consistency in the wild crop.

On our return, we took the wildlife drive at Seney Refuge…pretty quiet as far as other human visitors…in contrast to up by the Lake. We did spot several swans, all dirty headed/necked from the tannic waters of the refuge impoundments. Also a few Canada geese. A pair of Sandhills. Assorted ducks. A large tern with a gaudy orange beak (Caspian?). A loon we were photographing and binocularizing called as we watched; nice touch, buddy!

Posted at 7:43 PM | Comments Off on Adventure northward

First ground-flock of Canada geese I’ve spotted…preparing to fly south?

My hypothesis: the geese find the giant hay bales nurturing.

A fine shot of Queen Anne’s lace aka wild carrot, an invasive species from Europe and southwest Asia, to honor Joe’s VP pick: Kamala Devi Harris (October baby!, b. 1964), US Senator and former AG of CA.

Also in the news: Big Ten, Pac 12, more cancel fall football (that is: American football).

Posted at 4:50 PM | Comments Off on Everyday until late afternoon

Without a doubt, the highlight of our day was a lovely, long, languorous luncheon-bruncheon, with extended socially distanced laughing and chatting.

Posted at 7:20 PM | Comments Off on Monday funday

I went out to photo the heavy morning fog and found a distracted, not-worried chipmunk, who stayed around long enough for me to capture his/her soul.

I also found some extremely local webs, not at all world-wide.

Posted at 7:31 PM | Comments Off on Photo distractions

Get it? Sorry. Struck me as humorous. I saw this as a snap and thought I could post a posted sign. [Yes, I can be rather simple-minded.]

More than that, however, I liked the tip of the metal post poking up its red-head behind the wooden post.

Posted at 6:40 PM | Comments Off on Twice over

I tried for an artsy photo with light rays caused by the lens (I think). Turns out I had something—probably hand cream: oops—smudged on the lens for an additional muted effect (that I don’t like).

Posted at 6:52 PM | Comments Off on Artier than I planned

First, there were five crows perched on high dead tree branches.

Then, two flew off.

Then, one more left.

The answer is ___.

And they didn’t stay around long after I took this snap.

Posted at 6:35 PM | 1 Comment »

Tonight we ate veggies from the neighbors’ garden: mini-cucumbers, leaf lettuce, broccoli…all super-yum. We ate basil from our garden*…snipped atop a pasta-tomato sauce mixture [okay, I admit: the ingredients for that were from various groc stores].

I kinda think the basil made the main dish phenomenal!

* Our garden consists of basil…and a pair of barely rooted spearmint stems. So we pretty much harvested all we had! [Not enough of a garden to get through the winter….]

Posted at 7:04 PM | Comments Off on Fresh herb