Musings

We got antsy this afternoon and took what on another day would be called a Sunday Drive. No destination. No agenda other than Getting Out of the House. Which is a fine goal.

This place is called Eagles Nest.

And here’s a Great Lake and some low sand dunes, foreground, and much higher dunes in that rather distant shore-curve.

Wandered down a dead-end road and found a half-barn. What beams! And the silo is wood, too, with metal straps encircling the walls one above another.

Posted at 5:32 PM | Comments Off on Sunny, with great clouds

I’ve got two interesting pictures today, I thought, embarking on this post. This one has immediate punch. Color. Drama. Visual clout. Floral!

Yet, this one of the growth end of a cucumber plant is in many ways far more interesting. Look at that unfurling foliage drama! So much mystery unfurling pending. Flowers are lovely, but cucumber plants have flower AND produce food.

No honest way to compare the pair.

Posted at 8:37 PM | Comments Off on Drama club of plants

Around noon, things got rather quiet here, as our social-distancing houseguest left…zoom zoom. Then, we discharged our batteries with a few chores and, this evening, dove into the new “Perry Mason,” which is nothing like the TV Perry Mason’s of my childhood (in re-runs near you).

This photo is from last night…and the bright dot above the moon is…(have I already forgotten?) Jupiter?. (Too sedentary right at the moment to check my app. 😴 Lazy gal.)

Posted at 9:34 PM | Comments Off on Nightly news

I’ve been trying to snap this cluster of white birch trunks for a few days, and every time I bring them into focus they have a beige/brown cast on the screen that I don’t see in reality. I know I can remove that in post, but I kept trying to find a situation where the camera wasn’t “confused” by the color. Finally, this oblique angle (both me and the sun) produced relatively true color.

And this is a close-up (duh) of a mullein (Verbascum thapsus) leaf (top surface). The fuzziness appears like another world’s surface.

Posted at 6:34 PM | Comments Off on Photo phun

I went in for a swim and kept seeing these dark Thangs on the bottom that had little depressions in the sand around them like clams, but didn’t look like clams. Took me a while to figure out they WERE clams, but so festooned with zebra mussels so they no longer had exposed clam shell. I suppose that the clams can become overburdened with the invasive mussels to the point that they can’t move and can’t eat. It made me sad to see the many poor clams all dark and rough and weighed down.

The illusion in the photo is that the grass is rooted between the old bark and the wood; however, the stems are growing up almost two feet behind the bark to emerge into sunlight at stump-top. This does not make me sad. Having the white pine cut down did, though, and immensely.

Posted at 5:24 PM | Comments Off on Illusions

Is a grapevine tendril.

Was a peony blossom.

Posted at 8:30 PM | Comments Off on Izza wazza

Call it cinquefoil or call it potentilla, it’s a pretty, modest flowering shrub that’s hardy enough to survive in northern climes.

Posted at 5:24 PM | Comments Off on What’s in a name

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 only a wee-teeny meteorological knowledge of clouds, and that weensy database includes no name for this pattern. I hereby name it a radial cloud pattern.

Posted at 9:09 PM | Comments Off on Going with the descriptive

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