Friday, 26 July 2024
This doe has been coming by daily. Today, she came by twice—that we noticed.
This is one of her fawns. No photo of the second. White-tails are crepuscular, I have heard, but this group drifts by in the early and later afternoon.
Both are standing; that is how tall the grass is this year. Also, both photos are through a window with a screen.
Thursday, 25 July 2024
I didn’t see much in the way of wildlife today. I did see two garter snakes. Also, multiple flickers. And the usual deer, plus geese on the lake. I heard night-time loon calls and multiple sandhill cranes above.
Wednesday, 24 July 2024
Despite there being plenty of sunshine today, I continued the laziness of yesterday…reading a John Grisham novel (library book) set on the GA–FLA line, on islands on the coast. Ho-hum.
Tuesday, 23 July 2024
Dunno if one can judge one’s own brat-ness. Now it’s morphed into demo(b)rat, I’ve read. Pardon me, I’ve gotta go study up on Charli XCX lyrics and the meme-world.
BTW, it was rainy all day, with a few breaks of drippy grey. The rain barrel had surface bubbles, which I never remember seeing there before.
I used the noir filter on this shot. I don’t remember ever using a filter on a shot I’ve posted here before. It’s a visual reference to today’s sunlessness. Unfortunately, the noir takes away the iridescence. So much of art—and life—is trade-offs.
Monday, 22 July 2024
I’ve always heard this called sweet pea. For sixty-ump years.
Then, a few minutes ago, I did an online search, and oops. Nope. Sweet pea is botanically Lathyrus odoratus, which is a tip-off that it’s a scented flower. These specimens are not scented. That means they are Lathyrus latifolius, or everlasting pea (and other common names). The two are close cousins looking very, very similar, and I’m sure there are also morphological differences.
I’ll keep calling these flowers sweet peas, because tradition is tradition; however, I’ll try to remember if someone knowledgeable about such things is around that it’s really L. latifolius.
Friday, 19 July 2024
We drove and drove, and then we saw this milestone. All lanes were open, so we sailed along, then paid the $4 it takes to drive into the Upper Peninsula. The lakes looked glorious and sparkled. En route, we saw geese, a brood of turkeys, a deer, crows and flickers. At the cottage, I can tell a woodchuck’s been visiting our yard (rrr; they are voracious eaters).
Floral complexity continues to abound in the North Country.
Thursday, 18 July 2024
Meet Acer palmatum. This maple is native to east Asia, from Korea north into Russia. Knock me over with a feather; I just read that there are over a thousand cultivars of this species.
Wednesday, 17 July 2024
You can’t tell it’s the moon even, I suspect, but I’m sure it’s clearly waxing gibbous if you didn’t have the screen of vegetation and you’d been tracking the moon-change.
BTW, my dictionary indicates that gibbous is etymologically in a roundabout way from the Latin gibbus meaning ‘hump.’
