Musings

Half-bridge.

Double turbine (the left “one” that’s actually two).

Posted at 9:18 PM | Comments Off on Proportional built environment

In celebration of MondayFunday, we braved the leg-height clouds of biting stable flies and walked from the mouth of Hurricane Creek to the AuSable Lighthouse. We hoped for a breeze when we got out of the woods, but it was at best intermittent. Still: we survived.

Look at all the shapes and textures…bricks painted and unpainted, metal roof “shingle” overlaps, linear eave layers, and the most eye-catching: the flashing stair-steps.

Posted at 9:15 PM | Comments Off on Well-lit light

The other day I came across a discussion of perhaps the most common protein on earth, rubisco, technically styled RuBisCO. Its long version is Ribulose-1,5 bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase. I have no recollection of encountering mention of RuBisCO before.

RuBisCO is an enzyme, and it is critical for plants in extracting CO2 from air as part of the photosynthetic process. One key aspect of RuBisCO is that is extremely slow-acting, for an enzyme.

The utility of RuBisCO for human dietary needs is still under development, although I don’t know what the holdup has been…maybe it’s all chemistry? 🤣 Anyway, it has to be extracted from plant matter, then purified, etc., all without altering its protein properties.

My perspective is merely from trying to manage the onslaught of vegetative summer growth, without consideration of its potential RuBisCO content. Think: mowing, walking, cutting, and the like…. How would these chores be different if I could dump the plant-matter into an extractor…and, pfft, there’s dinner.

Posted at 9:28 PM | Comments Off on Lost in the weeds?

Our fawn visitors came by twice, with totally crepuscular timing: 6:30am and 6:30pm. This was the morning visit.

It seems like a quarter of the garage at the neighbors’ is for storing shoes. 🤣

I took a late-day walk and the light angle lined up with the creek that leads from the road into the swamp/lake.

Posted at 8:32 PM | Comments Off on Time and space

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.

Posted at 9:03 PM | Comments Off on Ungulate visitors

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.

Posted at 9:18 PM | Comments Off on Critter rundown

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.

Posted at 10:11 PM | Comments Off on Out of body experience?

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.

Posted at 8:16 PM | Comments Off on Are you brat?

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.

Posted at 9:10 PM | Comments Off on Live and learn

Hmmm; that changes things big time.

Posted at 8:44 PM | Comments Off on News o’ the day