Hot Time

Recuperating from flying leap into the forest. Visitors this afternoon. Dinner at Second Salem and then some train watching, complete with a squished penny

Very hot and humid.  

New Cottage

Before cleanup and the felling of dead birches.  Note: since this photo the dock has been leveled and four of the dead birches have been turned into firewood.

At home at the new retreat.  

Wonderful, spacious, new place, just around a point on Pickerel Lake from Dawn and Mark's cabin, in a glacially fascinating area of moraines and kettles. (North of Gleason, WI)

Lots of fun projects to look forward to. Off to a great start on just day two of ownership.

Progress.  

And the opening view.  

Garage Sale...

...or rather moving sale. Plus a little house work, and some kid play time. Plus, belated happy birthday to Abby and Tony, born just one day apart (though in different years). 

Hot, muggy, still, and buggy, out of doors.

Rising From The Ashes

The University Prairie, burned in the spring, is growing back wildly, a rich mix of forbes and grasses.  

Cherry Time

Three gallons of cherries picked, washed, and pitted (on the drum pitter), and I am guessing that that  many cherries weigh out well over 20 pounds. The picking was fun, but what comes next might be even better.

Wrestling

No weeds, just winter squash and tomatoes. The landscape fabric laid down this spring  has done the job of suppressing the noxious weed infestation. And the Oregon homestead winter squash seem to like Wisconsin as much as their namesake state. Tomatoes are tall and spindly (etiolated). But if that is because of a lack of sun, they are in for a surprise.

This morning with Ellie, Maddie, and Becca, and these girls like to play rough. We played hot llama (or hot lava, depending on your interpretation), monster, and lifeguard all in the space of a few hours, and they all entailed lots of capturing, rescuing, dragging, and flopping about. Becca enjoyed putting things on my head, down my shirt, and in between my glasses and my eyeballs.

This afternoon, it was with Katy and Will, and these kids like to play rough, too—lots of capturing, rescuing, dragging, and flopping about. It is so fun to reconnect with these kids after a month's absence, and ,of course, the flopping about will ease off over time.

Got the motorcycle back from the shop Bri took it to for its ten-year tuneup. Looking good and running strong, and fun to ride.

A nicer, cooler, less humid day. 

Travel Day

Foggy Lake Michigan, with beach being eroded back by high water. The last time the water was this high was in 1998, or 17 years ago. Amazing how much a beach can grow out in that time period. Also amazing how it can rapidly be cut back.

Back home in Whitewater, where it is hot, humid, overgrown, and swarming with mosquitoes. We are adapting to air conditioning.

Hearts of Oak

Success! At least partial. Oaks from acorns, planted last fall. Far left, white oak from an acorn found near here. Middle red oak, from an acorn found near here. Right, four swamp white oaks (one of my favorites) from acorns collected in Whitewater. Swamp white oaks like the same conditions as ash trees.

 ...............,

And then I decide to sit in the Zen spot for a few minutes before lunch, hoping to cool off a bit. I sit in the shade of the overhanging cedars, but I have to squint in order to look out on the bay. Squinting makes me sleepy. Occasionally a hint of a cool breeze lifts up from the water, but it is warm. 

A  large number of small bees, and fewer, but still numerous, small black wasps are working the flower heads of the ninebark bushes—a busy but slumberous humming. A column of ants marches around a rock. Dragonflies come in to recuperate from their shoreline predations, their approach a series of steps down to a final restful perch.

All is quiet and still. A monarch butterfly flits around a milkweed. 

Then there is another. Then monarchs everywhere—and then I can hear the cells dividing in the giant mullein to the left of my foot and can see it growing in front of my eyes.

And then my head tilts forward and, with a start, feeling cooler and a bit rested, I realize it’s past time for lunch.

Occupy Pinebox

Pinebox has been reoccupied.

Very warm and sunny. All signs point to summer. Overall, a calm and quiet day, and so far no fireworks (for which Pax is grateful) (he did already eat a lot of Lacey's kibble, though, just to prove a point).

Pitcher's Thistle

Rare and endangered. Exists primarily on the south-shore dunes of Manitoulin, and a few other small locales in Michigan.

One of the special attractions we took the Wisconsin boating friends to see today. First breakfast at Mum's in Mindemoya, then, for them, some banking and grocery shopping, and then for all of us a quick trip to Providence Bay. Being boaters, they are like we used to be—completely ignorant of the interior of Manitoulin. They know the shoreline, outlying islands, and harbors; and the harbor towns as far as walking is practical, but beyond that all is the mystical realm of the Great Manitou. We do believe they enjoyed ourlittle tour. 

And, they got to see the famous Pitcher's Thistle. To most people the Pitcher's Thistle looks like any other thistle, and to most people thistles are things to be eliminated. But the Pitcher's Thistle, being so rare, is highly protected. If you have one on your property you are pretty much screwed, since you can't do anything that would in any way harm it. On the other had, if you are a dyed-in-the-wool environmentalist you are pretty much delighted that you have one of the world's rarest plants growing in your front yard. 

Most property owners within Pitcher's Thistle ecozones have invested big bucks in a beach. And these folk like their beach to be beach, with no green stuff, and especially no thistles. They want pure, clean, unadulterated sand, with nothing more than the occasional bit of goose poop.

Here on Mudge Bay, there are four or five properties with sandy beaches, extending our way from THE Sandy Beach. These are up-scale properties. And the people who own them like their beaches immaculate. The the most expansive (expensive) of these beaches are groomed (or plowed) continuously, sometimes twice a week. And they are plowed so deeply that it is often impossible to walk the beach, as Pax and I do regularly, without sinking ankle deep. 

I think this is wrong. It kills all native vegetation and destroys habitat of all native wildlife. It makes the beach just an extension of the carpet inside the house.

But, here, on our beach, where we have not sand but boulders, we pull alder seedlings and cattails, whack back the nine bark and birch weeds, and poison the poison ivy. 

Is there a happy balance somewhere?

Anyway,  long live Pitcher's Thistle (but just over on the south side of the Island.)