Old Flower Friends, New Flower Friends

 I'll start with the new flower friends. This is the very newest. Sue gave it to me for my birthday! It's an Azalea, variety 'Stewartsonian,' with deep red flowers. I'll take its picture again when more of them open. She said the color I got was pot luck, but I like it.

This isn't actually the flowers. These are mostly grown for their foliage It's one of the Heuchera I bought last year, and it's really happy. The variety is 'Peach Flambe.' I like this a LOT. It will add bright color all season.

This is one of the two Brunnera I bought last year. This one is 'Frostbite.' The other one is either dead or not up yet. There are a lot of things not up yet, so who knows. I'm so happy to see it bloom. I knew the flowers were small; it's more of a foliage plant. The leaves will get very big after the flowers are done, but I love the delicate blue for spring.

Now for the old friends. I show you these most years. However, last year I divided and moved most of these, so I'm happy to report that I now have multiple puddles of all of them.

First is the traditional English Primrose. Three clumps in bloom! It was quite breezy when I took the pictures.

This is the Cowslip Primrose. It seems to be very very happy for me. There are three puddles of this now, also.

And I also split the purple Corydalis, possibly 'Berry Wine' variety. Both clumps of it are blooming.

It's pretty early to be digging around yet- too easy to cut plants that aren't quite emerged. But I need to get my fencing up. The deer love azaleas, so it will have to go in prison, and I now have netting for the front garden and the rock garden. I think I'll need to get those up next week.

I worked on the book today, and spent some time with Cathy. We took a tiny walk. Did about 90 miles of campsites and some editing. Might do more yet tonight.

Total miles hiked in 2024: 210.9 of which 70.6 is North Country Trail.

See A High Probability of Naughtiness

Back to Crystal Valley

 I went back out to Crystal Valley today, but still didn't hike every piece of every loop. I did walk 8.3 miles though.

It's still not really spring in the woods. Found more hilly trails. This is a really good area to get a workout around here. From the parking lot to the high point is about 300 feet difference, but the trails go up and down a lot. I definitely climbed and descended more than 300 feet. My tracker said my net elevation gain was 2.67 feet. Right. All that means is that I went in a loop which is good. Returning to the car is good.

I took several pictures that didn't come out at all. I took a picture of Sweetfern in bloom. Not in focus. It smells even more spicy than the leaves.

There was sun, so I was able to get a nice shadow of some emerging leaves on a rock.

The Shadbush is trying to show off. That's one of the very earliest blooms in the woods.

I was hoping for some wildflowers, but it's a very dry woods, so I didn't have big expectations. All I found was one small clump of common violets at the edge of a clearing.

A tattered Red Admiral butterfly was hanging around while I ate my lunch. I did also see a dragonfly.

It's really interesting that where the trees are getting sunlight they are starting to pop! This was a fencerow on the way home. I love this time of year.

Since I had to repeat some sections of some loops to get to "new" trail, I did stop at the chestnut balls and look around more carefully for the tree. Hmmm. I did not find anything that has the right bark. That said, I think chestnut bark can be rather variable, but I'm still mystified. I found more of the balls uphill in the woods, so I think my idea that they rolled downhill into the trail is true. And I found one ball that was broken open about a quarter mile from the others. I suspect a squirrel.

I've been trying to meet my 100 miles of campsites quota since I got home. I'm about at 40 miles. Will I make it before I give up for the day?

Total miles hiked in 2024: 208.9 of which 70.6 is North Country Trail.

Crystal Valley Ski loops, Oceana County, MI. Various loops, 8.3 miles

See Crystal Valley Outer Loop

Birthday Fun

 My usual birthday treat to myself is a hike. But this year I deferred that to another day. Maybe tomorrow, we'll see. I'm kind of on a roll with the book and want to work while I'm highly motivated.

But I was eating my lunch and someone called and asked me if I wanted to go out. Um... I was full. But there's always room for dessert, right? Especially pie.

Do you know who it was? It was Sue! With a friend of hers, Jan.

They had Jan's car, so I wasn't sure if I'd get to see my little buddies. But they had come too. Sophie and Annabelle are always good for smiles and licks.

And Omer got me some treat foods I'd been wanting. Some chips and pop.

And I've been inhaling broccoli. Just in the mood. Here it is with cottage cheese for breakfast. But last night for dinner I just ate a huge bowl of broccoli with butter. Yummers

Sue brought me another fun item. But I'm not going to share that until I decide where to put it. I thought I knew the answer to that when she gave it to me, but I need to rethink it. Stay tuned.

I did my editing, and then my 100 new miles of campsites, and some more formatting fixes. I may try to get more done this evening so that I'll feel good about going out to play tomorrow.

Oh yeah. What year is it? Most of you know. Finishing trip 76 around the blazing ball of gasses.

See Surprises and Blessings

Big Sable Reference Points

  You know one of my hobbies is to follow local rivers. I've showed you a couple of places on the Big Sable River a lot of times: the Vince Smith Bridge, where the NCT crosses it. Hamlin Dam, where it is dammed to make Hamilin Lake. And the outlet at Ludington State Park.

But I have another reference point from my back road explorations yesterday. This is about 7 straight-line miles downstream from the Vince Smith Bridge. That's probably at least twice that many river miles. This is along Taylor Road. Point #3 on the map.

Here is point #2 on the map. You've seen this in every season because this is where the North Country Trail crosses the river.



And this is the headwaters at point #1 on the map. From here, oddly, the river flows north and goes around a loop before heading south and west.

I left the map large, so you can click it to see things better.

I can see that there are a couple of small bridges between points 2 and 3. Guess I'll need a river exploration day!

I worked really hard today- editing and then on the book. I got some formatting cleaned up and did my 100 miles of campsites.

See At the Vince Smith Bridge See Snow on Big Sable Headwaters

Blaze Day!

 I've explained a lot about the how and why of this before, so I won't cover that again. Here are the tools.

I'll just say that I'm pretty sure the last time this section of trail was blazed was in 2010. That's way too long ago. Not good, but sometimes these things happen. Too few volunteers, whatever... The link at the end is the year that Ellen and I did part of this section. Yes, that's a 14-year-old blaze.

I went out with Dan D. today, and our goal was to touch up a half mile of trail in each direction. That is usually plenty for one day. Dan wanted to try a template he made for spraying the blazes. I have to say that this is not standard, but he wanted to try it.

He was really careful to not let the paint flare out inside the edges of the template. I'll concede that. Here is the sprayed blaze.

I'll stick with using a brush. A lot of the trees we had to use in this section are large red oak. They have deep ridged bark that is really difficult to get nice blazes on, but here is one of my reasonably good successes.

We had help from Riley, the trail-blazing dog. She thought the blue paint was great for accents.

We also did a tiny bit of white blazing on a side trail, but we were getting tired, and the white paint was too thin.

I got to do a little bit of back-roading on the way home. I was just on this road not too long ago, but can't find the date. It's a back way from Freesoil Road that actually has a bridge over the Big Sable River. It's fine as long as the weather has been fairly dry. Yonkers Rd.

My goal after I got home was to get 100 more miles of campsites done, and I did it. Had to really knuckle down!

Total miles hiked in 2024: 200.6 of which 70.6 is North Country Trail.

North Country Trail, Mason Co. Michigan, Tynadall Rd to Koenig Rd. and back. 1 mile

See More Blue Blazes

Handbell Sunday - April

  I gave you a hint last week that we were going to play "Hymn of Promise." It was the prelude, and people just take forever to quiet down. There's not much I can do about the noise since I'm only recording with the camera mic. I think the chimes sound really nice on the one verse.



I think you should have the words to all three verses.

In the bulb there is a flower; in the seed, an apple tree;
In cocoons, a hidden promise: butterflies will soon be free!
In the cold and snow of winter there’s a spring that waits to be,
Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

There’s a song in every silence, seeking word and melody;
There’s a dawn in every darkness, bringing hope to you and me.
From the past will come the future; what it holds, a mystery,
Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

In our end is our beginning; in our time, infinity;
In our doubt there is believing; in our life, eternity,
In our death, a resurrection; at the last, a victory,
Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

Our second piece was "An Easter Celebration." The young man on trumpet is a college freshman.



In the afternoon, I worked on the campsite list and got another 100 miles done. I forgot to tell you yesterday that I did 225 miles, but I worked really, really hard at it. Not even half done with the list yet.

See Handbell Sunday- April

Shadows of Spring

 I loved the sky and shadows across the back yard this morning.

The rest of my daffodils are coming into their own. You've seen them all before, but not this year. These are the lovely bi-colored ones, Narcissus Delnashaugh.

This one always makes me smile because these bulbs came from my family farm in NY. The old-fashioned double daffs were a favorite of my Grandma Leary.

Going back to another two-colored one, this is 'Duke of Windsor,' one of my personal favorites. It spreads very slowly, so I don't get big clumps of it like I do some of the others, but it manages to keep hanging on.

I think this variety is looking the best it ever has. This is 'Pistachio,' which is supposed to be yellow-green. It never is, but this may be the closest it's come. The wind knocked a few of these over, so we now have a little bouquet of them in the house, too.

I wouldn't mind a couple other varieties, but no plans to do anything about it at the moment.

I went to the food bank in the morning, and then worked all day on listing campsites for the book.

See A Riot of Daffs

Team C-J for the Win Yet Again

 Well, it appears that the last time I had the living room really clean was 2018, although Nov 2019 was probably close. And, no, it's not really clean now. And I didn't take a before picture, but this is the after. I know... there's still a lot of stuff. But you should have seen how much there was. Cathy came over and we spent two hours tackling this mess.

The couch is out of the picture on the right side, and it is clear (which it wasn't two days ago). As in... people can actually sit on it and use it as designed.

When I started working in earnest on the trailer project, all the wood, foam, moldings, etc were stored in the area you see here, in addition to everything you can still see.

So, where did all that stuff go?

We still have one viable out building. There was so much junk just thrown in the entrance way... We broke down about 50 dead boxes and pulled out some things that can go to recycle or the township cleanup day this spring. Again, no before picture. Not even an after picture. This is the middle of the project when it was cleaned out enough to move all the leftover building materials to this space.

Sure, I prefer having a cleaner house, but what has kicked me into a higher gear? Steve is coming for a visit in 2.5 weeks. We need enough space to at least have four people hanging around together and to eat meals. I have some hopes for part of the dining room table, but I'm not positive.

And, I edited, and managed to get 100 miles of campsites logged. I am whipped.

Just for perspective, You know I've been lamenting the utter mess here since I finished the hike. Well, I have emptied the boxes from and cleaned the kitchen (the floor was covered with boxes), cleaned and redecorated my bedroom, widened the aisle through the dining room by one whole row of boxes, pretty nearly finished cleaning the pantry (I'm still puttering on that), and the bathroom isn't bad. I guess I should feel a little better about my progress.

See Boring but Necessary

Forsythia

 I kept my nose to the grindstone all day today, so I've got not much to share.

Enjoy my forsythia bush, in full bloom two weeks earlier than usual. And it's looking very good.

Another 100 miles of campsites listed, and some editing, and some housecleaning

See Ready to Roll

Sneak Peek - How to Hike the North Country Trail

 This project is all Matt Rowbotham's fault! I'm only half kidding. He approached me at the Celebration in October of 2022 and suggested this would be a worthy and easy project. He was half right.

The first part of the book is about 30K words of text that explain why the NCT is different from other long trails, both in experiences and management. This is more or less done. I've sent it to some fact checkers and have to go back through and incorporate their feedback.

The second half is going to be a listing of all the known legal places to stay overnight along the trail. This is the daunting task. It has taken a while to get a format that is understandable, and works with all the odd configurations we have to deal with. Huge thanks to Marianne Duvendack and Cathy Laman for helping me get that whipped into shape.

Here is a sampler pdf with the opening to the campsite half, including the legends. Then it skips to a list from western Wisconsin.

Link to a Sample pdf of How to Hike the North Country Trail

I did my editing quota and then worked like a fiend on this book. I have to keep my nose to the grindstone or I'll never get it done in time. But I'm also supposed to be doing other things... I have campsites listed for about 1200 miles (that's about a quarter of the trail), and not all of those are formatted correctly yet.

Also, my car has new brakes. Driving is an expensive hobby.

See More Mapping Fun

Hymn of Promise

 We will be playing "Hymn of Promise" in bell choir on Sunday. It's great in midwinter or spring.

In the bulb there is a flower; in the seed, an apple tree;
In cocoons, a hidden promise: butterflies will soon be free!
In the cold and snow of winter there’s a spring that waits to be,
Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

The red maples are showing off their springtime red flowers. These are one of my favorite spring trees.

The church planter is looking nice with daffodils and hyacinths

I am a little sorry to tell you about this last tree, although it's about to burst in blossom. And it has at least 10 friends. I'm pretty sure these are Bradford Pear, Pyrus calleryana. They were brought to the US in the 1960s as an ornamental tree, but they out-compete a lot of native trees and revert to a brittle, thorny tree that naturalizes in woodlands. They are considered a real no-no farther south, and are now banned in a number of states. Maybe I can confirm this on Sunday. The flowers should have an unpleasant odor if it's this pear.

Even though it was nice out, I worked hard on editing and writing. I have so much to do, and Saturday and Sunday I did nothing on these projects.

I guess if there's an upside to the writing, I have finally figured out a format for the campsite list that seems to work with all the options, and I can organize it in a spreadsheet to double check the mileages. I feel as if this is going a little faster now, which would be really good.

See A Riot of Daffs