Gray Day and a Little Stinker

It was dark and oppressive all day long. Lots of thunder, a little wind, not much rain. (But a tiny bit.) The edge of one cloud rolled over us about 30 minutes ago.

Despite it being slightly wet all day, the finches are spending a lot of time at the birdbath. I'm getting a kick out of watching them.

In fact, I am enjoying them so much, I broke our decision not to feed the birds. It's not a big deal. I found a jar of seeds when I cleaned the pantry and decided to at least use it up. So I've just been putting a handful on the deck railing each morning. Last night the wind was blowing the seeds off, so I corralled them in a pot saucer.

Guess who found the seeds within just a couple of days. The chipmunk. I haven't been able to get a better picture of him.

He climbed right in and stuffed his cheeks full of every seed in the dish and took off.

This is the chipmunk that has been trying to come in the screen door. In fact, he can get in underneath it (twice last year- if it's the same one) and once this year. I've managed to scare him right back outdoors each time. But I decided I need a barrier because he might get in when I wasn't watching.

I have a board about 2 feet wide that just fits across the bottom of the opening. So far, this is keeping him out, although if he works at it, I'm sure he could duck under the screen door edge and jump over the board. To get on the deck at all he has to either make a leap of about 3 feet from the outside stairs, or climb up a window screen and leap about 2 feet. (Because the only access to the deck is through the house) I've watched him do both. Until I got a really good look, I was even contemplating if this was a small red squirrel because I didn't realize chipmunks were such good climbers. They tend to stay on the ground, although I've occasionally seen one higher in a tree.

One day, he climbed right up the screen door and hung there looking at me.

I am considering hanging the saucer on a cable that he can't climb down. That might slow him down for a while until he figures out how to leap to it. Probably not worth it for one jar of seeds that isn't even full any more.

I used to dream of having a small pond and a really wildlife-friendly yard- you know, one of those certified Backyard Habitats from the National Wildlife Federation. But I think I have enough wildlife already.

In other news: I did all the editing stuff and projects, but it wasn't a good day to work outside, so I cleaned the kitchen and spent some time on plant records. Makes me feel virtuous, like Archie Goodwin keeping the orchid records in the Nero Wolfe books. (But I do have pretty good records of the gardens.)

See Home Before the Storm

Mini Typhoon

  Turned out we probably could have hiked our planned distance twice before it actually started storming, but there were severe weather warnings renewed all day long, so we never went.

Finally about 3 pm. we actually got a storm. To be fair, it was pretty impressive.

Big winds, and it brought down two tree limbs. It put a divot in Joyce's driveway, but missed Marie's car except for a brushing of leaves.

We taught Joyce how to play Quiddler, and we have another aficionado! She's a good player, too.

I did a fair amount of work. Got IngramSpark to accept my text file, and after way too many tries and some help from a friend, I got the cover accepted too. Here's the final full cover.

A utility pole came down at the end of the street, so there's been no power here for about 4 hours. I have to shut down the computer now. We should be good to hike tomorrow.

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Ten Degrees Better

  Cathy and I went for a short hike at Ludington State Park this afternoon. The heat continues to be brutal at my house, but as is usually the case in summer it was literally at least ten degrees cooler at the lake. Much nicer for walking.

We took the Island Trail north. This is from one of the boardwalks over the shallows of Hamlin Lake.

Lots of yellow flags (wild iris). It's too bad the yellow ones are alien because they are so pretty.

Just an interesting stump in the water.

You know I'm a sucker for nifty patterns. I like the contrast of the dark rippled reflections of the stems with the white ripples of the water.

Hamlin Lake at the north end of the Island Trail

Then we turned around and went back to the Lost Lake Trail and took it away from the lake, then cut back toward Hamlin on the Lighthouse Trail. I'm going to show you more about that section another day. When we got back to Lost Lake, the trail is once again on boardwalks beside the water. Saw this gorgeous wood strip canoe.

By the time we were finished, the fog was rolling in from Lake Michigan. Here's the obligatory big lake picture. Ha! Can't see a thing. That's why lighthouses were invented.

By the time I got home, these thunderheads were building. Someone may get rain, but I don't think it's going to be us.

We hiked about 4.5 miles.

In other news. You need to be proud of me. I was outside at 7 am, before I even had coffee, digging the rest of the autumn olive out of the yard. Now I can mow, as soon as I get gas. It's been too hot to even think about digging up bushes. I also got groceries on the way home and did some editing.

Ludington State Park, MI, Island Trail and parts of the Lost Lake and Lighthouse Trails

See My Favorite SP Loop

Say Gray

 
I took one more day off because I could. Tomorrow I have to get busy. Nothing like "have to" as motivation. The weather lends itself to giving in to the blahs, too.

South:



North:



East:



West:



I guess the sky wins the consistency award.

I'm beginning to feel rested. Or at least I'm telling myself that since there is work to be done tomorrow to get ready for the weekend.

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Monsoon Day

 
The clouds at dawn were beautiful, but also a little ominous.



The final fling of Books Alive! was a casual breakfast with four of the authors staying to discuss authorly topics. Following that, Jean and I headed out to Shagway for another day of sales.

Well, we had hoped for a day of sales. Instead, we set up in the rain, but we had a canopy, right? And people often come to these events despite rain because there is live music, and it's more fun than the beach in the rain.

By noon, the heavy rain got pretty serious, and when it began blowing underneath the canopy and getting our books wet, we packed up and left. No sales.



Roads were beginning to flood as I drove home. With short breaks the heavy rain continued.



We heard on the news that the eastern part of the county got up to 13" of rain. The highway between Scottville and Manistee is closed for a stretch of several miles with as much as 18" of water over the road. Part of downtown Ludington is flooded.

I decided it was a good afternoon to rest and read. Finished one silly book, and started one serious book.

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Excitement and Apathy

 
The big excitement of the day was the storm last night. Lots of wind. 0.75 inch of rain. Power went out.

It didn't get restored until mid-afternoon.



The problem was a wire down way out by the railroad tracks. Somehow, we were the only house affected (in this immediate area).



The day cleared up, but now there is a second line of severe storms rolling through that may spin up some little tornadoes also. Whoa! But I went to writer's group, where we lost power within 10 minutes of starting, so we all went home. The streets in Ludington were flooding fairly deep and there seem to be a number of blocks without power. High winds (although I haven't seen anything yet as strong as they were here last night). Another 3/4 inch of rain in the last hour. Now it's just raining gently.

Hope we don't lose power again.

So much for the excitement. Now for the apathy.

I have done almost nothing except read books for three days now. I may be able to blame it on the extremely heavy air. Or today I can say I didn't want to run down the computer battery. Or maybe it's just because I can't manage to accomplish things unless there is a screaming deadline right in my face. Or maybe I am just lazy. I suppose we'll see what I manage to do tomorrow.

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Relief!

 
Last night all we got was a light show and early dark, but today... the rain actually showed up. Smells wonderful, feels wonderful. Cool breeze coming in the window.



I'll just walk you back through the day. Weird light, but I still wasn't sure we were going to get the rain.



For about thirty minutes it seemed as if the dark clouds were just going to race over without doing anything.



Before that, the light was good to take my annual picture of the rose bush I hate... except for this one week of glory.



And before that? I took a short walk and saw a female widow skimmer dragonfly that seems a little odd. The black coloration is only on the hind wing.



I'll sleep better tonight!

In other news: I froze 9 cups of mulberry juice to use later, or just add sugar and drink as juice. Other than that, I've been writing ALL day, and finished The Bigg Boss (subject to editing of course!). Major accomplishment.

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Pea Soup and Hail

 
I haven't been doing a very good job of taking interesting pictures this week for the blog.

One thing I finished today was making split pea soup. It came out really good. Much to my surprise, I've never shared a picture of split pea soup here before, although it's one of my favorites, so at least this is a "new" (to the blog) idea.



What I wanted to share with you was a book club I met with. They had all read North Country Cache, and we talked about it, and writing and publishing stuff. It was a lot of fun, but I forgot to take even one picture.

The big local news is the weather. Today we've had wind, rain, hail, lightning and thunder. Tomorrow is supposed to be serious ice. But the most interesting thing I didn't see, so of course, didn't get any pictures.

At several places along the shoreline today there was a seiche. This is an event caused by wind or disturbance (could be seismic, but this wasn't) that results in a rapid change in water levels. The water must be partly enclosed, like in a harbor, bay, river mouth, etc so that a standing wave can form. There are pictures of the breakwall in Ludington completely submerged. There was damage in Manistee along the river, and the water level change was observed in Pentwater. I guess the change was as much as 20 feet in a few places. Pretty amazing.

When it happened, I was eating lunch with the book club, and we watched the sky turn black and then the hail begin. We had no idea the water was creeping up the street just a couple of blocks away!

Now it's thundering and lightning. Hope it's not glare ice when I have to come home from work. Next to last Friday night, coming up!

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Moving On

 
As I came home from work today I was chasing the back end of the storm front that has hovered over us for the past several days. It's moving on. It's really too early to let myself think Spring, but it sure felt like it this afternoon.



When I got home, the next step in whatever is going on across the road was in progress. I took this picture on January 28. They bulldozed the entire lot just across and east of us.



Today, they were burning it all. I have no idea what's going in over there, but whatever it is, I don't like it already. I was hopeful the strip mall "progress" along this road wouldn't quite reach us until after I was dead, but I think my timing is off by a couple of decades. Bummer. I feel like moving on. Need to get that trailer done!



In other news: The prayer of the day was "let me be gracious, not grumpy." My success in putting that into action was partial. Work, oil change, wrote Chapter 12 in The ABZ Affair. Back to work in a couple of hours.

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Sky Show

 
Today was one spectacular sky after another. Mostly punctuated with rain, but hey. This was first light. I suspect the color is gratis from the forest fires out west.



I backed the shot out and got this!



Not long afterwards, the rain was scattering like splintered diamonds in the early sunshine!



On my way home from work, the clouds roiled and boiled and poured down more water.



By the time I got home, the rain stopped again but the clouds were still impressive.



This evening? Beautiful. But guess what? Right after I took this picture, it started raining!



My cold is hanging on. I mostly chilled out this afternoon.

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