Nordhouse Dunes Hike

A group of us went out to Nordhouse Dunes for a hike today. There were actually 9 of us. Two people didn't want to hike as far as some of us did, so they went out and back.

We did one of the longer loops which includes a fair amount of loose sand, coming near Lake Michigan.

I guess I like this tree. I've taken its picture before.

Hoary Puccoon is in bloom all over the dunes.

We came back to the parking by way of Nordhouse Lake, still with lots of water in it right now. It often dries up in August and September.

It was a lovely 67° when we started, but was 81 with 70% humidity by the time we finished. That was brutal. I haven't done much else today. But if I'm going to hike this fall, I have to get in shape.

Miles walked in 2026: 195.1

Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness- old road to Lake Michigan, north to Lake Michigan Rec Area, Arrowhead Trail, Nipissing Trail: 6.9 miles.

See Nordhouse and Bells

Velvet and Other Miscellany

A visitor to my yard yesterday is all gussied up in velvet.

Just as a reminder, the Staghorn Sumac gets its name from the velvety coating on young stalks, reminiscent of the stag.



Someone was running big equipment out back today, so I went to see if the railroad was being worked on. Nope. It's on the next property south- behind trees, so I don't know what they are doing.

But recently, new ballast has been added on the tracks. I think they are going to replace the regular rails with welded rail (as discussed in the link below), but not yet. Actually, thats why I went back to check out the noise- I'd love to see this process in action.

The only other interesting thing was that I noted the tiny boxelder tree back there is starting to look like a real tree. Not a high quality tree, but hey.

I worked well on all my projects again, and started the second weed-through of the rock garden. It's looking shaggy. A lot of things need trimming!

See Welded Rail Sections

The Trees Made It to Spring

I love the colors of trees in early spring, either flowering or not. Had some nice scenery on the way to and from the dentist today.

I think these are American Plum, but I didn't get out of the car to go check.

Sweet little baby Red Maple leaves!

Just extras- a bud for Canada Mayflower

And two deer moseying across the lawn at the Methodist Church.

Today was non-stop. I started with the dentist. That was a non-event. The implant is doing great. Six more weeks and another non-event check and I can have the tooth added.

Then I came home and got the mower going and mowed some grass. Then I worked on stuff for Confidence Camp until it was time to go to bell practice. Stopped at Cathy's on the way home and we talked more Confidence Camp stuff.

I'll see how much more I can get done yet this evening.

Stopped on the way home at Rothbury Rest Area. They have a tiny 0.3 mile trail.

Miles walked in 2026: 158.7

See Spring Color

A Hike with Lisa

Today we hiked with Marie's long-time friend Lisa. I met Lisa once before about 20 years ago. We met up at a different trailhead from where Marie and I walked last week on the Ontario & Western Rail Trail. We connected today to that hike.

The trail is 27 miles long (and I've now done 4 of them). Today's miles were different, so that is good, but the trail here is so close to the busy road that we could hardly visit for the noise.

This is pretty cool. The low hills in the background are just that- hills. One of them is called Morgan Hill. Directly behind them is the Ashokan Reservoir (link below), and behind that are the Catskills, and from there you can see the highest point in the Catskills, and the eastern end of the Finger Lakes Trail is up there.

There were occasional low berms between the trail and the road and various groups had adopted them to landscape. Not too much of interest in this season (some ornamental grasses that still look OK), but this caught my eye. This is a honey locust. However, this is not a typical growth from for a locust at all. This looks like it has been trained into more of a bonsai shape for landscaping purposes. I like it! I'd like to see it with leaves.

One of the underpasses had a nice mural that hasn't been defaced yet. (most of the interpretive signs were)

More errands. I actually did some editing work while Marie rested. Dinner and our game.

Miles walked in 2026: 68.1

Ontario and Western Rail Trail, Hurly north to Esopus Creek and back, 3.9 miles.

See Ashokan Reservoir Hike

Miscellaneous

I kept myself motivated and working on all the small and generally annoying tasks that needed to be done by allowing myself 10 pieces in the jigsaw puzzle after each item I got to cross off my list.

Then I took a walk. It was 50° out! The first picture is from today. Paper birch branches against the clear sky. Lovely, lovely, lovely!

And I have something to share from my walk on Sunday. Look who was so busy on a tree he let several of us take pictures. Usually the pileated woodpeckers are skittish. Not this one! This picture has a good silhouette, but the branches are in the way.

This is a clearer picture, but it's the back. Maybe not as interesting, although it's also not a view you see all the time.

These are possibly the best pictures I've taken of a pileated. I did get some good ones in Ohio once, but if I put them on the blog the search is not finding them. Those were unusual because the woodpecker was finding something to eat on the ground and was totally focused on getting it so it didn't notice Marie and me sneaking close. Maybe I'll find and share them some time.

The sky on Sunday was also gorgeous. I have to say that it's much easier to be cheerful when the sky is blue.

I am in good shape to finish the last things on my list tomorrow and pack the car. May put a few more pieces in the puzzle and take my book to bed.

Miles walked in 2026: 45.5

Road walk 4 miles.

See Snow Mushrooms and Other Events

Redbud in Winter

Just an urban tree ID, but hopefully I've sharpened my skill a little at recognizing this in winter.

Eastern redbud seems to grow this far north as an ornamental, but I haven't found any much farther north than Ann Arbor that are growing naturally. This specimen is an ornamental.

The seed pods are distinctive. I should have peeled one open to show you. I'll do that next time.

The twigs grow in a lazy zig-zag. Not very distinctive here, but you can clearly see that the leaves will be alternate, not opposite. You can also see in this and the next picture that they buds are very rounded, almost egg shaped.

I didn't do a good job of catching the specific things to look for when the uniquely shaped leaves aren't on the tree, or even more obviously, the pink spring flowers. But this picture does show the spots on the twigs- lenticels. And, yes, the Dollar General sign behind it. This is a planted street tree in Scottville.

I did take a picture of the bark, but I'm not even going to share it. I need to go back to this tree and find the characteristic that is distinctive and take a picture of that.

Stay tuned for more about the Eastern redbud, Cercis canadensis, in the future.

I was pretty good today. I worked on a number of things, had a Zoom meeting, started working on my next columns.

See a blooming redbud in Ohio

Three Tales of a Tree

I was going to share a Tale of Three Trees. Instead, it's more interesting to give you three tales of the same tree.

This tree is a small apple tree in our side yard. In the 30 years our house has been in this spot it's grown small wormy apples once. It never seems to get bigger. It's a pain in the butt to mow around. So why don't I cut it down?

Sometimes it's my own personal bonsai tree. This is last week on one of our snowy days.

Here it is on a foggy winter morning in 2018

And a sunrise picture also from 2018

I was pretty good today. Editing and all that. Cleaned up the kitchen. Wrote my column for Ludington Daily News. Also wrote a shopping list. Good writers are versitile like that.

There was an LOL moment. I'll share.

See Great Balls of Fire! Or Not

The Trees I Wanted

These are the trees I tried to picture the other day, but managed to leave the SD card out of the camera.

First up, we have my clump of white pines that I planted about 30 years ago. For a while, they looked like the letter B lying on its back. You can see its evolution at It's b-b-b-Back

This is pretty interesting to me. The jack pine that caught fire from sparks thrown from a train in 2017 has finally fallen down. The fire didn't immediately kill it, but I guess it never really recovered either.

You can now see the "mystery tree" clearly through the open space. This turned out to be almost certainly some kind of hybrid cherry that went wild. It always has a beautiful shape.

There is no longer even the faintest sign of the walnut trees I planted in about 1974. I think the tallest one got to about 15 inches. All gone now.

The sky gave me a nice pastel purple show through the aspens at dusk.

I seem to be in a low motivational phase. I managed to do some editing and a load of laundry. I snowshoed out back. It wasn't quite unbroken, except my tracks had blown in along quite a few sections. I was thinking about going farther, but didn't. My victory of the day was that I did not stop to catch my breath even once. I just kept walking.

Tomorrow, I have to get myself in gear. There are things I must do before Saturday!

Miles hiked in 2025: 463.1

See Not the Trees I Wanted

Beauty in the Details

We got another beautiful day! I had decided to use it to do my fall walk-through of the trail section I maintain. It was an easy amount of work. I had time to look for interesting details. This is the best.

I'm pretty sure this is a false chanterelle. Cute.

Still on the topic of mushrooms and fungus, this is some variety- I have no idea what- but see how it's growing in sort of a net pattern? The mycelium is under the bark and it puts up fruiting bodies in the softer cracks between the plates of the bark.

The bottomland hardwood swamp is completely dry. I've seldom seen it without any pools of water. This tree decided to become a terrarium. Probably Intermediate Wood Fern.

This just made me chuckle. It's an apartment building for some critters. I wonder who lives upstairs.

The trail work was easy. My section is in good shape. I only pulled a couple of small, downed trees off the path, clipped a little, and flipped away loose sticks.

Oh, a pic of my piece of trail? Sure.

And I did laundry and some editing.

Miles hiked in 2025: 440.5
NCT miles hiked in 2025: 244.8

North Country Trail, Lake and Mason Counties, Freesoil TH to Koenig Rd and back to Tyndall Rd. 3.5 miles.

See Work Day

Color in My Kingdom

I still have some really nice autumn photos from the past few days, but I think today I'll just show you what's going on in my corner of the universe.

Here's the female mulberry tree. The male one didn't look too healthy this year. I'm hoping it's not going to die. These two trees have given me several fantastic photos- see link at end for two of them

This is the paper birch I planted about 30 years ago. It's probably too close to the house, but oh, well. It almost died, and then came back, so part of the trunk is ugly. I have to keep trimming it away from the roof. It sheds leaves all over my front flower bed. That creates a big mess to clean up in the spring, but I think it has also improved the soil there tremendously. It's always golden in the fall.

The Sedum elecombeanum that I like so much in the rock garden with its yellow-green leaves all summer and bright yellow flowers in June- turns red-orange in the fall!

There is a big patch of Winged Sumac just out into the field a little ways. I missed the peak of its color, but here is proof that maybe a week ago it was bright.

Here is a picture from last year that shows how beautiful that clump can be.



And my parting shot is one of those "huh?" moments. I posted last year that the maple tree I planted as a sapling about 6 inches tall in 1991 got autumn color for the first time ever. It's the darker orange tree behind the yellow mulberry. That was taken October 31, so almost exactly a year ago.



Here's what it looks like this year. It has very little interest in changing color for me. You can see a few hints of orange/salmon on the edges of some leaves. But it's a nice tree, and I planted it, and it lived. So I like it.

I slept in this morning because I did not sleep well last night. Still got a fair amount done and took my 3-mile road walk.

Miles hiked in 2025: 416.2

See Pink, Blue, and Red