Primary Colors

Today was gray and foggy and rainy. I spent all day inside. Got a lot done, but I choose to show you some bright flowers from earlier in the week.

OK, it's not quite red, but it's the closest I can come right now. This is smooth rose, Rosa blanda, a wild rose with no thorns. It was growing on the banks of the White River.



For yellow, we have lance-leaved coreopsis, Coreopsis lanceolata. This grows wild in hot dry waste places, but it's happy enough in dry, sunny garden spots too.



Finally, I think I promised Ann to bring you this plant, and here you go. This is wild lupine, Lupinus perennis. It's always blue-purple, and is the required host of the Karner Blue butterfly, which is endangered. It doesn't seem to grow well right where I am, but a few miles east it covers the roadsides at this time of year.



Ellen and I have a play date tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Old and New (and Brown)

Out doing some work assignments today. These are the two things that caught my eye the most. I seem to have a color theme going on in posts this week.

First, the closeups. Can you picture the whole from these hints?





I bet you have a pretty good idea of what you are going to see next. First is a 1947 Chevy 1/2 ton truck. This side was getting more sun and you can see more of the original color. Pretty nifty! I'm calling this "Old." Of course if you were born in 1947 or earlier you might want to dispute that.



Did you guess what the little guy was up to? This isn't a cattle breed that I see a lot of. I think it's a red poll, but any farm bloggers with real knowledge, feel free to weigh in. I do know that he's pretty new to the world.



It rained a lot today- cooled down and felt nice.

Red & White (and out of focus)

Two lovely sights today but the camera rebelled. I bring them to you anyway.

Red

First is a red-headed woodpecker. Technically, they aren't rare here, but are certainly not often seen. I had work assignments today, and I saw this one about 30 miles east of where I live. I had one chance at a picture, and the camera focused behind the bird. I love their bold colors.

White

Tonight, coming home from my writers' support group meeting the moon was rising. It isn't full till tomorrow night according to the calendar, but it's sure hard to tell. For some reason, the camera couldn't seem to focus on either the moon or the grass.

I guess it was just one of those unfocused days!

Red & White (Pines)

So many interesting things have been coming my way lately that it's hard to choose what to share. But I'm going to sneak back to Friday for a minute. Ellen and I had another excellent day. It started out rainy, and we did some handicrafting at her house, and had a wonderful asparagus pastry for lunch.

Then we decided that, rain or not, we were going to get in the car and go exploring. Are you ready for this? We found a whole new place to play with lots of hiking possibilities! I'll tell more as we learn more.

The rain let up just long enough for us to sneak in a little hike. I just snapped a few pictures, and didn't realize what a nice set this is until tonight.

First is red pine, showing off the reason for its name. In certain lights, the bark looks really red. This is a pine plantation, as so much red pine is in Michigan. It was planted a lot in the 1930s by the CCC, and is now being harvested. This stand looks a little younger, maybe from the 1950s.



While we were walking a trail (no names, some former forest road numbers) we passed this wonderful old white pine. There are only a few of this size left that escaped the clearcut logging around 1900. This baby is probably 120 years old at least. I should have put Ellen beside it for scale.



Tall pines are awesome trees!

See Walking at Ward Hills for more red pine See The Wagon Road for another big white pine

Garden, Eggs, Muffins, and a New Toy

I did it all today, and I'm going to drag you along rather than pick one thing.



I spent about three hours in my flower beds. I know... it really doesn't look like much of a garden. But I am enjoying finding what's still alive. There will be another story eventually about the bare stalks in the middle.

While I was working out there, I also found these:



I've spent a lot of time hunting for what they might be. My best guess is the eggs of the milkweed bugs that I showed you last summer. If so, they are close to hatching. They start out more yellow and become deeper orange as they approach hatching. Maybe I can take a picture every day and figure it out.



My next goal was to make a double batch of rhubarb muffins, and Om helped with that project. It looks like they have frosting. It's only a little butter-sugar crumbly topping, but it really reflected the light, I guess. Most of them are already in the freezer. To accomplish that storage feat, I had to get a new toy.



My vacuum sealer was really and truly dead. The hot sealing bar no longer would heat. As we were getting ready to make the muffins, I discovered that we were out of brown sugar and that Om had just drunk the last of the milk! So I made a run to Meijer, and hopefully got all my groceries for the week too (I HATE shopping). I decided that I'd get a new sealer. I use it all the time, and we like to seal the muffins in cheap sandwich bags before stacking in a Tupperware box. It keeps them from drying out so much.

Who knew! They now make a deluxe model as well as the regular one. I stood there and read the boxes and wondered if it was worth the extra money. In the end, I bought the one with more features. I really use this gadget a lot, so perhaps more options will be worth it. I'm sure I'll do a review on Shared Reviews after I use it a little more.

Not a very focused post, but a very productive day! Thanks for coming along.

See Another Orange Bug for the Milkweed Bug