Crayfish Flotsam, from the minibeach off Lakeshore in Grosse Pointe Farms, MI, photo by Mary Stebbins 

A stroll around the yard on 5/18/05: today I was mowing the lawn and though the whole process is quite upsetting--the noise and mowing up flowers and insects--I enjoyed the sunshine and all the flowers. Here are just a few of the things in flower in my yard today. YAY! 

Flowers at the Village Market: We took our constitutional in the neighborhood tonight and I took pictures of flowers for sale at the Village Market. 

Metrobeach 5-4-05 Goose and Turtle: (Clockwise from top left) white pines yellowed perhaps by exhaust fumes from traffic, first leaves starting on red-stemmed dogwoods, face of large snapping turtle, goose in the canal. 

Metrobeach May 4, 2005

12:31 PM I lean against the park-here-for-Nature-Center sign eating a turkey sandwich and feeling cranky because I packed 1 1/2 turkey sandwiches and a molasses cookie for lunch and the cookie is missing. I may have dropped it at home or in the driveway or in the road or it may be roaming around in my car, but it isn’t here for me to eat. I thought I had a fruit bar, too, but I left that in the pocket of a different coat.

I’m also cold. It is perfectly clear, sunny, chilly, and windy.

Someone is flying a model airplane. It’s quite large and acrobatic.

12:46 PM I am walking. I need to leave in less than two hours, so I don’t have time to lounge around, darn it. I looked in vain again for that cookie, then suited up with gear, camera, binoculars. I hope I can see the owls today, including perhaps the screech owl.

I am cold in a coat and fleece and long sleeved jacket etc. and some of the tiny kids are only in shirt sleeves. There is a school field trip. They must be four five-year olds.

Driving here through the city I saw a gorgeous display of white and yellow tulips and another of red and yellow tulips. Flowering trees in flower everywhere. Here, the blackbird and redwings are going nuts.

I pass a couple bird watching. Hear more redwings and something chirring. I see a nut hatch. The redwings must be at the height or singing. The air is full of their trills.

Algae are already growing in the ponds.

I remember being here with Rachel, little Rachel (my granddaughter), how she posed at every turn for a new photo. I think about Keith saying I was cuddly because I was soft (he even used the word squishy until I objected, as if it was a good thing to be squishy!) I said he was cuddly and he said he was too bony.

Some red-headed man crowds by me on the trail walking faster.

Now I hear a very high musical chee-deep, chee-deep. Not a chickadee, higher than that.

I see a bird emerging from a bluebird house. I am watching them for the screech owl, but I’m not sure I remember which house it was in. But when I raise my glasses, the bird zips out through the hole and flies away. I am sure of only a couple things: it is not a screech and probably not a blue bird. Maybe a swallow.

The redhead hurries back and stops to talk to me. I see he is only a boy, maybe 15 or 16. He tells me the trail is really wet ahead. I thank him and continue on. He goes back the other way.

There is no screech owl looking from the box that I think is the one the naturalist said had a screech owl who often looked out. I go on without seeing him.

1:11 PM A mourning cloak butterfly settled on the ground nearby, but flies when I try to take his picture. I settle on a bench. (Click here to see what I wrote about my fibro).

A bird that looks a little like a gull, but smaller, with sharply angled wings and a long sharp bill plunges into the pond as if attempting at catch a fish, and then flies in circles around it. Turtles are sunning. Painted turtles.

A mallard hen flies very low over the pond, quaking throatily. I shoot a turtle, with Eeyore, through the phragmites.

Two geese hiss at me as I walk past them.

The huge snapper is here, but more out of the water than last time, so I shoot a few shots with Eeyore and one with Olli.

When I reach the spot where the male great-horned owl was, I can’t find it. I know I have the right spot, exactly. I get a great look at two cavorting flickers and male red-winged blackbird, but no owl.

So far, I am striking out in the owl department. Lots of ducks, though.

I just ran into the naturalist from a couple days, no green jacket, he told me where the male owl is, and the female owl. Said the screech owl wasn't hanging out today. So far.

The female great-horned owl is sitting in the nest. No sign of the babies.

I go to the place where the male owl is supposed to be, but I can't find him. Lot of woods to scan and no one to say, look there by the dead branch or whatever. I look from several different vantage points but fail to find him and need to move on. It’s 1:44 and I have to LEAVE in an hour. Wahn. I keep watching as I walk away for some slight thickening, but see only what look like large nest with lots of sticks. No owl.

When I get back to the nest, Mom and both babies are visible so I attempt a shot. While I’m attempting a second, the babies start sinking out of sight. More people come, I leave.

There is loud woodpecker drumming that reminds me of the ivory-billed. This isn’t that loud, not hardly. Maybe only a hairy.

My watch zeros out at 31 minutes. 14 to go.

There are not enough benches, logs, or rocks for people suffering from fibromyalgia out here.

I would like to get one of those cards to take light and color readings for adjusting the exposures later, I wonder if Keith has one.

I walk out into the marsh and then return to check the nest again. The mother is still visible. Then I run into the school group, they stop by the snapper. I hope they don’t poke it.

Especially with their little fingers.

When they leave, I shoot the turtle again, and a small frog. The turtle ahs moved slightly. Also some geese in the canal.

Another school group approaches and I tell them about the snapper and remind them to watch the little fingers.

2:16 I have walked my 45 minutes plus a little and have to leave in less than half an hour (and still walk the rest of the way back to the car). That means there will be no reading of manuals, probably. Let’s see if I can write an entry for Full Tilt Retreat in the little bit of remaining time. Click here to see what I wrote for Full Tilt Retreat.

Oops, after writing, I have 2 minutes to get back to the car. It’s more than 2 minutes away!

I peek at the screech owl nest box, but from this distance, I’m not sure I could tell of it was there or not. A mallard hen flaps wildly in a puddle.

I walk past lots of fur bits where some animal met its demise. I am sad to have to go home. I would say, "I wish that Graham would tell me when he wants to come home, but really, I have other things to attend to at home probably should go home anyway. Though I’d get more writing down if I stayed here.

I did not come out where I intended to come out, but walked farther away so now I have to walk back farther. Aiee.

I got hot sitting in the sun writing, but the wind is cold out here in the open.

I get home, get my stuffed packed up and unloaded and get into the house at 3:26 PM. Phew.

I never found my cookie. :-(

Map of Blisle. I made this from smaller pieces of topo maps pasted together. 

Note on pix from Blisle

Now that I see these together, I think it would have been more harmonious to post the Lagoon pix together and the forest pix together, but please forgive this inharmony, as I do not have time to redo them. Mary

Blisle May 3, 2005 with Swan and White Trout Lily

Blisle May 3, 2005 with Swan and Trout Lily (clockwise from top left) swan on lagoon, white trout lilies, crayfish claw at lagoon by swan and tree from previous post), forest floor with trout lilies and toothworts.

Belle Isle, May 3 pictures

Belle Isle May 3, 2005: Clockwise from top left: flooded entry to Nature Trail, the Center Canal Bridge, the trail alone the canal through the woods, a tree on the lagoon.

Belle Isle, May 3

Tuesday, May 3, 2005 Belle Isle

11:50 I am at B'l'Isle, otherwise known as Belle Isle. I drove on an "empty tank" to Mack and Moross to get gas at the normal place, but there were orange cones blocking the pumps, so I nervously drove toward B’l’Isle. Luckily, I did find a Sunoco station and get gas.

I brought a small lunch, but I want to walk first, because it's supposed to rain later. And then I want to write today's entry for the retreat blog, at least that, and read about the digital voice recorder.

I want to find my old strobe and see if it can be fixed or buy a new one or borrow one of Keith's. He always says he has one, but he never GIVES it to me to use.

It's cold today.

I haven’t been recording my walks anywhere. I start this walk at 11:59 AM. Yesterday I walked 45:39. I am walking toward the red bridge and the trail along the canal. The Karolin (SP) is playing tunes for noon. The white trout lilies are all hanging down, bell-like and unopened. There are plethoras of them, but the light is bad.

I wish Keith were here with me; we had so much fun here together last year at this time.

Toothworts in flower, fern fiddleheads unrolling. Blue violets flowering still. I shoot a few white trilliums and some reflections in a swamp with Olli. I left Eeyore in the car because it looks like rain, and the radio said it would rain. There are ZILLIONS of white trout lilies here. I should take some back to Baltimore woods. Or to Beaver Lake, if Bruce wants a wildflower garden.

Back in B’ville, someone told me of some flowers that were going to be destroyed and I meant to pass the word on to Bruce and/or Baltimore woods, but never did.

The whole forest floor is covered with white trout lilies. Amazing.

I accidentally zero out my watch at 6 minutes, what a piece of junk. (Read C@#$!)

I take toothwort (3 shots) and one of the woodland floor of white toothwort and start my watch again. I need to remember to add six minutes.

There is not a huge variety here. But what there is, there is in abundance.

I find a cress that looks like rock cress (?), but I'm unsure. I don't have my book. I shoot it, and I small incompletely opened Jack-in-the-pulpit. While I am shooting, who should come along but the same man we saw at Metrobeach, the birdwatcher with the green coat and camera and matching binoculars to my sweetie’s. He tells me that there used to be both yellow and white trout lilies here, but the Formosan deer preferred the yellow ones and ate most of them, whereas, the white ones, which are normally rare, were unfavored and spread and that there are more here than anywhere else. I tell him about Rock Glen falls in Ontario where there are white at the bottom, yellow at the top, and mixed in between. He sees a bird and dashes off, leaving me happily to myself.

I had inadvertently stopped my watch at 2:22. Of course, it’s actually 8:22, but 2:22 is a nice number. The Green Birdman asked if I had driven the little red car and I admitted to it.

There is lots of spicebush in flower, but partly gone by. I run into the Green Birdman again and he starts taking again. We hear a bird and go toward it. He says it is either a worm-eating warbler or a water thrush. He says he’s been listening to the calls on CDs. I say I do too, but I don’t learn as fast as I used to. He knocks on his head and says, “This is a 386, not a Pentium 4, but eventually it gets the job done.”

I walk off in another direction. I suddenly am feeling as if I should have binoculars with me. I have 2 pairs in the car, but I was intent on wildflowers today.

As I was arriving, I ran into a man riding a unicycle with a big grin on his face. He was clearly enjoying himself. It was geared low so he was peddling like mad and swaying from side to side with every stroke.

When I cross to the far side of the canal, I meet a black man. I rarely see black people out in the woods. He has a grey mustache and is friendly. Says, in a heavy southern accent, "Wish it would get a little warmer!" I say, "Warmer would be nice," and he says, "Sure would be." Cool, though, is good for sustaining the wildflowers and slowing the leafing. In my mind, a long cool spring is preferable to a short hot spring. I sympathize with warmth lovers, but only to the extent it doesn’t kill off the flowers or get hot.

I take a couple shots of the canal, and go back to the other side, walking on the canal shore trail rather than the woodland trail I was on earlier. There is so much trash here it is difficult to get a decent shot of the trail or the canal. I attempt a shot of the trail alone the canal, but it may not really be representative of the area because the woods is more open here than elsewhere.

When I stop my watch to take the shot at 14-something, it zeros out again, so now I have to add 20. At least it’s a nice even number.

I feel suddenly happy. I am alone in the woods next to the canal and that water thrush or worm-eating warbler is calling again, and the gulls are calling, and robins, and the little leaves are opening on the trees and it seems peaceful and serene. I wish these woods were just a little larger, but they are still pleasant with wildflowers. I wonder if the story Mr. Green Birdman told me about the trout lilies is true. It well may be. I wonder if he is British or from somewhere else, he has a bit of an accent. He looks rather British or something.

A lot of the squirrels look mangy. I wonder if the are shedding badly or actually have mange. A lush fluffy black one investigates me.

It is so dark and a little oppressive. It really seems as if rain is imminent.

I wonder if the Imminentalists are so in the moment that they are sliding over the shiny accretion disc into the future. Or the future is rolling over the slippery slope into their now. What is imminent is almost more now than now, it is what is coming, what is slipping from future to now, the rain drops that are ABOUT to dimple the slate grey water, the fetal robin that is about to burst through its cerulean shell and emerge.

Is that what the Imminentalists think they are all about? I read all their mission statement stuff and saw nothing tangible to chew up and swallow.

HAH! It is starting rain, just very lightly, a tiny sprinkle, slowly increasing in intensity. The imminent becoming present. And here it comes, harder. It is clicking and banging. It is SNOWING!

If it rains, I can sit in the car and work. If it snows, I may go home.

I’ve only walked 20 minutes, though.

It is SO much nicer here than walking on Moran and McMillan.

Even the dandelions are all closed up!

There is a yellow Aracae opening. Because of the snow, I do not photograph it. The snow is getting to hard and thick to write and it’s starting to gather on the ground. Sheltering the camera, I take a shot in the woods with toothworts and white trillium and falling snow.

And another of the trail along the canal. Two. They come out dark. It’s 1:10 which should be the brightest time of the Daylight-Saving-Time day, but it is dark.

I am nearly back to the red bridge, and when I get there, I will have walked just over 30 minutes and still have 15 left to walk. The poison ivy is coming out, red leaves unfolding and reaching toward me with itchy fingers.

I can never make things the same as they are or were. I can’t keep them the same or go back. I think of how much fun Keith and I had here together and want him to be here with me. I know I said this, but I keep missing him. We could have come Sunday, but we went instead to the primitive skills party. Cinco de Mayo.

I walk over to the bathroom, but it is locked. People have urinated and defecated in the entryway and it stinks. I quickly leave.

Keith has a relationship with B'l'Isle. I am building one of my own.

I walk among the gulls and find and photograph a crayfish claw, a few gulls, some trees along the lagoon. I'm about to shoot more, but I just can’t stand the garbage: white Styrofoam cups and food containers, chip bags and cans juice boxes and lots more, ugh.

Plastic bags floating in the water like guts.

I see three big fat fluffy healthy-looking fox squirrels. They do not seem to be afflicted with mange that the black phase grey squirrels have.

The snow has stopped and disappeared from the ground. I walk along the edge of the woods and find a sign that says, "Belle Isle Nature Trail." There is a foot of water on the trail and I can’t resist taking a picture.

1:37 PM I have walked 44:30 and still have to walk back to the car, so my official constitutional is essentially over. Any walking I do from now on is for pleasure, curiosity, necessity, but not for my obligatory constitutional. Yay!

I am sitting at a picnic table outside picnic Shelter #18, which is where the flooded nature trail starts. NOW, the sun peeks out between the dark clouds, now that I'm officially finished. But I could trick it, and go back in the woods, here or else where. I was going to work on my retreat entry.

(If you would like to see my retreat entry at Belle Isle for May 3, 2005, click here.)

OK, good, now I can go eat my sandwich.

I thought I might end the serial today, but it doesn't seem to want to end yet.

What will I do about the fact that none of the restrooms are open? I may have to go home. Actually, I wanted to leave here at 2:45 and it is already after 2:00, so I don’t have much time left anyway. I wanted to do some other and additional writing.

I also wanted to read the instruction manual on my new voice recorder. I'd like to know how to use it before I start back to B'ville.

A big ship is passing on the river. Keith would be excited!

The little parking area is littered with ribbed condoms and flattened beer cans. This is not a pristine wilderness area.

I stop to take couple shots of periwinkle (Vinca minor), but, like the violets, the blue just doesn’t cut it. They look washed out.

There are geese around my car, and I have to disturb them to get my sandwich. They are not very disturbed, though. I think I was more disturbed to be disturbing them than they were at being disturbed.

So far, I have walked 53:33 and that is probably it for now.

The geese are grazing in a manner similar to horses, all walking along in more or less the same direction sometimes stopping to rest. I am not sure what they are eating. It is not the taller grass. They press their beaks deep into the grass.

There goes another big ship.

Suddenly one goose takes off from the rest in the opposite direction. Half turn and follow him. He walks across the road, almost getting hit in the process. The others turn back, graze a little longer, and then half of them follow the first goose who is now grazing on the other side of the road. I missed a good picture. Now they are all going, and a squirrel crosses their path coming back across the road. A fast-moving SUV almost takes them all out. The sky is darkening dramatically after lightening up a little.

2:35 I finish my sandwich. I planned on leaving in ten minutes. I think I will start driving slowly around the island and watch for possible pictures. The old boathouse, for one. Then head home. No time left to really to write.

It starts raining and I’m in motion and don’t stop to take the picture I wanted of the old boat house or whatever it is near the bridge.

I pass a woman hitchhiking. It literally hurts to drive by and not offer a ride. I remember when I seed to hitchhike to and from school and desperately want a ride, when it was cold or I was late, and no one would stop. I’d be so angry. "What are you afraid of?" I’d scream. Couldn’t they see I just needed a ride? But now I’m the one who’s afraid. The woman looks right at me and raises her eyebrows questioningly. I keep driving, feeling hurt, sad, scared. Probably, she just wants a ride. But maybe she has a gun. Maybe she would rob me or hurt me, take my car, my money, what little I have. WAHN!

When I get home at 3:15, the black SUV has my place and the places on either side are taken. I have to park three houses away. I could have kept my spot, if I'd stayed home. But ugh.

OK, I need to collect my stuff and go inside. I wish Graham would let me know if he’s coming home. It could affect my plans!

I hear that unconditional parenting produces the healthiest more independent-minded children, moderate parenting the next best (that’s halfway between strict and lenient), lenient parents the next best, and strict parents have the worst kids when they become teens.

I tried for a mix of unconditional, moderate and lenient. I like having kids have the most amount of freedom possible and making the most decisions on their own. But some loving guidance is appropriate.

Rage is always a mistake, but one that reasonable beings unfortunately occasionally make.

Patty Murphy comes along: someone moves while I’m writing, so I take my spot in front of the house. Now (Michael) Murphy’s Law says Graham will need a ride and someone will steal my spot. Or something like that.

The man next door is trimming and trims along our edge. I have trouble getting the door unlocked my hands are so full.

But I’m in before 3:30. Yay!

Mary

Welcome Spring!

Welcome Spring! I can't always do an exciting wild constitutional. Here are some local flowers and opening buds from our walk down Moran and McMillan. Clockwise from top left with center last(leaving out the dupes): unfolding staghorn sumac buds, magnolia blossoms at dusk, white trillium in someone's garden, blue violets, periwinkle (Vinca minor.)

I have issues preparing the pictures for display because the monitors on Blue and Dead, my two computers, are so different. Dead's flat-screen monitor is very bright, so that the images then appear dark on Blue's monitor and vice versa. I know that you will see them differently still. What to do?

May Day Walk, Photos

May Day walk: (clockwise from top left) "Ruined Enemy" (rue anemone), "Warning, keep out!!", Self-portrait at cemetery (me), barn under dark sky. [To see a self-portrait postcard made from these images, visit Self-Portraits.]

May Day Walk

May Day, Beltane, May First, 2005. Cinco de Mayo Party; 2:51 PM

I walk alone through unfamiliar woods. I have never been here before, and don’t even know where I am—somewhere in Michigan. I’ve left the Cinco de Mayo party at Phil and Diane’s. Keith came up with me to the top of the hill, but I sent him back to hang out with Dale, since Dale had invited us. I want to get my walk in before I get too involved. Before the day disappears without it. I’ve been taking pictures of wildflowers and enjoying the hills and valleys and large patches of umbrella-shaped mayapples.

Oh-oh, I'm on posted property and I just came up to a house, so I quickly turned back. I’ll have to go a different way. Hope I don’t get in trouble.

I don’t think these woods are large, but they are very pleasant, fill of rue anemone, mayapples in leaf and bud, spring beauties, vernal and permanent ponds and swamps. Deer tracks and trails.

I attempt some pictures of rue anemone (or, as Keith says, "ruined enemy"), but it is dark and windy, not a good combo. I am using Olly, the only camera I’m carrying at the moment. I walk down to view a Vernal pond. No, not a vernal pond, a longer than verbal pond. A permanent pond. It has duckweed.

Yellow violets are in flower. Chokecherry leaves are all the way open but not full-size.

The woods are full of deer stands, nailed to trees all around me. Deer trails and deer stands. I am walking along on the inside of the posted signs, not smart, probably.

There are squirrel nests and bird nests. Now the woods appear to be ending at a farm field. I’ve been walking 14 minutes not counting the maybe 5 it took to climb the hill. Do I dare walk out into the field for a few minutes? I don’t, I turn and skirt the inside of the woods.

I come to a place where there are arrows stuck into a tree stump—some sort of warning--gives me the willies--and a canoe by a pond. I get a little nervous, and start back the other way. I feel a unwelcome, though I have no intention of hurting or disturbing anything.

I've now walked far enough where I could retrace my steps if I’d made a straight trail, but I did not and don’t care to try to search for the convoluted path I took.. A hawk screams, over and over. I wonder if it is nesting nearby. Sounds like a red-tail.

I see a cemetery and also some interesting barns so I head along the hedgerow between the plowed but untilled cornfield and the pasted woods. I could walk back along the road, but then I won’t have walked long enough.

Did I say untilled? I meant unplanted. It’s been tilled, but the old cornstalks are still visible. No sign of new.

At the edge of the cemetery: a dump, with the strong scent of balsam. A goose, a single goose, flies over, honked sadly. I stick a blue cloth chrysanthemum in my hair and snap a shot of myself. It’s very windy, so I then stick the flower in my back pocket. I take a few shots of the farm, probably the farm that owns the cornfields, but not the woods, as the posted signs point out toward the cornfield. The farm shot is sort of ruined by a big satellite dish. Sigh.

When Keith and I were walking up the first set of hills together, we found some cages with dead animals in them--road kill, maybe--speaking of which, here’s one now. They were in the cages to remove the flesh from the bones. This one is a deer, still quite stink-ulous. But the skull is there, along with the rest of the carcass and of course, I’m tempted by it.

I walk up by the farm and take 2 more pictures of the barn and walk back toward the cemetery. I mark the place where the dead deer lies, its bones all chewed by predators as if they were in Wild Africa or some other nature program. Hah, I can’t believe I said that—the nature comes first and the program or writing about it afterwards. Not the other way around! The carcass is across from the cemetery and down 300 feet or so. Just past the cemetery is a curved snag and the skeleton is directly across from the first tree after that.

Now I am headed back toward Diane and Phil’s, where the party is. I’m almost ready to learn flint-knapping and whatever else is being offered. Keith bends intently over a table, deeply involved in something. I walked 46:12. Graham runs up and says I was gone 2 hours. I sit with the flint knappers and pick up some basalt, a leather shield, and a knapping tool.

Mary Stebbins