No, it’s not that I lost my slippers. Or that I need to buy some slippers, though some winter mornings I wish I had.
Prairie Smoke blossom at the end of this years bloom.
No, this week I was lucky enough to be invited along on an adventure with a college friend and her mom in search of Showy Lady Slipper plants.
What will we find along the boardwalk?
We drove over to central Michigan, kind of north of Grand Rapids, to Pierce Cedar Creek Nature Center where my friend’s mom had seen the lady slippers in previous years. And sure enough, she was soon grinning from ear to ear.
Isn’t this just stunning? Even the leaf structure is beautiful.
These are taller than the yellow lady slippers I’ve seen in the Upper Peninsula, and such a beautiful shade of pink. Definitely worth the drive.
Such a pretty plant.
In fact the whole boardwalk area was worth the drive, a wetland filled with blue flag iris and wild roses.
Blue iris as far as you could see.
And if you looked close you’d find a bit of red too.
A little columbine hidden back in the brush.
After we were finished photographing the lady slippers and were headed back to the car my friend’s mom saw an oriole dive down into the reeds.
Artsy fartsy lady slipper bud.
Of course we didn’t believe her, told her it was probably the yellow warbler that we’d been hearing.
Do I LOOK like a yellow warbler?!
But darned if she wasn’t right. As we discussed the possibility of an oriole diving it flew up into a dead tree, sopping wet, and proceeded to pose for us as it preened it’s feathers.
What about from this side?
We watched it until it finally flew off. Lesson learned – moms know stuff.
We spent a lot of time admiring the iris.
Then, as we continued back to the car we heard a yellowthroat singing away. Eventually we found it, hopping up and down the branches of a half dead tree.
Mr. Yellow-throat sings a pretty song.
It was hard to get a good look because it never stood still, but we did catch a glimpse of it’s cool black mask.
Joe pye weed getting ready to bloom
Man, seeing those two birds (and a whole lot of robins trying to get some attention too) sure made the day extra special. And to top it off we stopped at a dairy farm ice cream store!
I think her name is Lois.
I got lavender honey. It was amazing.
Yum.
What a wonderful way to end the day, sitting at a picnic table eating ice-cream and watching the clouds (and cars) go by.
Supervising road construction.
Oh…and on the way home there was a barn.
There are a LOT of pretty barns over there, but we had to stop for this one.
Yep. Can’t beat a road trip in Michigan with friends. I recommend it highly.
So this is the pond Katie always got her picture in front of.
I bet you’ve been wondering what I’ve been up to, and since mom is off doing dishes or laundry or some other boring thing I thought I’d tell you about last weekend when I got to visit my sister Katie’s park and I walked all the way around it for the very first time!
Is there something back there?
I’ve been telling Mom I was a big girl and I could walk around that park, but for some reason she’s never taken me. I think she just wasn’t emotionally ready to handle it, you know?
It’s really nice here, mom!
I know this is Katie’s park and it’s not like I’m asking her to rename it or anything. But sometimes mom is a little slow to move forward. So I waited patiently (I’m really good at patient) for her to be ready to share the park with me, her new little girl.
We stopped at the memory tree. Mom didn’t have to explain it to me. I understood.
Well. Let me tell you it was worth the wait! Though I am not thrilled about sitting on some rock in the parking lot. Apparently Katie would pose for her there. I don’t see what the point is, so I declined to pose.
Tell me again why you want me up here, mom?
I am my own girl. Mom said that was OK, I’m allowed to be me, and she loves me just the quirky little girl way I am.
Mom says she always takes at least one artsy-fartsy image. I guess this is it.
Anyway…mom put a long line on me so I could wander further away from her. But she kept calling me when I wasn’t paying attention.
Did you call, mom?
I’d turn right around and run back to find out what she needed. And to get a snack.
This is a pretty fun game, mom!
Mom says I’m very good at something called distracted recall. She says that’s a very very important skill to have. Whatever mom, if you bring the snacks I will do recall all day.
Are you coming, mom? Katie says you lag a lot on walks.
The park was pretty the day we visited, and mom promises to take me back again real soon. I can’t wait. I liked this park a lot because we weren’t in the deep woods and I could see the sky.
Is there something back there?
Mom is figuring out I like to be in open places the better to make sure there aren’t any monsters around.
Sometimes mom focused on stuff that wasn’t me! Incredible. Katie told me to get used to it.
It’s possible to be an Adventure-Girl and also a little nervous all at the same time. Mom says that’s OK too.
I think I’ll get braver and braver the more adventures we go on. Mom’s going to put up another tent in our back yard after it stops raining. She says it has a little window down near the floor and maybe I’ll like it better. I don’t know, mom. Right now I’m thinking daddy has the right idea about camping.
Mom got a lot of pictures like this too. Tee hee.
I guess I’ll have to trust you, mom, and check out the new tent when you put it up. Maybe I’ll turn into a camping dog eventually. Dad reminds mom that I’m still just a baby.
I took a nap when we got home. Mom woke me up when she took this picture. I was not amused.
Finally. Since my mid-May camping trip to Sleeping Bear in northern Michigan I’ve been working on my night sky images. I’ve also been backing up my laptop, and experimenting with an external hard drive.
The Platt River, flowing into Lake Michigan, with lots of light pollution from a nearby town.
You know how new things, especially technical new stuff, flummoxes me. So many days went by when I looked at my laptop, sitting over there on the table and didn’t feel smart enough to try.
Looking up the river toward the Milky Way that was just coming up.
But more new photos are filling my camera’s memory card and I have this rule that I can’t download new images until I have finished processing the ones already waiting on the laptop.
Waiting for the Milky Way to rise, I turned the camera to the east at this tree. You’ve seen this image before but I loved it so much I decided to put it in this post too. That’s the northern end of the Milky Way to the right of the tree.
Silly rule. I have so many more pretty things to show you and I’m still wallowing through these stars.
Barr Lake and the Milky Way on my second night of shooting. Do you see the dark horse?
I guess that’s not such a horrible problem to have.
So I’ll show you what the night sky looked at back in May. Recognize that you won’t see the sky like this just by looking up wherever you are, even if you’re in a very dark place.
The tail end of a star-link line of satellites, it was very long, and right behind me as I was shooting the Milky Way over Barr Lake.By the time I got the camera swung around this was all that was left to see.
The camera sees much more light than our eyes do, and then I’ve processed them to bring more light out so that you can appreciate the shapes and patterns that hang out up there.
To the west of me was an outlet for the lake to flow into Lake Michigan, which is just over those dunes.
I’ve tried not to process them too much, but I do have to lighten them some because WordPress and Facebook both post images darker than they appear in my work on the laptop.
I hope you enjoy looking at the night sky. I like having company when I’m out there, and I often think of all of you while I’m shooting, hoping you can feel a little bit like you were there too when you see the images.
This is a stacked, horizontal, image of Barr Lake. That means I took multiple (11) images and stacked them together to weed out image noise.
I can’t wait to get back out there and bring you more.
This week I’ve been ‘camping’ in the back yard. We haven’t had rain for a long time and none is predicted for a long time into the future. So I’ve been sleeping in the tent without the rain fly.
The first night, a cool breeze touching my face and tucked under my blankets, I was looking up trying to see the few stars that shine in my light polluted neighborhood when I noticed a flash, almost out of my line of vision. I stared in that direction for several seconds but didn’t see anything, so I returned to my search for stars.
The flash happened again, higher but still almost beyond the open space above the tent. I stared some more. Nothing.
And then it happened. TWO lights blinked, right above the tent and I realized the lightening bugs had arrived for the summer! I couldn’t contain my smile. Lightening bugs, stars and a cool late night summer breeze. A perfect summer night in Michigan.
I have no pictures, but I’m sure if you close your eyes you can imagine it all for yourself. And I’m thinking you’ll smile too.
Some of you know that I spent most of my career in banking. The last 13 years of it were spent in mortgage banking, but the before that, for about 7 years I was management in retail banking. IE, a branch manager.
I managed different sized offices during that stint, some really small, some really big. All of them were busy, back in the days before electronic paychecks and even before ATM machines.
I remember lines out the door on General Motor’s weekly paydays. And cars constantly lined up in the drive-throughs on Friday evening when we stayed open late.
Working with the public can be stressful. I get that. But somewhere along the line customers got cut out of the service equation.
This week I realized my credit card was expiring at the end of May and I hadn’t received a replacement card. I’ve had this card since 1980. It says so right there on the plastic, and I’ve never had an issue like this.
So I figured I’d just call in and find out when I might expect the card. It wasn’t like I had any grand purchases planned, but it’s handy to have. I called the 800 number on the back of my card, the number for Customer Service.
After listening to several instructions to push 1 or say yes or no, I listened to a few advertisements for things they could do for me, none of which I was interested in. And interspersed between the ads, were suggestions about how much easier it could be if I’d just download the mobile app. Or perhaps I’d like to go to their website where surely I could solve all my problems.
All of this repeated for many long excruciating minutes, with ugly background noise disguised as music enhancing my enjoyment. They were experiencing a ‘high volume’ of calls and the wait time might be unusually long.
Huh. On a Tuesday night at 6:30 they were experiencing a high volume of calls? OK, I needed to go to band rehearsal, so after waiting for 15 minutes I decided to try again on another day.
Early Wednesday morning I called again. The same irritating music, the same ‘high volume of calls.’ I waited almost 20 minutes and hung up in disgust. It was obvious they were not interested in talking to me.
So I decided, what the heck, I’ll just drive to my local branch with my expired card and have them help me figure out what to do. Seemed so simple I don’t know why I didn’t think to do that from the start.
This afternoon I stopped by my branch.
There was nobody sitting at any of the customer service desks. The lights on that side of the building weren’t even on. There was a stock broker in a suit sitting in his office, but he wasn’t the appropriate person to fix my credit card issue.
Behind the teller line was one man, talking to a customer about a problem. It seemed quite complicated. At the far end of the teller line counter was another man running money through a counting machine. I couldn’t see it, but I’ve been around equipment like that enough to recognize the sound.
He never looked up.
I waited at the “enter here” sign for the employee to finish with the only other customer in the building. I waited a long time. And I noted he did not provide a solution to the customer’s problem.
Finally the man with the problem left and I approached the teller window. “You’ll need to go down there,” said the employee, nodding his head at the man on the end, still busy counting money. “I don’t have any money.” And he began to walk away.
“I don’t need money.” I said.
“Then what do you want?” he asked.
Yep, I’m feeling really weird about this whole place now. No customers, no staff, not even a teller working the drive-through, the curtains there are drawn, there’s no equipment on the counters, something seems off.
“Are you still a full service bank?” I asked.
“Why do you ask,” said the guy still counting money.
“Because there’s no one here.” I responded.
“We just had a bunch of people call in sick.” he replied.
Sure.
Anyway, I told the employee about my expired credit card and he said he couldn’t do anything from the branch and gave me a phone number to call.
An 800 number.
Apparently it’s my responsibility to fix this problem. And I’m not going to get any help from my local branch. If they’re even a branch at all.
I know I’m not alone, but when did customer service stop being a thing? And why must we only deal with people far away in call centers which must be so understaffed that exceptionally high call volume is really the norm and not an exception at all.
Maybe I’m just an old baby boomer who likes to reminisce about the way things used to be. But you youngsters should have been around when customer service ruled. When you got to talk to people face to face. And when they did their best to solve a problem rather than pass it on.
Or back to the customer.
Yep, those were the days. You’d have been amazed.
Note: images are from a walk last month at my favorite park. I never got them into a post, so I figure even if you don’t want to read about banking, and who would, you might enjoy the birds.
On the drive up I stopped for this patch of trillium.
A friend and I were camping in the Sleeping Bear National Park earlier this month specifically to spend as many nights as possible shooting the stars in that big beautiful dark sky country.
Arriving at site 312. It had electricity!
But let’s be honest, I took a lot of other pictures too. After all, what does a photographer do all day while waiting for it to get true dark?
All set up for our 5 night stay.
Well, we sat in camp a bit. And cooked lovely meals.
Yum. She brought the fish, I brought the chicken salad and bread.
We enjoyed the campfire in the cool evenings.
Trying to get warm.
And we got a little shuteye as we waited for the Milky Way to rise.
All buttoned up for a nap.
Of course we also went on a hike or two through the countryside, enjoying the newly greening forest…
This hike it was all about the late afternoon light.
…and the wildflowers pushing up from a long winter nap.
I can’t remember what this is, but it sure was pretty!
There’s plenty to do while you’re waiting for the stars to come out.
Hiking past a lake made during the times of glaciers. We were cold just thinking about that.
I haven’t even begun to process the images of the old barns and the orchards in bloom that we saw. And I still have seven stacks of star images to process.
Pretty sure it’s not edible.
So there’s going to be plenty to share once I get all the work done.
While you’re waiting you might want to go on a walk somewhere pretty too.
Saturday morning I walked in one of Katie’s parks along with 10 other people and an expert guide, to see the wildflowers blooming and tour some of the projects the township is working on to make more of the area open to the public.
One of several steep hills we climbed.
It was two plus miles of hills and wetlands, lots of little things blooming, and a cold, sunny day. I was very glad I’d worn waterproof shoes, and three layers of shirts!
Our guide told us what this was, but I can’t remember the name of it now.
I had just driven back home Friday afternoon, after five days of camping near the Sleeping Bear Dunes in cold, sometimes rainy, weather. I was kind of tired and thought about skipping this guided walk. It would be so easy to sleep in.
Tiny little white lady’s slippers just beginning to bloom.
But we were going to explore parts of the park I’ve never been to and I didn’t want to miss that, so I went. And I’m glad I did.
A lone trillium.
There will soon be so much more of the park available to explore, and I think it will be nice to have areas of the park that are new, without memories of Katie, that can be Penny’s alone.
Wild germanium
I can’t wait to show it all to her. They say the bridge from the parking lot to the new sections should be ready this fall. I don’t know, it seems like there is still a lot of work to do. But our guide, who is in charge of all the township parklands, says he’s confident they’ll get it all done.
Lupine
Meanwhile I’ll probably take Penny over to walk the trails Katie and I used to wander. The last time Katie and I were there she had a really good walk. Where before she had often refused to walk down the big hills, on this last walk, in the fall of 2021, she was eager to go.
I don’t know what this is, but it was pretty!
She walked much further than I expected her to, and even jumped over a tree branch that had fallen over the trail.
How fun! We got to go down trails that were normally off limits!
So I have those good memories to ease me into sharing her park with her new little sister, Penny.
Remnant.
The guided walk helped me, too, to see the park without Katie, but to realize she’ll always be there with me, just like she is in so many places.
You can’t beat spring in Michigan. I used to tell my mother, who had moved along with my dad to Alabama in 1980, that she no longer appreciated spring like we who still lived in the north did.
That without the freezes and snow and frigid wind she didn’t have a true understanding of how wonderful spring can be.
She disagreed. She said she didn’t need to freeze to know warmth.
I suppose not, but I have to think that those of us living here in the north (and there is much more north north of me!) are much more grateful for those warm days than people living in the perpetually sunny south.
She used to say they had fall colors down there too. But that’s an entirely different post.
Anyway, this is just a long winded way to share the spring that is happening right this minute in my backyard.
For those of you living further to the north of me, this is what I’m sending to you as soon as I’m done with it.
But, to be honest, I might not be done with it for several more weeks.
Change Is Hard 