When I left you last, we had just spent the late afternoon exploring Trillium Hill and some of the backroads around Leelanau County. The next morning I lounged around in bed for a bit, enjoying the view from my window. It looked like it was going to be a beautiful day.
Pretty in pink.
After we spent some time tickling orange tummies, we headed back out to see what we would find.
No reason to rush out of the house.
Since we had seen Trillium Hill with the sun going down behind it, we wondered what it would look like with the morning light on it’s face. We were not disappointed.
Happy flowers with the morning sun warming them.
At first I thought I’d just take a general shot from the road. After all, I had all those images from the day before. And who, really, needs more than a few dozen pictures of white flowers?
The cowslips (or marsh marigolds) liked the morning light too.
Well. I just couldn’t resist, because the light was different in the morning, and everything looked fresh and happy.
It was hard to stop taking pictures.
We probably stayed way too long there, but after all, we’re both retired. What better way to spend a morning than among acres of flowers?
Another little pretty, hiding among all that white.
Eventually we left the magic hillside to see what else was out there. Turns out there was a lot. But first we stopped at a winery to pick up a few bottles and enjoy the view.
I loved the layers, from the dandelions to the grape vines to the two colors of orchards and the tall trees behind.
Then we wandered, on conservatory trails, through woods just waking up to spring.
How could you resist following this trail?
Spring was enjoying a resurgence, but sometimes you had to look carefully.
Such wonderful colors and texture.
We spent a lot of time in the woods. But we also drove on a lot of roads, looking for pretty stuff. It wasn’t hard to find things to stop for.
Roads meander through such beauty that I can’t believe people don’t drive off the road just looking at everything.
But mostly we kept our eyes open while we traipsed through the woods. We saw bleeding heart…
…and more Jack in the pulpit…
…and lots of regular stuff just bursting open in joy.
Spring has sprung.
It was my last full day in the north, in the morning I’d be heading home, sad to be leaving but so very glad I’d been able to see spring in my favorite part of the state.
Usually my visit here is all about the lake. Or the stars. But this time it was more about the land. And what glorious land it is! I saw lots of good stuff on my drive home too, but it’s hard to top cherry blossoms and trillium.
There’s no better place to spend a weekend then in Michigan’s little finger, and I was lucky enough to spend last weekend there at the home of a friend. This trip had a specific purpose, to see Trillium Hill and cherry orchards in bloom.
What’s that over there? Could it be a barn??
But first I had a several hour drive up and across the middle of the lower peninsualia of Michigan. Right through farm country.
Three for the price of one.
Plus I was lucky enough to have some pretty interesting skies which kept taking me off the freeway and on to back roads looking for that perfect combination of barn and sky. I kept promising myself that I’d get back on the road and stop stopping. But it was hard.
This was my favorite barn on the trip north.
When I eventually made it to Traverse City, still half an hour from my destination, the storm front I’d had so much fun photographing had gone through, the temperatures had dropped into the mid 30s, (-1.11F), and the wind had picked up. On the 7th of May sleet was hitting my windshield.
Traverse Bay didn’t look very inviting.
Things didn’t look promising for a photoshoot of flowers or orchards! But by late afternoon the sun was beginning to peek through clouds and temperatures, though not balmy, at least weren’t freezing. Still, we put on our winter coats, hats and gloves as we headed out to Trillium Hill.
Waves and waves of trillum lit by a sinking sun.
The hill is covered in acres of white blossoms and the lowering sun softened the light, making them glow.
Trillums, the state flower in Michigan, as far as you could see.
It was unlike anything I’d ever seen. And though you’d think there were only so many pictures to take of trilliums, you’d be wrong. There were infinite ways to try to capture the moment, and I tried to get them all.
A closer look.
I didn’t want to miss the cowslips along a small creek at the base of the hill…
A bit of gold among all that white.
…or the jack in the pulpit that gleamed in the evening light.
I loved the light shining through the leaves.
And of course, the stars of the show, the hundreds and hundreds, the thousands of trillum as far as the eye could see. There was simply no way to encompass the entirity, it was almost hard for me to believe it was real, and I was standing in the middle of it all.
Sheer magic.
Eventually we tore ourselves away from the hill and went looking for cherry orchards in bloom. Luckily there were still some puffy white clouds just begging to be used as a backdrop.
Rows of beautiful trees covered hillsides, shining against a bright blue sky.
Not everything was in bloom yet, but the trees that were, were stunning.
It felt like spring had finally arrived.
It was a treat to drive the backroads looking for something special. And look what we found.
A barn AND cherry trees! Jackpot!
So the very first day of my weekend up north we managed to find both our objectives, trilliums and cherry trees. What was left to do the next day?
Even the roads are beautiful.
Guess you’ll have to wait and see.
We liked the shadows on this barn. The end of a good day.
I’ve been seeing a couple of bluebirds flitting around, mostly in the neighbor’s front yard. Tonight I saw one in our front yard while I was walking Katie. No camera. Dog.
You know the usual excuses.
But I smiled that I even saw him and Katie and I continued on our walk.
This evening as the sun was going down I noticed this guy sitting in the back yard on the garden fence and I shot through a filthy window while he posed.
Then he hopped up on our rain guage and posed again. Just to be sure I got his good side, I suppose.
I hope she’s catching all this.
He even stared at me for awhile, and didn’t fly off.
You got the shot yet, lady?
In fact, I gave up before he finally flew down into the grass for some tasty morsel. I think I have to figure out how to be outside in the evenings if he’s going to hang around. Images without dirty glass between him and me might be spectacular.
Hmmmm, that title doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, but I missed Wednesday, so there you go. And since Thursdays aren’t generally wordless, let me explain.
It’s April 15th. Lots of things are in bloom around here, but today it decided to snow. Not unusual in Michigan, but disappointing every single year.
Husband bought me a new camera lens for my birthday. No it’s not my birthday yet, he’s just an early shopper. I have all sorts of ideas about where I should go to try it out, but I’ve been reigning myself in because I had hundreds of images waiting to be processed while I struggled with my editing function.
As the sun came up in the east, the birds began to move.
Or lack thereof.
But now I’m back on a roll and I’ve spent a couple hours (OK more) sorting through the hundreds of images I have of my last trip to the Shiawasee National Wildlife Refuge a couple weeks ago. (I think you’ll enjoy these images more if you’re looking at them on a large screen.)
Looking to the west, with the sun rising behind me, the meadows began to glow. And more birds flew overhead.
You got to see a few of the images, straight out of the camera, in a previous post. And to be honest most of these images didn’t need much editing other than cropping to get closer to the interesting stuff.
The refuge is just over an hour away from me and I like to get there prior to sunrise, because, especially when the birds are migrating, there is so much noise and movement in the early morning moments.
A kingfisher came to sit right above me, surveying the water below.
The first time I visited I was about 30 minutes too late. That morning I could see waves of sandhill cranes flying away while I was driving down the last road, still about half a mile away. This time I got there half an hour before sunrise.
Way cropped and shot in low light, so quite noisy, but look at his colors!He caught breakfast right in front of me.
When I first got out of the car at the parking lot the sky was relatively quiet, and I wondered if I had missed them again. But moments later…well…it was incredible.
Just two of hundreds.
I stood in the parking lot watching wave after wave of noisy sandhill cranes fly by. I began to wonder how so many large birds could be sleeping in the refuge, and where in the world they were all going.
As the sun came up the undersides of the birds, the cranes, geese and ducks began to glow.
Magic.
It was pretty wonderful, and I hadn’t even left the parking lot yet. In fact I thought if that was all I did, stand in a parking lot, watching and listening to these birds, that was enough to make me smile.
Follow the leader.
Finally I made myself move on, though the birds were still flying overhead. And not far down the road I saw this group beginning it’s morning stroll. I loved how the electrical lines and the fur on some of their ears glowed with the early light.
There were about a dozen of them.
The further into the refuge I got the higher the sun rose. My objective was to get to the viewing platform, two miles from the parking lot, sometime before lunch. 🙂 I don’t move along very fast when I have my camera.
Loud singing added to the morning din.
Last fall when I was here the waterways were filled with ducks, but this time the waterways were pretty quiet. Still, the reflections were pretty stunning.
Reflecting as I walked.
And I could hear the cranes out in the open wetlands. So I moved along.
I don’t know what this tree was, but the chickadee was eating parts of the buds.
On the way I met a man coming back who pointed out a tree, surrounded by water, where eight eagles of assorted ages were sunning themselves. If he hadn’t pointed it out I never would have seen it.
A perfect place to enjoy the sun.
It wasn’t on the way to the viewing stand, but it was worth the extra walk to go out on a dike to get the best shot I could. My lens wasn’t long enough to get close, so some of these shots are pretty cropped. But you get the idea.
Such huge birds!
They watched me walk out on that dike across from them, and eventually the two mature adults and a couple of the kids flew off to another tree, further away. A couple of the teenagers weren’t bothered by me and hung out in the tree. You know how teenagers are.
We’re out of here, lady!
After the eagle adventure I made my way back and then on to the viewing platform. From there I could see across the wetland.
Incoming!
There were hundreds of sandhill cranes and ducks and seagulls out there, and wave after wave of them coming in for a landing.
It was pretty noisy.
Move over, I’m coming in!
Again I wasn’t really close enough, nor did I have a big enough long lens (though that would have been pretty heavy to carry all the way back there!) so these are really cropped. But take these images and expand them by 10 and you’ll get the idea what it was like. Everywhere there were cranes.
I saw this flock of male woodducks too.
And on the other side of the dike, in a body of water, were swans.
Swans flying west, cranes flying east.
It was all pretty amazing. I stood there a long time taking picture after picture, all of them, it turns out, pretty much the same, but it felt like I was in a snowglobe with cranes rather than snow filling the air.
I didn’t see any beavers, but obviously they were somewhere around.
I wish you all could come with me when I go back there some day. You never know what you’ll see. It probably won’t be filled with cranes (I don’t think) but there will be something else interesting.
It’s my own fault. I don’t like technology, I feel like I don’t understand enough, and I avoid figuring stuff out until stuff breaks and I’m stuck having to do something.
I feel like I’m half a generation out of step with the world. I can read instructions, and think I know what I’m supposed to do, but I can never quite execute it. That’s how I ended up with an A- on a coding class I took my last semester of grad school. I spent hours slaving over the homework, and got it all turned in, but each assignment was a marathon of agony.
She was showing off her best side.
Thank goodness the final grade was based so heavily on homework and not the final hands-on exam which I managed to get my name on but not much else.
Anyway. I’m still without Lightroom, my editing software. I’ve used up the 20 GB alloted storage just since last July when I purchased it. I don’t even need their stinking storage, I store all my photos on my laptop. Which had to be updated because I used up all the storage on my previous laptop too.
I think I have purchased the wrong version of Lightroom. There’s one called Lightroom Classic that doesn’t put your images into the cloud. So there would’t be a limit. But that’s not where I am.
Nom, nom, nom.
So my options are to delete the library in Lightroom, which also deletes those images from my files on my laptop, or buy more storage.
Of course as I explore these options I note that I can’t even figure out how to buy more storage. I’ve followed their links several times trying to find out what the next steps in storage might cost and I get absolutely nowhere. I’ve even followed the links through their help buttons and end up in the same nowhere place.
Just becausethis shot makes me smile. And I could use a smile.
I could start over and purchase Lightroom Classic…and just let my current version sit there, but I have to keep paying each year to keep what I have. Otherwise I guess they delete me. And my images, which deletes them from my files on my laptop. This infuriates me, as they don’t own those images.
But I digress. I could look for something entirely different that is more user friendly. Though I am not sure it’s not just me and I might struggle with any editing program. For example, one of my readers suggested a free program she uses called Fotor. I looked that up and there are versions for different Windows operating system. I don’t know what I have. So I tried to look that up by googling “How do I know what Windows I have?” and the explanation was so complicated I couldn’t even get through it.
This week in Michigan.
Which leads me back to this post. Any ideas or suggestions, preferably written in Grade 4 English, would be appreciated. Meanwhile I’ll keep adding photos straight from the camera to my posts.
It’s the least I can do in appreciation for your support.
Thanks everybody, sometimes mama just needs a little help.
Who else does this? I’ve always read obituaries, especially back in the days of paper newspapers. I remember the Sunday editions had pages of them and I read them all. I particularly focused on those people close to my age, tried to figure out what killed them, so as to reassure myself that something like that couldn’t happen to me.
A little over a year ago I looked up someone’s obit, I can’t remember who, but it was someone from my hometown. I ended up at the website of the local funeral home, a funeral home that’s been in town forever, whose family owners went to the church I attended as a kid.
A flock of wood ducks.
I signed up for an email notification whenever they have another person’s obituary. I’ve found that a lot of people that went to my church as a kid have now passed through this particular funeral home.
It’s an odd feeling when I see the notification in my emails. I always take a deep breath before I click on the link to see who it was. Lots of times it’s not someone I know, not a name from my childood, not a friend of my parents, or worse, a friend of mine. But sometimes it is someone I know’s parent or sister or brother, or child.
Beaver damage.
Sometimes it’s not anyone I know, but after reading the obituary I sort of wish I had known them. Today there were three, and a couple of them struck me. The best obit opening line I’ve ever read showed up today:
“Michael XXXX, age 73 of Howell Michigan, passed away on the golf course after a frustrating double-bogey on March …” Even though I’m not a golfer I smiled as I read that first sentence. And if you can make people smile while reading your obituary, well, you’re a pretty special person in a pretty special family.
Talkative robin.
And this man was someone five years younger than me that I would have enjoyed talking to:
“Mxxx strongly believed in education. He earned Masters Degrees in Economics from Indiana State University, Business Administration from Lewis University, and Information and Library Science from Wayne State University. He was a volunteer at the Salvation Army and the Livingston County Democratic Party. He was passionate about politics, the Chicago White Sox, and the music of Bruce Springsteen.”
I wish everyone’s obituary shared such interesting and fun bits of information. I’ve often thought I’d like to write obituaries. During such a stressful time I would want families not to have to come up with it on their own. And the help from funeral homes isn’t always much more than a fill in the blank option.
I would want families to look back at that obituary and know it summed up their loved one just exactly right. A last gift to the family I guess.
Anyway…how many of you read stranger’s obituaries and consider whether they were lucky to live a full life, how many of you feel grateful for your own life when you read an obituary for someone your age, or someone who seemed to have so few loved ones left.
Or am I just odd? Maybe you shouldn’t answer that.
Reflections.
Pictures today are from my walk last week at the Shiawasee Wildlife Preserve. I still don’t have editing capabilities, so I looked for images that you could enjoy straight out of the camera. They don’t have anything to do with obituaries, but that’s OK. I know you can deal with it.
And somewhere along the line I started getting my captions in the picture, which is sort of OK, except it darkens the picture. And I haven’t figured out how to get the captions out of there. Or even to delete the whole image. So you’ll have to image that these are decent pictures with interesting colors and stuff.
Seriously WordPress, don’t you realize we already have a lot on our plates?
Change Is Hard 