I've been feeling burnt out the last few days and have had no desire to sit in front of a computer. For a change of scenery I went for a hike in the woods while at work yesterday. It was humid, the mosquitoes were hungry, and the black raspberries were just beginning to ripen.
While out for drinks Friday night someone guessed that I was 32 years old. I assume it was the beer talking.
Thirty-two years ago, give or take a year or two, we planted the Norway Maple above as a father's day gift. The tree wasn't nearly so big then. Dad really liked it. We planted another tree off to the right on a different father's day. That tree is now gone. Subsequent owners also mowed down the 300 pine seedlings we planted behind the motel. That was a lot of work planting and caring for those little trees!
Marie posted a lovely photo of a shapely tree last month. I liked it so much I tried to copy it. I couldn't find a comparable shape but I like this square tree.
Most of the trees in the city have put out buds. Greenery is soon to follow, should it ever warm up. Maybe in April, which is MillionTreesNYC month. MillionTreesNYC is a program to plant a million trees across the city over the next decade.
It was time to take down the Christmas tree this morning. I carried it down to Central Park, where there was supposed to be a chipping station for Mulchfest. There were trees to be chipped but no chipper. I ws very disappointed. I have no need for the mulch, and I didn't mind unnecessarily carrying a tree for ten blocks, I just wanted to see the chipper in action. Oh, well, I did get to go for a nice walk.
Jumping back to the Wisconsin diversion of the Minnesota trip... As we were driving along the northern tip of Wisconsin Jeff saw a sign indicating a lake access point and turned off the highway. At the end of the road was Meyers Beach. According to a sign there were sea caves a couple miles in, so we took a hike. The Apostle Island sea caves are well known but I wasn't aware of the ones on the mainland.
Even though you can't really tell from my photos the caves were quite amazing. Some cut inland a couple hundred feet. That's a lot of wave action!
A chain link fence is no obstacle to these scrappy staghorn sumac trees. Did you know you could make wine from the berries of a staghorn sumac?
A few more leaves. I suspect after this rain we won't have many leaves to look at until next Spring.
The surgery went well and I am quickly recuperating. Stitches come out Thursday. My right nostril may have a permanent flare to it!
Since Movie Place is soon to close I finally subscribed to NetFlix. Herewith are reviews of movies seen over the weekend.
Grizzly Man - Excellent. What's up with that coroner?
Manhattan - Meh. Hard to believe this once was one of my favorites. Too much pop psychobabble and the major characters are totally unlikeable.
An American in Paris - Good Dancing. Otherwise not much of a story or movie. Instead watch Singin' in the Rain for a Gene Kelly fix and Funny Face for a Gershwin fix.
Two grape and one sycamore leaf from the woods. Is it possible to successfully graft domesticated grape varieties onto wild grape vines? Would that take a lot of nurturing, or would they eventually grow on their own? These are questions I sometimes have.
I've got to have a few pesky basal cells removed from my nose Thursday. In honor of that great occasion I'm taking a few days off from blogging. However, if the double feature of "Invaders from Mars" and "The Crawling Eye" fails to entertain, or I otherwise get bored sitting around the apartment, a whole lot of pictures may start appearing here and on Flickr as I try to work through the backlog of photos.
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