Rambling the Zukey

A bit of afternoon gardening and tidying up preceded a walk down to Zukey Lake and memory lane. I once caught small fish with my hands in this lake, long ago. I'm hoping I'll manage to catch a few fish this summer (with a fishing pole) and remember how to clean them and prepare them for dinner. Not too many though, PCBs and all. I imagine there are more than a few. Good thing my child bearing days are done.

Still a beautiful and comforting view.

 © Dawn Nelson, 2022

the Huron River lately

A lovely sunny Tuesday afternoon revealed an unexpected and delightful walk by the riverside. Funny how just yesterday it was snowing gigantic snowflakes.

A large snowflake day. April 4, 2022. 

I've been experimenting with writing on Medium and have started to develop a longform content series I am currently calling the 0100 series. It seems to be unearthing a fair amount of narrative from me on weather obs, so I imagine I will revise some of these posts for longer form essays here on my beloved Lake Poet blog. I'm finding that it really helps to give myself creative license to experiment with different platforms to see what works and what kind of writing it inspires me to cultivate. It's funny how a lot of this kind of writing I would do offline, now I just write and put it out there as I will, caution to the wind. So be it.

The sun is shining.

The Huron River on a sunny Tuesday afternoon. April 5, 2022.

© Dawn Nelson, 2022

Seasons change

As we now roll into the summer season, I look back at the events of the last couple of months and am shocked at how much turmoil a spring season can hold. 

While I was caught up in the ice out dates of the local lakes and rivers, what I didn't realize was that the pipes had frozen at my mother's house while she was away and consequently flooded the house. An extensive amount of water damage, to say the least. Dealing with this has preoccupied a lot of unanticipated time.

But now that the reality has set in, and with very little help from the insurance company, I am compelled to relate this experience to the implications of climate change, insurance, and the unfortunate lack of adequate and affordable housing in the US. I will likely write about this more articulately on my other blog, Courage and Climate Change. But for now, I just needed to revisit my intentions for a lake poet's musings, which was to, well, muse and wax poetic about the lakes and rivers and weather in general.

Since I find myself awake at a much earlier hour than usual, I think now is a good time to return a bit more energy to this effort once again. 

What I can note is that the river has been quite low lately, based on the daily text updates I receive from the USGS for the Huron River in Ann Arbor near Canal Street. Save for a few good storms this past week, it has been rather dry this entire spring in southeast Michigan. 

But June is here, and the summer solstice will hopefully bring life balance along with it.

Monday snow

More snow today but it is beginning to melt. I wake up late and make coffee and think about what to write about today now that it is becoming easier to write anything. It worries me less and less whether what I write has any intrinsic meaning -- rather, do I feel better once I've written it? 

The coffee maker is making a lot of noise in the kitchen and the cockatiels are chirping now that they know I am awake and at their beck and call. Whenever I change out their food dish I give the remaining seeds to the wild birds so that they have something too in the middle of all this snow. as long as it is only birds that visit my balcony and not squirrels I am okay with this.

It is Monday. There are plenty of Monday things for me to do today. It gives me hope that I want to eschew them all so that I can write. 

This is a good sign.

I remind myself that there was a February not so long ago that yielded sixty thousand words so I know it is, despite what many may believe to the contrary, an excellent month to write prolifically. 

The coffee is done brewing. More soon.

--- 

Snow water equivalent (SWE) is how much precipitation an area received in snow. I haven't changed my precipitation gauge in weeks because it has been frozen to the post so I kinda gave up on daily totals for a while. I figured I would just do a month total. My CoCoRaHS group just reminded us all that we should at the very least post these totals on Mondays (SWE Mondays) and I suddenly realized the temperature is finally above freezing! I can retrieve the gauge from the frozen post! 

This is exciting news. There is a lot of SWE packed in there.

the historic and the simple

Transit across the northern sea route

and birds on my balcony, eating the seeds I left for them

this is the big news for my February Sunday afternoon.

...the usual news is simply sitting in the sunshine:

...notes from the nether cafe: alabaster mist

...notes from the nether cafe. : alabaster mist: so many shades of grey. I remember once listening to the dramatic lavender sound of a saxophone echoing through the street corridor outside ...