Michigan Lady Style

My Mom and I are back from an almost relaxing vacation! As parents of young children may know, vacations are usually needed after vacations. But my kids are getting to the age of self-sufficiency and it is nice.

We were able to stay at Great Gramma's house and the kids reveled in their explorations of the crawl space. I remember feeling the same way. They even dressed up in the same old and colorful clothes. I remember that too.

We went to the beach, specifically 7 different beaches.

After a day of South Haven swimming, we were able to wave at Cousin Sarah on the Friends Good Will Tall Ship as she sailed out of town.

http://www.michiganmaritimemuseum.org/

She was leaving for Chicago's Tall Ship Festival. Sarah is 16 and home schooled and it allows her the opportunity to do this. Amazing.

We were also able to see Cousin Charli after she was released from the hospital. She has endured a long month of ICU, skin grafts, blood transfusions...

It was so wonderful to see her running around with the kids and doing well.

On our way back home, we hoped to swim one last time. But the riptide warnings were in effect all the way down. We thought we would head south until we found a calm and gentle place to swim...nope. And Indiana's beaches were closed for swimming altogether.

We ended up at New Buffalo City. The red flag was up, but we were able to get in the water and let the waves beat us around a bit.

We made some pretty sweet sand castles at all our beaches. We also had some beautiful beach collections which included: driftwood, sea glass, bones, butts, straws, a Christmas tree cookie cutter, spoon, shells, plastic cow, fossil rocks, regular rocks, string, feathers...

We listened to Where the Red Fern Grows a couple times (much to my Mom's dismay). It is an incredible story and a wonderful way to while away the day.

Weko Beach

Boardwalk Walk

Cousin Sarah's Ship

South Haven Sunset

A Boy And His Driftwood

Warren Dune Climb

Great Gramma

They Made It

Sappington Market

My favorite place to shop. This is a small, but not too small store that is farmer owned and carries all the best local products.

www.sappingtonfarmersmkt.com

On Thursdays spend $50 get $10 off.

Some of our favorite local staples:

• Good Earth Eggs $1.39 dozen
• Heartland Milk $3.19 gallon
• Legacy Cheese
• Mangia Pasta $3.20
• San Luis Chips $1.99 16 ounces
• San Luis Tortillas .89 12 pack

Forgotten Cucumber

Cucumbers are my favorite thing to grow. Everyone in the family loves them, they are refreshing, easy to care for, and scrumptious.

Today the kids found a straggler. The one on the right must have been hidden from sight in previous pickings.

Hot Day Hike

One of my favorite places in Forest Park. We collected some more pond water and will take a look today.

Elephant Rocks

We stopped by Elephant Rocks on our way back home.

We scurried around on large rocks and shimmied through small passageways.

The trail also winds around an old quarry site. The red granite was used as building material and paving blocks on St Louis city streets and the levee.

I hope to go back again in Fall. The rock will be cooler. It was hot hot.

http://www.mostateparks.com/elephantrock.htm

On our way home, we stopped in Caledonia at the Caledonia BBQ Company.

It was delicious and we enjoyed getting to know the couple who run the place. If you are heading back to Stl on Highway 21 stop in and explore this tiny town.

http://caledoniamo.org/index.html

Johnson's Shut-Ins

I didn't want to take my camera down into the water, so my pictures don't really do this natural water park justice.

http://www.mostateparks.com/jshutins.htm

We left St Louis early, but not early enough. We arrived at the Park around 11 AM, but the line was already long. The lot has a 100 car capacity and the line wasn't moving unless a car drove out.

We decided to park and hike in. The walk was a mile or two and hot but worth it.

Food and drinks are not allowed at the river, but thankfully we saw our friends' van in the parking lot, and stuck our cooler underneath it. We were also able to snag a ride back to our van when the time was right. You really can fit 6 children and 4 adults in a minivan.

A lovely day.

Tadpoles Have Left Home

Our tadpoles have left home. They are now Leopard Frogs and took about 2 months to develop.

An amazing and worthwhile experience!

Pulltite

Devil Fern

Sweaty Grins

Swallowtail On Boy

Crawdad Smile

The View

We spent Father's day and our 9th anniversary camping at Pulltite. Although it was blazing hot, we kept much cooler out in the woods than we would've in the concrete city, in an ancient house with no airflow. We just hung out in the cool spring-fed river all day and it was cool enough by the time we went to sleep.

Despite some vulgar, loud, and annoyingly drunk neighbors, we enjoyed getting away from our regular life for a while. Just the usual before we left...gunshot wounds, shattered femur, shattered 9mm bullet in shattered femur.

Sister and Brother-in-law stayed a day and friends joined us for an evening.

Across the river is the historic Pulltite spring and cabin.

Cross upstream from the spring. It pours out so strong that it was scary. SCARY!!

But worth the short hike from the campground.

Powered by the spring’s daily 20-to-30-million-gallon outflow, gristmills operated here from the mid-1800s until 1911.

The mill being deep in the river valley indirectly gave the area its unique name.

It was a “tight pull” for mules and horses pulling wagonloads of ground meal from the mill to the hillsides above the village of Pulltite.

Jasper caught several lampreys which weirded us out quite a bit. They look like eels/snakes and bury themselves in the sand with a jerk and a wiggle.

We caught a lot of crawdaddies and minnows. And Banded Sculpins didn't have a chance with us in the water. Also a very large predaceous diving beetle.

A horsehair worm was on the camp shower floor and i wasn't pleased to see it. We both imagined it as a parasite that squirmed out of an unsuspecting camper. They are only parasites to insects though and harmless to humans.

While near the spring, we saw a pipevine swallowtail caterpillar. They are very strange looking with osmeterium, a retractable fleshy organ behind the head that is extruded when the caterpillar is alarmed. It looks a lot like a snail head.

Devil's Well is only a few miles away from Pulltite. Even though we had been there before, we had to go again. We didn't realize the first time that you have to turn on the light to see the underwater lake. It is neat, but not as neat as i expected? We gathered blackberries on the way back to the car.

We also drove through a virgin pine forest to the Roger Pryor Backcountry. 61,000 acres to explore including 15 miles of Current River as well as the Ozark Trail.

So much beauty. And no one brought home any ticks.

Windridge Solitude

I went on a silent retreat recently to Windridge Solitude. It is a bit over an hour outside St Louis and it felt like a retreat on a private slice of Shaw Nature Reserve. There are trails all through the property and benches are tucked in here and there. I had a pleasant stay and highly recommend it.
http://www.windridgesolitude.org/
I had trouble viewing the website. It was like invisible ink to me and my computer. Hopefully it works for others.

Lord, make us mindful of the little things

that grow and blossom in these days

to make the world beautiful for us.

-W.E.B. Du Bois

As my eyes

search

the prairie

I feel the summer

in the spring

-Chippewa Song

What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone,

in the forest, at night, cherished by this

wonderful, unintelligible,

perfectly innocent speech,

the most comforting speech in the world,

the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges,

and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows!

Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it.

It will talk as long as it wants, this rain.

As long as it talks I am going to listen.

-Thomas Merton

And more than anything

this time has been

a gift,

an exploration

of

wonderful things.

Lively Pond Water

We scooped up a bit of pond water from my parents' farm this weekend. It has been an exciting time for us!

Tadpoles (I think gray tree-frog)

Snails

Predaceous water beetle larvae (AKA Water Tiger)

Leech

Back-Swimmer Water Beetle

Water Mite

Duckweed

Water Beetle

Tullaia has been making daily observations for her science journal. Some of those are...

(in my words)

-Tadpoles have shrunk in population due to the voracious appetite of the larvae and water bug, both being predators. We feed them lettuce that has been boiled for 10 minutes and frozen. They love it. The snails do too. There is a lot of pooping going on. Which is good for leg development and bad for the person cleaning the tank.

-The snails have mated (even though i think they are hermaphrodites?) and laid masses of eggs all over in a kidney bean shape.

-The predaceous water beetle larvae is a prowling creature that looks a bit like a centipede. When he was really hungry, he grabbed a snail and got up out of the water halfway so he could slurp the body out of the shell. We moved it out into it's own space, but woke up this morning to the container dumped over. (Possum?)

-Leech is sneaky. He slithers around as a ball or snake depending on his mood. He has killed several large snails by slithering in and taking over. I thought that parasites lived on other living beings, but he seems to live off other living beings eventually dying an early death.

-The Back-Swimmer is a consistent eater but prefers live bugs to freshly dead. Jasper is a pro at catching flies, but they are not as readily available as ones on the farm. So we have left our doors open a bit in order to capture them. And they like mosquitoes. Which I delight in giving them. Sorry nature lovers. The Back-Swimmer is also responsible for a missing tail on one of the younger taddies.

-Water mite is rather large and red with 6 little legs. His name was Tick. He is no longer part of the pond.

-Duckweed can be an aggressive plant, but i think it is so cute. The snails and taddies love it. It is like a miniature water lily.

-The water beetle disappeared and i guess he was eaten overnight. But i know they can also fly so perhaps we weren't providing him with the necessities of a good life and he flew west like everyone else looking for the good life. We miss him though.

Circus Flora

Big Top

With A Dear Friend

Juggler Boy

Special Girl

We were given tickets by friends to attend Circus Flora last night. We had quite a lovely time of course! Circus Flora is a wonderful one-ring European style circus that will make your palms sweat with excitement.

And it is St. Louis' own.

Go before it is over.

http://www.circusflora.org

Happiness and Refreshment

Tullaia picked this Butterfly Bush blossom and she claims it smells like "happiness and refreshment". It does. She put it in a vase in her room.

We had such a short and sweet time. All the baby animals and fresh air. The catching up with dear ones. There were not many bugs and the wind was blowing the right way. Thanks Mom and Dad!
>And i realize this is backwards like other trips we've had. I just haven't the patience to find a better way. I could post backward in my brain? That would never do.

Does every kid like to show off their belly? It is a past time Jasper is partial to.

Baby Cows Awwww!

You have to say it like that. They are so cute. We rode the four wheelers out to the infamous Donny Blizzard pasture. It was very fun and the night ended with more cow and Frozen Udders?

Ice cream. Of course!