Back on September 14, 2019, we went down to the beach at Jacobsville, at the south entry of the Portage Canal[1]. There is a breakwall there with with a lighthouse at the end of it, that you can walk out on.
Back on May 31, 2020, Sandy spotted this example of a jumping spider subduing its prey.
The spider is a female Zebra Jumping Spider, Salticus scenicus, a very common and extremely distinctive little spider. I’m not sure what the caterpillar was, other than that it was probably immature, and it was fighting pretty vigorously. The spider had it by the head, putting it at kind of a disadvantage.
Just down the hill from our house, there are a number of bogs that are filled with common cattails, Typha latifolia (also known as bulrushes). I’ve always been impressed by how fast they grow, and thought it would be nice to document it. So:
Starting on May 12, 2020, here is what the largest bog looks like. This was just a short time after the last of the snow melted. Everything is mashed flat and looks dead.
On May 22, 2020, we were on our trip up to Copper Harbor. The road up to the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula is a “Scenic Drive”, which is apparently a code-word for “twisting through the woods and likely to cause motion-sickness”[1]. Sam and I are both kind of prone to motion-sickness, so partway up we needed to stop for a bit. And there was a little turnout for Aetna Creek which looked like a good spot.
We were walking down our road on July 18, 2020, when we noticed this plant with purple flowers groing in the rip-rap[1] that the road commission put in to stabilize the slope beside the road:
The plant was pretty big, here it is with Sam for scale (she is 5’2″ tall)
These grow just down the hill from our house, they are a sparse shrub that grows to maybe around 10-15 feet tall. On June 20,2020 they were blooming, so Sandy and I got some pictures of the blossom clusters.
When we went up to Lake Manganese on May 9, 2020 to collect some ore samples[1], we stopped off at Manganese Falls. This is right next to the road, but the only indication of it being there is the sign. Once we stopped, and walked a few feet through the obscuring vegetation, there was a rather abrupt cliff, with a wooden railing, and there were the falls.
Well, it is apple blossom time again. Here are some pictures I took last year (June 8, 2019), of a tree just downhill from our house that was was absolutely covered with blossoms[1]:
This is far from being our only apple tree[2], but last year it was probably the most picturesque one.
Back on April 16, 2020 [1], I was strolling down the hill from our house to see how the snowmelt was proceeding. Some of it was kind of picturesque. Like this spot, where the creek comes out of the woods before it flows down beside the road.
(Most of this posting is about decomposing plants and mud. But, if you go all the way to the end, there is a butterfly picture as a reward)
Just down the hill from our house, there is a spot where the hill flattens out and catches water, making a bog. Cattails grow there. Right at the moment (May 13, 2020), the cattails have not yet re-sprouted, and so there are flat expanses of decomposing plant matter saturated with water.
