clouds – I dream of sumac and milkweed (and other wild things)

June’s end

July 1, 2017 sumacandmilkweed4 Comments

June ended last night in spectacular fashion over Lake Michigan. I don’t recall a month before with so many incredible cloud formations. Maybe it’s just that I’ve gotten luckier this month, being at the right place at the right time to see just the perfect cloud formation in just the right light. This luck isn’t lost on me.

I’ve also seen more animals this month than I ever remember. More deer, in fields and roadside and in our driveway. More rabbits, squirrels, opossums, raccoons, birds, foxes (three this month!). And more plant life, and more butterflies. More of everything. It’s a healthy ecosystem here, I suppose. I’m lucky to see it.

But the animals are harder to capture in images. The deer don’t wait for me to get my camera ready. The foxes are even less accommodating. I’m not so inclined to wait in the meadow with the ticks and mosquitoes for an opportunity to photograph the wildlife.

The lake and sky? Maybe easy targets, but so satisfying, and different every day.

The sky and the lake

June 16, 2017 sumacandmilkweed2 Comments

It’s just too amazing here. I think in the city we forget to look at the sky. In the country, the sky demands review. Where I am on a bluff above Lake Michigan, it more than demands… it slaps you upside the head.

It must be the time of year, but the cloud formations right now are just amazing. Storms have been rolling though this week. Some stay out over the lake where you can just hear their low, rolling grumbles and catch a flicker of lightning out of the corner of your eye. Others come ashore, steamrolling, blowing deck chairs around like the weather gods have it out for deck chairs or something.

Two days ago the clouds got all puffy and twisty and rolling-hills-looking out over the water. Rain fell out of holes in the clouds out over the lake. One looked as if a funnel cloud was going to form, but fortunately never did.

And yesterday this front came through. I love when the front of the storm looks like a tendril reaching across the sky, a pointed finger. This, too, dropped a little rain but only for a minute. The wind that came with it pressed the dunegrass nearly flat and whipped the lake into a frenzy, but again these effects were only a few minutes and the calm behind the front belied its intensity.

And then this morning, clouds stretched like rays across the western sky over the lake, lit up from the east by the sunrise.

September sky

September 28, 2016September 29, 2016 sumacandmilkweed7 Comments

Where did this month go?

Honestly, September flew by. Didn’t it just start? I had too much on my to-do list this month, only some of which got done (I guess I have a few more days to work on that). Slow down, September. What’s your rush, anyway? Where’s the fire (as my mother would say)?

But here at the end of this month, I just can’t get over the sky. September sky, particularly a big, wide open view over a great big body of water… well, it kind of can’t be beat.

deshantzcook_20160926_img_1446 — sky + lake = heaven

The ocean, the sea? I bet they are as gorgeous. I’d like to spend more time getting to know them. But the Great Lakes come pretty close.

deshantzcook_20160926_img_1366 — blue and white as far as you can see

I sound like a broken record. I feel like a broken record. I step out onto the deck multiple times during my workday to record this gorgeousness, either with my camera or just by trying to create an imprint on my brain, my soul.

Particularly in the last several days, the wind has been wild and the waves huge, crashing, like lumbering giants that roll over each other, bumbling. It’s mesmerizing.

deshantzcook_20160926_img_1461 — dunegrass in detail; wild waves and clouds

deshantzcook_20160926_img_1475 — pink mini stormcloud

Maybe October will hang out a little longer, move a little slower, let us savor it a bit longer. We can hope. Or, maybe we have to be proactive and demand it. The midwest turns vibrant in October–I will try to savor the burst of color before the winter moves in.