More Spring Time Happening in Northern Michigan

                                                    May 10, 2017

Last summer the mobile home that is to the left from our house finally sold. It had sat empty for many years.The new owner painted the garage. We were like, OK this is different.

After a week, we decided to go behind our house to look  for moral mushrooms again.

When the Trillium wild flowers are out, it means moral mushrooms are to be found.

There were not a lot of the Trilliums behind our house, but enough to know there were morals around.

While Joe mushroomed, I walk the woods  and took pictures.

A leafless bush had a nest of something inside it.

Not sure what was inside, but something was moving inside.

Joe found about 20 small morel mushrooms.

The next day, Joe fried them up,

with some grass fed lamb chops and vegetables.

Well our neighbor finally got approved by the city council to tear down the old mobile home he bought, and to rebuild. I guess it was quite the ordeal.

A few days later we went back to the woods behind our house and the crawling insect were very visible this time. From my research, I think these are Eastern tent caterpillars. Pretty much a pest to trees and their leaves, but nature balances them out with predators.

Joe's find was a little less but the mushrooms were bigger than the last group. If we were true moral mushroom-ers, we would go more toward Petoskey as they get a lot more rain than we do, and the woods are blanketed with Trilliums.

View of our neighbors lot with mobile home gone from the road.

Like most storms, they go to  the north and south of  us, but we still get beautiful cloud formations the the lighting from them.

Before picture of our neighbors property viewed from our property,

and after mobile home gone. Then at least 40 trees were removed from his lot.

While we are in Michigan, Tiffany, Blake, and Lennox fly back to Iowa to pick up her grandfathers car, who passed away a month prior.

 An early morning view out our living room window, during my morning Bible reading time.

I have been busy this spring/summer painting 2 sets of dresser drawer, and 2 shelves, that we bought from our home's previous owner. Since we didn't have any furniture, we asked them if they would be interested in selling us some of their furniture. Unfortunately they were hunter green. Two years of hunter green is long enough!

Another early morning view!

Weeding out the snow on the mountain plants that has been taking over my hosta plant bed, has also been on the spring/summer chores.

I pretty much ignored weeding the flower and plant beds the last 2 summers, so it has been a frustrating job! Snow on the mountain, also call Bishop Weeds is extremely tenacious because it send rhizomes under ground. I can see this is going to be a ongoing job trying to irradiate this plant because it is impossible to remove all the rhizomes under the existing wanted plants. But at least I have started.

On May 30th we got our dock in. We were schedule for May 9th, but we were going to get freezing weather during a few nights, so we canceled. Unfortunately, it was hard to get back into the schedule after dropping out.

The guys were smarter putting in the dock this year.

Instead of walking down the rock wall, they walked down to the end of the docks as they put them in.

Then the shore station and boat went in.

While we are in Michigan, my mom and sister flew to Florida to see my sisters grandkids and mom's great grandkids. Mom is 90, so every picture is special these days, so I posted it in our timeline.

On our second boat outing we took our neighbor Mindy and her friends from down state Michigan.

 One morning, I had just got up and was checking my calendar. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw something move from the laundry room to the kitchen. After a few moments of,  "what do I do now?", I quickly grabbed my phone that was in the laundry room and ran to the living room and jumped on the couch. The mouse ran from the kitchen back to the laundry room. I wasn't seeing things! I called Joe. He was still in bed. Dang, his phone rang in the dining room. It took me 6 calls before he got up and answered the phone. After filling him in, he quickly put a board to block the laundry room entrance.

 Joe notice the mouse kept coming out from under the washer and just standing by the board. He grabbed the top of a container that had roasted chicken in it the night before. Joe put the container top over the mouse. Then I put this flower pot with rock on top. Joe went out to the garage and got a sheet of metal and pushed it underneath. He was going to take it out like that, but I insisted to mask tape the container top to the metal sheet so that it didn't get out. Once outside he let it go. Our neighbor, when heard we let it go, thought we were nuts. He said they are pest and should be killed. I don't like to kill things if I can get them out. I know it might someday get back in, but I'll take my chances. This is the third mouse this spring. Joe caught another one in a box in a corner. The first one got in a mouse trap. Joe's a good mouse catcher! Joe thinks they got in during the winter during construction. Either way, I continue to look for any holes or cracks they may get in. So far we have had mice, honey bees, yellow jackets and spiders. Everyone keeps telling me you are in the Northern woods of Michigan. I love it up here but not too crazy of the nature creatures! I am still a city girl when it come to bugs and pest. Our contractor keeps telling me the more we zip the place up the less we will have these issues. I guess I had better get used to life in the country/woods!