New wildflowers continue to bloom and beautify our roadsides,fields and woods, but there are other flowers that I want you to see and enjoy -- Sandra's (or your mother's, depending on who's reading this) flowers that she with love nurtures and tends. It's difficult to imagine what our place would be like without them. Please enjoy.

The Flower of the Day, the Swamp Milkweed, is new for us this year. It showed up on our beach several days ago, and is, of course, related to the Common Milkweed.

The summer for us has settled into a nice routine -- walks, checking out wildflowers, daily chores, reading, enjoying friends, watching the evening news (better not comment), looking forward to those who will be coming to visit, and church on Sunday.

Another important part of our summer routine are the boats that pass before us on their way to the Sault St. Marie locks, into Lake Superior, and then on to Duluth, MN or Thunder Bay, Ontario. They mostly are loaded with iron ore and grain at Duluth or grain at Thunder Bay, before again passing by us on their way south. There are two kinds of ships that travel the Great Lakes -- lake ships (those that travel only on the Great Lakes -- some which are quite large -- over a 1000' in length) and foreign ships that travel over 2200 miles and raise 600' in elevation from the Atlantic Ocean to Duluth or Thunder Bay. The foreign ships are smaller than the lake ships and generally carry grain.

The two ships with the unloading towers are foreign ships -- one is from Germany and the other from Athens, Greece. The ship with CSL on its side is Canadian -- the Roger Blough is U.S. The picture of the Roger Blough was taken from the ferry as we were coming back to the island.

And a last minute add on -- last night's light, thunder and wind show snapped off the top of a cedar tree and deposited it on our incinerator. Fortunately, it didn't hit the power line that was close -- or the cabin.

We hope all is well with you and we want you to know that while the summer is good for us, we nevertheless look forward to just being with you again. Much love to all.

I'm having trouble getting my pictures to come up in the right order, so you may have to some mental rearranging.
The Flower of the Day as promised in the last blog is the lovely Showy Lady's Slipper from the Orchid Family. We are so fortunate that she chose to grace us with her beauty this year and are already looking forward to her return next year.
Yesterday being the 4th of July, we went to the island 4th of July Parade. Our friends Candace and Jurgen (that's Jurgen with Sandra) and Pete and Sandy were with us. The parade was, of course, wonderful and well attended -- a major event and as you can see from the pictures, Americana at its best. The theme of the parade was "board games" and the parade began (as most do) with fire engines and ended (as most also do) with horses. After the parade we found a picnic table in the shade and enjoyed brats and strawberry shortcake and the company of each other. For you who remember them in Warrensburg, that is Sandra and Pete Buley in the picnic table picture.
We ended the day at our place with Italian sausage, potato salad and a brownie dessert, followed by fireworks from across the water at Detour. It was a most wonderful day. Hope yours was too.