Pope Leo draws line in sand

"Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place.

Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the Kingdom of heaven.

But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments
will be called greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.

I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven."  Matthew 5:18, 19,20

There has been a lot of speculation about "What kind of pope will Pope Leo be?"

One vocal faction wants him to accelerate the drift toward secular values. They want a pope who supports relative standards and blesses go-with-the-flow morality.

Another faction contends that religion has no purpose if it mindlessly rubber-stamps every base, human desire. They want a pope who advocates for absolute standards.

A recent video posted by Pope Leo suggests that he is an absolute standards kind of guy.

It is instructive that he chose the word "murder" for #7 rather than the more common word "kill"

It is a long video (47 minutes). While I doubt that even many Catholics will watch it, you can get a sense of the content by scanning the Table of Contents.

We are all sinners. We are all fallen-people. A preacher or priest telling people that something is not a sin doesn't make it so. It makes the preacher a craven coward.

The physician comes for the sick people. Religion* is to lift-up and support us sinners and to help cure what is broken within us. 

 

*I expect some comments that will say "You don't need no stinking religion. All you need is Jesus".

You are entitled to that viewpoint. My viewpoint is that Jesus is the Living Water and religion is the plumbing. 

I also believe that "Woke religion" is when the potable water and waste-water pipes are cross-plumbed because "it don't matter" and "it is all the same". 

Phenology report, Collard Greens, Fire Blight and Busy Hands

Phenology report, 730 Growing Degree Days, base 50F. 

• The Catalpa are blooming in town and Multiflora rose is at peak bloom.
• The Bluegills (bream down-south) are on the spawning beds. 
• "Dumb bunnies' (looking out the window and there are three of them within 15' of each other), fawns, baby woodchucks and raccoons are everywhere.
• The first mulberries are starting to ripen to the delight of birds, squirrels, raccoons and possum.
• The first persimmon flowers are opening and White Clover is blooming.
• Smooth Brome Grass is pollinating.

Collard Greens

I have about 20 Collard Green plants in the ground. Bowing to the inevitable, I have them in "collars" to protect them from cut-worms and rabbits.

Being a D@__ed Yankee, I am not versed in the mysteries of Collard Greens. My impression is that they are "cleaner" in terms of bugs and bug-poop than cabbage due to their open structure; Collards are essentially a non-heading cabbage. I am also under the impression that in terms of nutrition-per-foot-of-row they might beat cabbage since all of their leaves are photosynthesizing and not all folded-up and not exposed to light.

The downside of Collards vs Cabbage is that Cabbage is compact and stores well while Collards appear to be mostly an eat-as-you-go vegetable. They are complimentary in that respect.

Getting back to harvesting Collards, does the cook typically walk down the row and pluck two-or-three leaves from each plant per-meal ensuring they provide a long harvest window? If so, I imagine they are "nearly fully expanded but not tough/mature"? Or does the typical home gardener harvest the entire plant at one time?

Fire blight vs Bacterial Canker

Coyote Ken mentioned in comments that he found it difficult to distinguish between bacterial canker and fire blight. I will answer that question to the best of my ability.

The cloudy conditions stymied my desire to take photos of the fire blight strikes. I apologize for the quality of the images. It was the best I could do.

A fire blight strike on the pear I removed

Even pears that are "fire blight resistant" will show some fire blight strikes. But they will "self extinguish" and stall-out before infecting one-year-old wood. This is a section of TWO-year-old wood on the pear variety I removed.

I think the symptoms vary by species. The strikes on the pears are as BLACK as charcoal. The strikes on the quince are green-tan-light brown.

Most fire blight strikes are on new shoots and/or fruiting spurs.

Most bacterial canker (not an expert here) are in crotches (usually narrow ones) formed by branches or in older, senile limbs and trunks.

Workie, workie, workie makes for a boring blog

I had a long day, starting at 7:30 and knocking off at 6:30. If idle hands are the Devil's workshop then I am pretty safe at the moment.

Mowing, tilling, planting, caging, cutting wire, traveling, pounding posts, more mowing.

None of the mulberry seedlings that I transplanted this spring and then grafted dore doing very well. The ones that I grafted-in-place are doing well and pushing buds. Remember "Driver's Ed" when the instructor suggested that a smart driver avoided "stacking" hazards? The instructor might suggest braking so oncoming traffic would pass you before you had to negotiate cars parked on your side of the street on a narrow, city street.

That might be a good way to think about grafting. A living plant can take only so much injury and insult in a growing season.

Maybe the mulberries in the linear brush-pile will take-off. Maybe they will die. I am 99% sure I would have been fine if I had transplanted them into a garden or if I had given them a year to establish and then grafted them next spring. 

Quince, floating row covers, Israel-Iran and Social Media

I walked around the Eaton Rapids orchard and every quince bush has fire blight strikes on them with Tashkent and Ekmek having the most strikes. So does an Asian pear that I grafted with a twig that I took from a tree growing beside Bellevue Highway. I also see where the woodchucks have been climbing the Illinois Everbearing Mulberry growing in that orchard.

I had planned to cut them all down today but was mugged by a nap.

I have other IEM trees and this tree towers over its dwarf fruit-tree neighbors and shades them.

With regard to the fire blight...time to get rid of the Typhoid Marys.

Row covers

Something came through and browsed my row of bush green beans the day before yesterday. My perimeter fence is leaky and it was much faster to throw a floating row cover over the row of beans than to fix all of the issues with the fence.

Fixing the fence is still on the list of things to do, but now I have some breathing room.

This is my first experience with floating row covers. 

Israel-Iran

The photos I saw indicated a great deal of intelligence and precision. There were images of blocks of apartments with a single apartment cratered with a guided munition. They knew to the hour where high-level targets would be to within 10 meters.

The sobering thing is that the US Government has the same information on every one of us. That is why it is imperative that we cut back on the size and overreach of the government.

I was surprised when I went into town at 6:00 to fill my gas tank. The gas stations were empty and the price of gas was still $2.95 a gallon. 

Social Media security

A couple who attends the same church we do had their house broken into while they were on vacation. My assumption is that they posted pictures of the beach while they were away and one of their 721 friends decided to take advantage of the absence. 

Fake News Friday: Orca vs Cajun

The rumble on the street is that a semi-famous author was commissioned by Disney, owner of both the Predator and Alien franchises, to write a script titled Orca vs. Cajun.

In the story-board, the Cajun provoke the confrontation by serving broiled Orca at the St Bonaventure Good Friday fish-fry. Bishop Broussard loudly proclaimed imminent, divine retribution for not serving FRIED Orca during Lent.

Orcas mind-meld and direct solar flares to cause the glaciers to melt, flooding southern Louisiana. They start hunting Cajun who, in turn stalk Orcas in their pirogues.

The turning point is when twin brothers, Benoit and Guidry Baird discover that Orcas lose their greater-than-human intelligence when exposed to live Zydeco performed on 14', aluminum jon-boats and that former Marines can hit an Orca in the brain-pan with a 6.5mm Creedmoor at 500 yards.

Baseline photo of the tomato and Nicotiana plants

 

A picture showing the height of the tomato vines. The yellow bucket is 14-1/2" tall. To the right you can see the collars I put around the cucumber plants to protect them from cut-worms and/or rabbits

Same bucket. Nicotiana rustica plants.

These plants should be taller than the bucket in a couple of weeks. We have warmth. We have sunlight. I have the ability to water.

I enjoy posting pictures that show the progression of plants growing and filling their allotted space.

Weedwhacker

Somewhere along the line, my weedwhacker (aka, string trimmer) sucked up some orange baling twine and that gummed up the business end of the tool.

It took me a half hour to pick the twine out but we are now back-in-business.

Armoring the apple grafts

It is my plan to get back out to The Property and armor the apple grafts against the deer nibbling on them through the 2"-by-4" wire cages.

He who chooses to not act on information has no grounds to complain. The deer very politely informed me that the trees are vulnerable. Shame on me if I don't step-up and protect the trees.

Update

Twenty-two young apple trees got "armored" against deer nibbling them. It took about an hour, not counting the time to cut the wire netting.

Sad news. Mass casualties in a school shooting in Austria

There was a school shooting in Graz, Austria. The details that are being reported are difficult to reconcile.

A bit of background

One quirk of the European model of education is "tracking". Kids with an aptitude for math (for instance) are tracked into hard sciences and engineering oriented programs. Kids with excellent spacial awareness are tracked into skilled trades or athletics. Kids with excellent verbal skills are tracked into legal pathways and so on. Tracking can start as early as 3rd grade.

The facts that don't align

The shooter has was not a student at the school they shot-up for 9 years. The shooter was 21 and "dropped out" or "voluntarily" left the school as a sixth-grader.

The adjective used to describe the shooter was "...bullied..."

The perpetrator is (oddly) only identified as "Artur A" and no images of the shooter have been made public. Pictures of the perpetrator are often published when heinous crimes are committed so authorities can tap the public to get a clearer picture of motives and possible accomplices. And why would Artur's privacy be protected (unless "A" is their entire surname)? Artur is not a minor.

The victims were in first, second and third grade when the student left the school.

Seven of the students who were killed were girls while three of the victims were boys.

If this happened in the US, I would automatically jump to the conclusion that the shooter was a transsexual who was already "on the the radar". 

Update on lugging water

The guy who brush-hogged the Upper Orchard did a fabulous job!

The brown patches are where impenetrable brush blocked my way

 My movement had been restricted to walking to the end of the orchard and then up the rows. Now I can walk across the orchard, perpendicular to the direction of the rows AND I can walk anywhere in the direction of the rows. I still need to pick up the larger sticks before I can maintain it with mowing but it looks VERY nice!

Graft status 

The bright red is the top of a Tee-post. The pink is surveyor's tape so the brush-hog guy wouldn't miss the newly grafted trees. The wire hoop is 5' tall and made of 2"by 4" welded wire mesh.

This looks like a deer pulled it through the mesh with its tongue and at the new growth.

As you can see, a lot of variation from tree-to-tree.

This is a tall one. I have my fingers crossed that the deer don't find it.

All of these trees were Empire grafted to Geneva-890 rootstock and I put a graft of Liberty on top of the Empire.

Watering statistics

It still took two hours to drain the two, 110 gallon tanks. I had two phone calls in that time but they were short.

I really need a third tank because there were about 20 trees I didn't get to.

The soil still looked moist under some of the trees.

I am going to have to spray the vegetation beneath the trees again. TONS of Poison Ivy which is going to be a problem if I don't deal with it.

It was 78 degrees F when I finished watering. 

Today is a watering day

Today is a watering day.

After lugging water, my plan is to drill some holes into the trunks of some pesky Black Walnuts that shrugged off girdling and the herbicide I sprayed on the cut surfaces. The holes will be filled with 10% glyphosate equivalent solution

I THINK those Black Walnuts are dead-trees-walking that haven't figured out that their roots are slowly starving. Operative word "slowly".

I want to be done with the heavy work by noon due to heat.

A morbid taste

Yesterday is when I and three of my siblings road-tripped to the west side of Michigan to pay our respects to our paternal fore-fathers (and mothers).

One of the cemeteries we visited has a reputation for being "the most haunted in Michigan". While I have never "sensed" a ghost, I have one brother and one sister who insist that they felt a "cold, clammy hand" grasp their own while walking in that cemetery. There is a place to leave coins to appease the spirits. Some years we leave some. This year we did not.

Some people who live in Michigan believe that ghosts are people who died while sitting on the crapper. A surprising number of people who slip their mortal coil do so while engaging in this inelegant activity. They feel pressure and pain and assume that they need a solid-and-satisfying #2 to make everything hunky-dory when, in fact, they are experiencing a coronary infarction and the straining hastens their demise.

I never met Michael Jerome Wheeler, but I intuitively know that I would have liked him.

I recognized the plant "his people" had put in the planter. It speaks volumes about his character.

It was not a wax-leaved begonia, geranium or petunia.

My sister

My sister is an acorn that didn't fall too far from the oak tree.

She has been known to collect "keepsakes" to remember events.

Extensive mats of LoV on the east side of the cemetery

She was fascinated to learn that all parts of Lily of the Valley contain a very potent poison (as well as being a staple of the Victorian garden). Being highly toxic results in it being very "persistent" in gardens and being able to thrive even when under the onslaught of deer and rabbits.

I wouldn't be surprised if one or two LoV starts made their way into her hand-bag. Nor would I be surprised if one or two of the current residents of the cemetery had been abusive and their spouse knew about the "curative" effects of LoV salads.

Napoleon supposedly died while sitting on the toilet

He had an incurable desire to sit on every throne he encountered.

Oh, and the ghosts of the people who died while sitting on the toilet? Obviously, they didn't shuffle through the veil to the New Jerusalem* at the appointed time because they had unfinished business. 

*Jerusalem translates as "New Salem", so "New Jerusalem" is "New New Salem". Almost like they were stuttering. The concept of "New Jerusalem shows up in Revelations 21. 

My wife is my soul-mate

 

A lot of women would become very angry if they found out that their husband paid $30 for a hoe...and only got some head.

Not my wife.

She is the one for me!!! 

Estimating the number of times I will be lugging water

 

I started wondering, "How many times will I be carrying water to baby-trees this year?

When in doubt, look for data!

Daily data can be found HERE but it is not in a form that answers my question.

My "algorithm" for watering is "Seven days without substantial rain means I need to start hauling water". In my case, substantial rain means a single rainfall of more than 0.25". Less than that just wets the surface.

I pulled the Charlotte, Michigan data for the 2020-through-2024 growing seasons and this is what I found when I started counting "runs" of rain-free days.

Every year had at least eight, 7 day periods where no substantial rain fell.

Every year had at least two, 14 day periods. That is, a seven day run that went another seven days where no substantial rain fell.

Most years had at least one, 21 day period when no substantial rain fell.

Two of the five years had one 35 day period when no substantial rain fell. That is five weeks.  

Using those years as a basis for estimating, I can expect to carry water fourteen times over the course of the growing season if I use my "algorithm". If I stretch that to 14 days as the initial trigger but then water every 7 days after that I am looking at having to lug water five times.

This data is specific to Charlotte, Michigan and only applies to the years 2020-2024. 

Brush-hogging

 

Image can be embiggened by clicking on it

The gentleman I hired to brush-hog the Upper Orchard showed up yesterday.

He "hogged" the grassy, north end of the orchard and then double-checked to see if I wanted the brushy, south end mowed.

This image shows the north end of the orchard in the background and a couple of lanes through the brushy south end. You can see the height of the brush (mostly thorny brambles and multiflora rose) framing the foreground of the picture.

He is hoggin' to the drip-line of the trees. I will clean up with herbicide once I know what he leaves

The goal is to be able to maintain the orchard floor by mowing.

Getting there! 

Hickory, Bang-sticks and a minor rant about Optimization

One of my friends found himself with technical difficulties which impaired his ability to barbecue. Things recently flipped right-side up and he can now scratch that itch.

He reached out and asked if I could spare some apple and other types of wood to fuel his adventures.

Hey, that is what friends are for!
 

Slow-grown Shagbark Hickory

 

Same piece, different place on the "cookie" using the Canadian side of the ruler.

That is a slowly grown tree!

I also have cookies of apple-wood (Duh!) and cherry. Next on the list is pecan wood. Those will be 2" diameter rods. Then, I will give him a call and ask how much room he has to store his windfall and what size "prisms" he wants the cookies split into.

Tomatoes

I saw the first blossoms on two of my tomato plants.

For my gardening readers who are blessed to live in more southern climates, when do you expect your first, ripe tomato?

Sighting in (new scope)

The black dots were made by tracing a penny. Call it 20mm or 3/4" diameter.

The first shot at 25 yards hit the paper (Yeah!!!). I was aiming for the dot in the middle of the 8-1/2" by 11" sheet of paper.

I made 32 clicks to move the point-of-aim to the left and 20 clicks up.

The second shot chipped the black dot.

Then I moved the target out to 100 yards and was about 3-1/2" high. I made 4 clicks down and it hit about 2-1/2" high. Plenty good enough for me. 2-1/2" should be about the peak of the trajectory and give me a point-blank-range a bit more than 150 yards with the .350 Legend.

This is the first time in my life that I got the rifle functionally sighted in with only four shots.

Replanting

I lost a few small cucumber plants to my clumsy feet while putting up the structure to support the netting. Then I lost a few more to cut-worms.

It is still early enough to replant seeds where I lost the plants.

Some vegetables are very "plastic" in terms of plant density. Bush beans show relatively little change in yield between seeds planted 2" apart in the row and 6" apart in the row. Other plants are very "not-plastic". Peas are "not-plastic". If you lose pea plants, you lose production. They will not fill-in.

I think the cucumbers would fill-in...as long as I didn't lose any more. But I am not willing to bet that my losses will stop.

Modern pickling cucumbers vs. older cucumbers

Color me surprised! Modern cucumbers are selected...designed if you prefer...for mechanical harvesting. They are selected to have one or two cucumbers ripen per vine exactly at the same time and the harvesting machine rips the vines out of the ground and puts the cukes into the bin.

You read that correctly, due to the high cost of hired labor, it is more economical to only harvest one or two cukes per vine with a 6000 pound machine than to repeatedly pick cucumbers, by hand, over a period of several weeks.

As gardeners, we don't have "hired labor". For our purposes, we might pick the same 30 feet of trellised pickling cucumbers seven times over the course of two weeks.

Back when I was an engineer, all claims of "...it has been optimized..." were met with challenges of "Optimized with regard to which variable?" There is nothing universally magical about "optimized". 

Systems that are "optimized" for commercial growers are organized around minimizing the bottleneck variable: Labor and secondarily "inelastic market specifications".

Systems that are "optimized" for subsistence growers should be organized around the limited footprint (yield per square-foot rather than yield per manpower-hour) and pesticide avoidance. Modern cucumber varieties MIGHT be a solid choice because most of them have multiple disease resistances.

Plants that struggle are NOT tougher

One of my pet gardening peeves is the myth that "plants that struggle are tougher".

The usual line-of-reasoning is usually some variation of this: "Plants that are not watered will have deeper roots and be more resistant to drought." 

It is my studied opinion that grass that was urinated on by cattle stays green much later into dry spells than grass that was not urinated on. The grass growing in the nutrient rich patch is able to grow faster-and-taller and the leaves are able to capture more sunlight and make more carbohydrates.

The myth is blind to the fact that roots require carbohydrates for their structural cells and for respiration. Few leaves means no "excess" carbs to grow roots. It is the same deal with regard to water. Starving plants for water early in the season means that they do not have the resources to invest in roots that penetrate deeply into the ground to mine water and nutrients.

Deep roots can mine moisture stored in the subsoil. In Michigan, corn typically transpires 5"-to-10" more water than falls during the growing season. That moisture is pulled from the subsoil. 

If you are gardening in a climate like Michigan then a few key-points must be followed to make your garden more drought resistant:

• Don't over-plant. High densities makes for smaller plants and shorter roots. Higher plant densities means each individual plant has a smaller footprint of soil to mine.
• Control weeds. It isn't just the density of the vegetables that you need to consider. Weeds also compete for water and nutrients.
• GROW those plants when young! Push them! It doesn't  take much water to keep small seedlings happy. Add a wee-bit of fertilizer* to the water and the plants will outgrow most problems.
• Spot-water when plants are small so you aren't watering weeds 
• Make choices about the trees and bushes around your garden. Tree roots infiltrate your garden and compete with your vegetable plants. A dense row of short trees that are upwind of the garden can be helpful in reducing water losses from evaporation...but make them SHORT trees so they don't shade the garden.
• Control woodchucks, rabbits, deer and other herbivores. A single woodchuck can eat 30' of green bean seedlings in a single session. No leaves results in stunted growth (if they recover) and no vegetables. 

Another way of looking at vegetable production is to consider the human-quality food the plants produce is actually the "excess" that they have banked. If you don't supply your plants with generous inputs then there will be no "excess". All of their resources will be used to survive and there will be nothing for your table.

That might be why Marxists invariably starve. They have a deep hatred for "excess" and "profits". 

*There are many recipes for organic, soluble fertilizers (compost or manure tea) and there are also organic "fish based" fertilizers that can be purchased. 

Changing the culture

I overheard an interesting observation: "Of course the ICE riots started now. All of the college classes are dismissed and K-12 is out on summer break."

Given the medical costs of having Federal Immigration agents being injured during riots/demonstrations, it seems perfectly reasonable to me for the Feds to DEFUND the employers of Public Sector employees who are arrested for VIOLENTLY demonstrating. The defunding should be to the tune of some multiplier of annual wages and the cost of their benefits (including NPV of post-retirement medical benefits and pensions).

Many people say that it is impossible to change culture. But that is untrue. It can change so quickly that it gives you whip-lash. It is a pretty simple picture to paint. If 10% of the staff of George Custer Elementary protest and are arrested for throwing rocks, then the number of kids-per-class jumps to 40 kids. Instead of being lionized for "Speaking truth to power" those teachers who get arrested will be spat upon when they return.

Attitudes would change very, very quickly.

Garden Tour (pictures)

 

Peony, cv. "Joker". It seems to be doing OK even though it only gets a few hours of full sunlight

As always, you can click on the image to embiggen them.

Three, 32' long rows of potatoes. The annual grasses are coming up and they need to be tilled. I am waiting for the soil to dry out.

Provider bush green-beans in upper-left corner, banana peppers to the right of them, then two rows of Nicotiana rustica which is the pale green

The red items are lids from peanut butter and coffee jars that I filled with beer to kill snails. It was a waste of effort. The robins and mourning doves beat me to it.

Two rows of tomatoes planted on 2' centers. Stupice on the left and Ace 55 on the right. The clump of green at the far end of the Ace 55 row is an oregano plant that volunteered.

Posts for the cucumber trellis. I have some lengths of top-rail salvaged from a chain-link fence that I will reuse to hang the vegetable netting. Excavating and replanting the posts was one of Saturday's jobs. East end of the orchard is in the background.

The north-east corner of the garden is reserved for fall crops. "Reserved" almost sounds like I plant to not have this tilled. Writing fiction made me clever.

Deadon savoy cabbage. VERY split resistant and tastes good.

Collards. Belladona loves the Office episode where the boss can't get it out of his head that they aren't called "colored greens".

A few root crops will also be sown in the fall garden.

A pecan graft breaking buds

Another pecan tree doing the same.

 

A grafted Shellbark Hickory with two catkins (bottom-center of image)

This woodchuck was repurposed as fertilizer for a pecan tree. It is the Circle of Life.

Crunchy pickles

1. Start with a pickling cucumber variety
2. Pick at the optimum stage of ripeness 
3. Handle expeditiously after picking
4. Wash dirt off of pickles. Toss any with signs of rot. 
5. Cut 1/2" off each end to eliminate reservoir of enzymes that speed ripening
6. Increase calcium content of pickles

Increase Calcium content by adding food-grade calcium chloride or pickling lime + vinegar to the pickling liquid. For dill pickles, 15 grams-to-30 grams of calcium chloride per gallon of pickling liquid is the suggested range. For sweet pickles, 7-to-15 grams per gallon. For refrigerator pickles, 3-to-7 grams per gallon.

For the adventurous, Magnesium content can also be used (alone or with Calcium) to increase crispness.  Magnesium has a bitter taste that may not be appreciated by some people but others find attractive. Seawater has three times more magnesium than calcium, by weight.

Traditionally, alum has been used to make pickles crunchy but elevated aluminum levels in the brain have been correlated with dementia although causality has not been proven. Consequently, many people are leery of using alum in cooking. 

In addition, calcium acetate (vs. chloride) and potassium (a component in low-sodium, salt substitutes) have been shown to increase pickle crispness. The difference between the acetate form and the chloride form might be attributed to the pH buffering effects which keep the final pH above 4.0 for the acetate.

Roadtrip: After Action Report

The mission had a very slender profile. Wake up. Get in van. Pick up our "client". Transport him to kick the tires of a vehicle. Follow him home after he bought it.

Street food in Luxemburg? Who would have ever guessed?

While the client was on a test-drive, I bought a burrito from a food truck. 

I opted for the Carne Asada. It didn't have the amount of chilies that Handsome Hombre's does but it was delicious. 

In retrospect, gobbling down "street food" before getting into a vehicle for a seven hour drive was not smart. But I got away with it.

Then I wandered into the cheese store next door and sweet-talked Kelsie into letting me take some pictures.

Kelsie standing in front of pizzas

She good-naturedly consented after I told her that I was going to post them on social media. She helpfully supplied this brochure, too.

On the way home, I was impressed with the number of church steeples in Milwaulkee. I had time to admire them as it was stop-and-go traffic on US-43 Southbound. 

The brick is bright red and was spectacular when viewed from the north-west at 4:30 local time on a sunny June 6.

I just learned that you can change the "camera angle" on Google Street View. Who know? This is looking up at the church.

The spire and steeple on the Calvary Presbyterian Church was particularly "in-spiring", a pun which made Mrs ERJ groan.

Another thing that caught my eye, again because we were in stop-stop-go-stop traffic was the Microsoft Data Center just east of US-294 at mile marker 34.25.

 

Google street View. Normal people don't take pictures of Transformer farms of military targets on their vacations. We use Google Street View.

The large transformer farm directly feed from the high-voltage transmission lines is what first caught my eye.

The second thing that caught my eye were the massive refrigeration units that carpeted the roof of the structure. 

That is a lot of tons of refrigeration

Mrs ERJ and I made a stop at the New Buffalo, Michigan exit on the way back and the gas station and McD's were SLAMMED. Vehicles were lined up on the street and everybody was dressed like they were going to the Oscars. I don't know what that was about but the staff and McDonalds was hammered at 9:00 PM local time.