Many of the rural churches are surrounded by farmland, like Immanuel Lutheran Church, which by its cornerstone stated it was Rebuilt in 1923, but I didn’t find any other history on the church.
With some rain moving in this afternoon, some farmers may be out baling hay on a Sunday to get it up before it gets wet.
Church Among the Fields
In the late summer, yards and ditches are filled with various types of lilies. Sometimes you notice a field with some lilies and other flowers, which at one time had surrounded a farm house, but has long been abandoned and the house was either torn down or fell down, leaving only a few indicators that something more once stood there.
Lilies in the Summer Sun
As the county fairs continue this summer, there will be people looking at the various exhibits and livestock and in some cases I think there is a bit of ‘people watching’ too and not just people watching other people but the critters watching all the weird humans. These two goats sure look like they are gossiping about the strange person with the camera even if they are really just chewing their cud, a necessary digestive step for ruminants.
Goats, like most ruminants do not have upper front teeth, so they graze by pressing their lower front teeth on the hard pad at the top of their mouth to pull the food into their stomach, or the first compartment of their stomach, with little chewing. The food is then mixed with saliva and softened. This softened small balls of food is called the cud. The cud is re-chewed slowly using their hind teeth, with a side to side grinding motion, before being swallowed again. Plants are hard to digest so this second cud chewing is required to get all of the nutrients from the food and to break the food down further for digestion.
Goat Gossip
The flower may be orange, but the fruit is a pale green pods which “explode” at the slightest touch, scattering the seeds in all directions, hence the name “touch me not”. The Spotted Touch-me-not is a native plant (and this time was transported to parts of Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries).
The plant is also known as Jewelweed and Orange Jewelweed – a reference to the way the spotted blossoms hand like a pendent jewel and leaves appear to be silver or ‘jeweled’ when held underwater. The wildflower is important nectar plants for hummingbirds and the stems also contain a juice that can relieve the sting from Poison Ivy or Stinging Nettle.
Spotted Touch-Me-Not
The cattle are enjoying a nice late summer day in the pasture and they better before they are walking in snow instead of grass as it seems summer is fading quickly this year.
Enjoying the Pasture
Another ‘escapee’ from home gardens is the Deptford Pink, which some consider to be an invasive plant and is found in all but three states of the United States. A native of England, and it gets its name from a town in the south of England, Deptford, in a case of mistaken identity. The plant was given its English name by the 17th century herbalist Thomas Johnson, who found and described the similar Maiden Pink in Deptford in 1633. As the first name given to a plant is generally the one botanists stick to, the town near London is ‘famous’ for a species that has not grown there in historical times, and possibly not at all.
And while Deptford Pink, with tiny blossoms only about a third of an inch across, seems to be thriving in North American (although this year with the raining summer, most of them in my lawn are getting mowed off), the native European wildflower has been rapidly decreasing in Britain, now classified as vulnerable and protected in its natural habitat.
Deptford Pink Who Shouldn’t Be a Deptford
The cargo is pretty and colorful but the driver and extra passengers don’t look too friendly in (and on) this old Studebaker truck. The truck definitely has seen more years than I have as it might be a 1949 model.
The Studebaker’s Cargo
Every sunset is different; from ones with no clouds and little color, to cloudy ones with varying colors or completely hidden due to clouds, which probably will be the case this evening with possible rain showers.
Cloudy Sunset
My rare find of the Lesser Purple Fringed Orchid while mowing the last week of July, is now fading away and only a few blossoms left but since I fenced it off, at least the deer didn’t eat it. And hopefully since the bee was working the blossoms, maybe there will be some seeds so next year there would be more than just one plant blooming.
The Orchid Before Fading
As the Montreal River, which forms the border for parts of Upper Michigan and Wisconsin, drops in elevation on its way to Lake Superior, it cascades over several waterfalls. This 20 foot waterfall is called Interstate Falls, with Peterson Falls slightly upstream, and with Saxon and Superior Falls downstream.
The Wisconsin side of the falls is currently up for sale, and although it has been private land, public public access has been allowed along the foot trail to the falls and river. But this could change and there is no public access on the Michigan side to see the falls so I’m glad I saw it when I did even if wasn’t in the best lighting conditions at the time but the sunlight did catch the mist rising from the falls and sparkles on the water closer to shore.
Interstate Falls
