Are you looking for color?

Equinoctal moon --
color only beginning now

Glimpses of color:

Tree Guy tells me that the red and orange and gold and yellow colors of autumn leaves are there all summer long, hidden by green. When the green seeps away (chlorophyll “breaks down” and/or stops being produced—obviously, I’m pretty vague on the science), other colors sing forth. 

Already in early September the green of our deciduous trees was noticeably less bright, red undertones darkening the overall effect of the woodland edges. Where I notice brighter color most in September is in pockets—peony foliage in my border, columbine in the shade garden, an isolated, stressed tree here and there along the road, the first red sumac leaves and berries. But the big color show, once it gets underway, will develop quickly—and then be over all too soon, as happens every year.

And oh, already the pin cherries! How often do we pay any attention to them? Look at their vivid color with the low, almost-setting sun behind the leaves!

Flowers and Gardens of the Shoulder Season:

When bee balm goes to seed and phlox begins dropping its petals, I sometimes, with a wave of sadness, almost panic, that the time of blossoms is past—and then the asters begin to bloom. Asters in the village, asters in my meadow, asters along the roadside! Tiny white and pale pink ones and splashy big deep purple flowers. The bees love them, and so do I. 

My old corner from long ago!

Busy bee --

Chrysanthemums in pots appear around the same time and certainly fill an important niche, but it’s the wild asters that make me stop and smile. Carefree as weeds, bright and varied in their colors, they are Nature’s free will offering. Thank you!

Meadow asters

More

There are colors in my garden, too, though. A few marigolds from last year’s seeds, some dwarf hollyhocks (why they came up where they did and why they are so small, I have no idea), a handful of zinnias. My strawberry tower did not yield fruit but survived the summer, and I’m considering bringing it to the bookstore for the winter to see what it will do. Any thoughts on that?

Garden gold

Strawberry tower

Look out for this invader!

I had a nasty shock while Tree Guy and I were working on reducing the number of (total elimination is a pipe dream) young black walnut trees and the ever-invasive autumn olive. A large shrub I had been walking by for years was covered with black berries. What were they? Anything edible? Imagine how I recoiled in dread when the identification turned out to be the horrible buckthorn! That, too? No fair!

Chainsaw, loppers, pruners, poison, and a bag to contain the berries stole an hour from our pursuit of other goals, but I will be on the lookout from now on, and if you see this invader on your land, don't let it get the upper hand!

Buckthorn! Very unwelcome!

What of the 2026 apple crop?

Judging only from what I see as I travel county roads, it looks like a fantastic apple year! My own little trees have produced nicely after two off-years (first because of codling moths, then the next year a late spring killing frost nipping the blossoms). This year I was ready with traps for the moths at the end of winter, and spring frosts were unproblematic, so my only regret now is having neglected to thin the crop, because there are too many undersized apples, too much fruit competing for the trees’ resources. Three years ago, I did a good job of thinning, but this summer I forgot all about it. Oh, well! There are some good-sized apples in the mix, too.

One of my overloaded trees

Orchardists will not have made my mistake. Their crops look great! A place on Swede Road makes the most delicious fresh sweet cider with theirs. 

Cider stop, Swede Road

Wild apple trees look to have had a boom year, also, so there will be plenty of fruit for wildlife this winter.

Big wild apple

What people have been reading this year:

Three categories of fiction frequently requested this past year stand out, along with one of philosophy: (1) science fiction; (2) fantasy; (3) romance; and ((4) Stoicism. Even given the dystopic, post-apocalyptic trends in (1) and (2), the first three genres, as I see them, spell escape from present reality. 

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours….

So wrote William Wordsworth, noting further that “we are out of tune.”  

Out of tune. Not in harmony. Out of tune with nature, surely, tragically. Out of tune with our times—perhaps not such a bad thing, since the times themselves are out of tune with nature. 

So where does that leave (4)? Why are American readers—at least in Northern Michigan—turning to an ancient school of philosophy? Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus. As with the escape reading, the Stoics seem clearly a response to the times in which we live, with the difference that Stoicism would have us deal with our challenges, accept our limitations, and keep our cool rather than explode in anger, simmer and shiver in anxiety, or fearfully burrow down the rabbit hole of escapism.

The Serenity Prayer is an example of the Stoic approach to life: 

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, 

 

Courage to change the things I can, 

 

and Wisdom to know the difference.

Stoicism is not resignation. Change what you can and then don’t give your one brief precious life over to agonizing about what you cannot control.

It has been an interesting summer of bookstore requests, this one of 2026, with three frequently requested categories of reading to escape reality and one to help us deal with it.

I am reminded by a recent customer request that there have also been more older adults than usual looking for the simple stories of their early years. Women have always been ready to revisit Nancy Drew, but in 2026 I’ve had men in their 70s wanting to re-read Hardy Boys books. Comfortable familiarity is another welcome escape, so there is a fifth popular category.

What I’ve been reading and thinking about:

For myself, I read and think and attempt to deal with life as it is and also periodically plunge from the present day to a previous century and another continent, escaping the here and now, or binge on two or three murder mysteries in a row. (Murder mysteries are a satisfying escape because the genre generally dictates that justice triumph in the end.) I recently finished my reading of the Anatole France novel, The Gods Are A-Thirst, a novel of life immediately following the French Revolution of 1789 (which is not at all escape reading, given the Terror and all that it involved), but I fell into a nonfiction book that turned out, to my surprise, to lead off with an introduction to Stoicism, and while I can’t go the whole nine yards to believing that “everything happens for a reason,” i.e., according to some kind of grand plan, the idea of imagining a worst-case scenario is long familiar to me, something I’ve done for years, though I never gave it a name or realized it was part of Stoic practice. 

“What’s the worst that could happen?” Thinking about a possible worst case, I can decide ahead of time how to deal with it, should it come to pass. That gave me a measure of control—not over the outcome but over my response—and thus a reason not to fret overmuch.

Memento mori thinking is something else that has meaning for me, so encountering it in Stoicism is like meeting an old friend. Before my husband died, we had already lost many good, lifelong friends, and the Artist would often say in the morning, “It’s a beautiful day! And we’re alive!” The implication, sometimes voiced, always implied, was that we would not always be alive—obvious, but not something everyone wants to contemplate daily but for us a happy reminder to rejoice in the day we were beginning together. Now that he is gone, remembering that I too will die still reminds me to appreciate the moment and hour I have while I am in them. Not only will I die, but so will Tree Guy, and so will Naughty Barker, and so will all the people I know and love, but we are here now, and life is all the more precious because not unlimited. 

Stoicism, though, isn’t just about feeling good. That would be a shallow and simplistic reading of it. As Oliver Burkeman notes in his book, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking, when a Stoic thinks that any day could be her last, she doesn’t go wild and max out her credit card because she won’t have another chance to buy things and besides, she’ll be dead and won’t have to pay the bill. That is not memento mori thinking at all. Rather, the Stoic idea is that every day is an opportunity to live a virtuous life, to be courageous, practice healthy moderation, and to pursue justice and seek wisdom. We won’t have an eternity of chances, but we have today. Here’s a quick introduction that may lead you to want to read more.

Dogs are natural stoics, a friend reminded me. So true! The dog with a sore leg avoids straining it as much as possible, and even a dying dog doesn’t weep and wail, “Why me???” Which makes me think of Sarah's last day of life and the photo I will put here of that day, and, as for taking the opportunity to practice doggie virtue, the way she staggered to her feet in the late afternoon, four hours before her last breath, and asked to go outside. She needed to pee. We would not have cared if she had peed on the floor, but she was still concerned with doing right, as a good dog sees right.

Our last day together: Dos Cabezas, Arizona

Brief comment on the news:

I really will keep this brief. My response today is to the Vice President of the United States, who defends the President's actions against media networks whose coverage he doesn't like. (The president has barred those networks from future press conferences. They are suing.) The Vice President says that negative coverage of the president is (I'm going to paraphrase rather than look this up) “not representative of the American people's views.” Huh? Does he understand the difference between news and opinion? Or is he like my stepson's grade school teacher? That teacher told the class, “We only like nice news.” VP also called negative coverage “left-wing propaganda.” Hmmm, propaganda. News ≠ opinion ≠ propaganda. I could say more but won't. You all know what propaganda is, I hope.

A common enemy?

It’s often said that nothing unites people as much as seeing a common enemy. Without one, we find reasons to feud with each other; with one, we make common cause. 

With election year competition and conflict and vitriol building to fever pitch, there is at the same time a growing sense that the American people see AI as their common enemy. Will this be the future conflict? Humans vs. (for lack of a better word) “robots”? Sounds like science fiction, but if it would unite all human beings on earth, I can imagine worse scenarios (e.g., the one we've been living most recently).

How agile are we?

Sunny and I had another agility session with Coach Mike on Monday morning, and he had us doing some complicated new things that we did, I must say, very well. Sunny seemed happy to do what I asked of her, and I was happy with how well we both did. One more reason to keep the grass mowed in my yard is to keep the stage clear for agility equipment. Ah, but Sunny is just as happy with her beloved tennis balls. She is demanding but only within a narrow range!

(I can't photograph her when we are running the course.)

I cannot leave this unsaid.

I learned this morning that one of my oldest and dearest Leelanau friends died last night, Wednesday, Sept. 22. I saw her the previous Friday and a couple Mondays before that and thought there would be more visits, more time to hold her hand and tell her I loved her and what a good friend she had always been. The next-to-last time I was with her, I'm not sure she knew me, though she had called me by name two weeks earlier, and we had shared some laughs. Last Friday, though, she had a beautifully lucid moment when I mentioned all the good times we had had together. She said, “There's one thing we didn't do. We didn't go to the U.P. together. We need to make that trip.”

Ellen, you will be in my heart wherever I go!

Another: One year four of us drove down to the countryside near Buckley to see the giant elm. At the side of the road, on a metal folding chair, inside a Tupperware sheet cake container, there was a guest book. We all wrote something in the book and signed our names. I don't remember what year that was, and now I can't ask the others, because they are all gone.

Ellen, Ann, Linda
(I was cameraperson for this shot.)

"Locals' Summer" Comes 'Round Again

No, summer isn’t over!

‘Locals’ summer’ is what Up North residents, especially the non-retired, like to call September, these idyllic days when air and water are still warm enough to lure us to the beaches, and when the beaches themselves are much more sparsely populated than in July and August. For those with children back in school, even with college-age students gone off to begin classes, as well as for teachers and professors at all levels of instruction, September is the beginning of fall, but for those of us no longer returning to classrooms, this month of the first turning leaves is summer’s last hurrah.

Cathedral of trees

So it was that Tree Guy and Naughty Barker and I packed up the car and headed for the Mackinac Bridge the day after the annual Labor Day bridge walk. Tuesday found us stopping once more at Lehto’s for our dinner pasties, wrapping up the day with a long forest walk and a spell of quiet riverbank sitting before bedtime. 

Sunlight on the river

Tree Guy had important errands to accomplish in Marquette on Wednesday, which were taken care of with surprising and delightful ease, leaving time for a visit to Snowbound Books. Hurrah! Years ago—and for many years—Snowbound was an annual visit for me, and I hate to think how long it’s been since I was last there, so long that needed a brief tour to orient myself. Current inventory is about 70% new books and 30% used, which I judge is about the opposite of my own shop’s offerings.

How far to Dog Ears Books???

Bonnie at Snowbound Books

I’d have loved to linger twice as long … and to have time to stop in at Dead River Coffee, as well … but even with a shaded parking space, we didn’t want to leave Naughty Barker in the car too long, and we were as eager as the River Rat to get back to our “bijou riverside residence” for the rest of the gloriously summery September day.

Everywhere, goldenrod!

Only small pockets of fall color in the trees

Thursday we did little projects around the cabin, took more long forest walks, and made a short jaunt over to the famous Kitch-iti-kipi spring, not far from Manistique but challenging to locate (for us, at least), which I had somehow never seen before in all my U.P. travels. The spring is within the boundary of a state park, but though the parking lot and grounds were swarming with late-season tourists, a respectful hush fell over visitors as they neared, on foot, the destination spring. The hush surprised and pleased me. “Medicine Water” and “Mirror of Heaven,” Ojibwa names for the spring, express very well the sacred feeling of this North American freshwater cenote. 

Spring water's route to Indian Lake

The 10,000 gallons of water per minute that burble silently up from bedrock flow gently out via Indian Lake, six long, wide miles, the Indian River then flowing into the Manistique before entering Lake Michigan. The river has a peaceful look. We paused at the Bishop Baraga site (his first mission was at this location) and wondered about the path that had brought him to the spot.

Bishop Baraga's first mission: Indian Lake

A lot of cabin time is taken up with simple pleasures: watching water flow, walking in the forest, throwing tennis balls for Naughty Barker’s entertainment, reading, and observing wildlife. NB directed my attention to Mr. Toad. I was pleased that she did not harass him. Later she was surprised and puzzled by a garter snake. A bulge in the snake’s curves seemed to indicate a satisfying meal, and I hoped the meal had not been Mr. Toad. Surely the bulge would have been larger had she swallowed anything that big?

As for my reading, it was all over the map. A Dave Barry book from the privy had me in stitches, and after that I dove into Agatha Christie, first the book I’d gotten halfway through on our last visit to the cabin, A Holiday for Murder, and then a second Christie in my mini-binge, The Moving Finger, which may be (in my opinion, you understand) her best. Finally, then, my mind had had enough relaxation that I could get into Anatole France, The Gods Are A-Thirst, our reading circle’s selection for September. This one was—I should say is, as I have over half the book to read yet—anything but “escape reading,” as the politics of the French Revolution are both background and foreground to the story.

I learned to my great delight, in André Maurois's introduction to The Gods Are A-Thirst, that the author's father, François Noel Thibault was a bookseller, specializing in—guess what!—the French Revolution. 

In 1862, shortly after leaving the Collège Stanislas, his son had set to work in the family bookshop cataloguing the Comte de la Bédoyère's collection. Thus Anatole France had come to be on intimate terms with Robespierre, Marat and their clan down to its humblest members. 

It pleases me to think of the young Anatole France, not yet using the name under which he would become famous, busy in his father's shop on the Quai Malplaquais, 

hard at work over the correspondence and papers of revolutionaries of almost a century before. His novel's title, Les dieux ont soif, comes from a periodical article that got its editor beheaded in 1794 (pleas for moderation and freedom of the press not popular with the Tribunal) and supposedly comes from Aztec culture and justification for human sacrifice, the gods being “thirsty” for blood, a taste Anatole France did not share, I am happy too say, either in retrospect (in his views on the Revolution) or in his own time (his sympathies were with Dreyfus). 

Tree Guy is not a meandering kind of traveler—more “Point A to Point B”—but he was persuaded to take a 2-mile detour off our road back to the Bridge so I could visit another old favorite bookstore. The bookseller, my friend Mary, was off on a book adventure, but her daughter Holly took care of me. Again, it had been years since I had been inside this shop I used to visit on an annual basis, so it felt good to be able to make purchases there again.

That American flag hanging over the Mackinac Bridge — “Is that something new?” I asked as we drove over above the Straits (always a thrilling part of any trip from one peninsula to the other, as far as I am concerned). Was it because of 9/11? We had noticed other flags along the way at half-mast, and, when writing a check for my books at First Edition Too, I’d had to ask Holly the date. Twenty-five years. All of us remember that day, just as those of us my age remember the day President Kennedy was shot. Adam Kinzinger wrote something very moving about the 25th anniversary of 9/11. 

September continues, and we came back home.

September 12: A warm, open door day in Northport

Back in my shop on Saturday, I wasn’t sure if it felt as if I’d been for a long time or hardly any time at all, but on Sunday Tree Guy and I played tourist right here in Leelanau County, exploring roads north of the village of Northport and finding ourselves eventually at the Grand Traverse Lighthouse in Leelanau State Park, a place I hadn’t visited for many years, back when the first 1990s renovation was done and the public invited to celebrate. More work has been done since then, and there are further exhibits planned. It was good to be there, and a lot of what I felt had to do with local people connected both with the light itself and the preservation of its history. 

Grand Traverse Lighthouse

Library furnished to lighthouse keeper & family--
one of my favorite exhibits, of course!

View from the light tower

Back at home and back at work after a rest and a long walk (in that order), Tree Guy got busy with black walnut brush, and I undertook the very necessary annual wild grapevine tear-out. Oh, yes! We are home again! And the good news is that it rained while we were gone, so nothing died in my gardens, not even the annuals in planters.

Bacopa's third blooming

Black petunia

Blue & black salvia with citronella

We are now halfway through September, with Leelanau UnCaged coming up just a week from this coming Saturday, the last Saturday in September, this year 9/26. Fall color is also yet to come. Summer ends, eventually, but reasons for being in Northport do not. 

Anticipating our big street festival!

Here Now and Looking Ahead

Goldenrod, coneflowers, giant bluestem grass

September has come.

After the freshness of May and June, with all that new life springing greenly forth, September comes in as another of my favorite months, but I can’t even rank-order them, as each is my favorite when it’s upon me, just as each flower of garden and woods and meadow is my favorite when it’s in bloom. Life for the non-retired country dweller, of course, has chores in every season, and the transition from summer to fall is no exception. As business slows down and takes a deep breath, nuts and berries and seeds and all manner of fruits ripen and demand attention, but it’s all good on the home front, busy as we are.

My apples look good this year.

Another new morning --

Tree Guy has been at work!

I had wakened at a little after 1 a.m. on Wednesday and gone out to read on the porch so my reading light would not disturb Tree Guy’s well-earned sleep. Naturally, I fell asleep over Chinese Lives and woke again at 6 a.m. with 45 minutes of leisure to make coffee and read the first chapter of Adam Gopnik’s Paris to the Moon collection before it was time to drive garbage out to the highway for pickup. Oh, Adam Gopnik, you wonderful writer! How jealous I am of a friend’s sister who can count you among her friends!

Someone I knew years ago said of the French that they had an “ambivalent attitude” toward capitalism. Well, like most European countries, the French have a mixed economy, part-capitalism, part-socialism. Gopnik notes an interesting attitude—is it only American, or do the French share this illusion?

We surf the waves of capitalism, from crest to trough and back again, but the funny thing is that no matter how often we ride the wave, nobody notices that it’s wet. When we are on the crest, we believe that we have climbed a mountain through our own virtuous efforts, and when we are in the trough, we believe that we have fallen into a pit through our own vice. 

    - Adam Gopnik, Paris to the Moon 

Economics aside, like Gopnik, I had visions of Paris in my head for years before I ever reached the real earthly city. My father had been there in 1945, following the Liberation, and had seen and heard Piaf in a little club and there, also, over drinks, had discussed Racine with Frenchmen, relying on his high school French, and I later learned French phrases from my father long before studying the language myself in high school, so, as Gopnik puts it:

My head was filled with pictures of Paris, mostly black and white, and I wanted to be in them.

And so on Wednesday morning, driving out to the highway to place two bags of garbage carefully at the side of the road for pickup (two because I hadn’t put out any for three or four weeks), I smiled both at the crowing of the rooster across the road (remembering a rooster across the street when we lived in Leland in the 1990s and the same sound at my maternal grandparents’ Ohio country home in the 1950s) and at the thought, as the pre-sunrise sky painted itself gold and vividly coral and crimson, that it was already afternoon in Paris. I was happy, smiling at the crowing of a rooster and the beautiful predawn sky and my memories of being in Paris and my good fortune, now, of living where I live, with a man who suits me so well and a dog, as the man notes, “even luckier than we are,” with absolutely no worries and “two people who adore her!” 

The pensive look is just her patient face.

The promised new book has arrived!

I have both hardcover and paperback copies of Beyond the National Parks In All 50 States, by Ren Brabanec and Joel Anderson, a production of the Anderson Design Group. Ren, the son of Leelanau’s own organic orchardists John and Julia Brabanec (both now gone and very much missed) came by the shop to show me a copy of the book, and I've been eager to have it here for my customers. Copies arrived on Tuesday, the first day of September. What a good way to begin one of my favorite months!

hardcover or paperback are equally beautiful.

Beyond the National Parks introduces readers to parks that may have been under their radar before. Here in Leelanau we all know about Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore (doesn’t the whole country know about it by now, with all the publicity it has gotten from coast to coast?), but if you’ve not yet been to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula you might not know about the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore or the Keweenaw National Historical Park. And how about southeast Michigan’s River Raisin National Battlefield Park? I didn't know about that one.

(The River Raisin mention makes me wonder yet again why neither the Raisin nor the St. Joseph River were included in the justly famous “Rivers of America” series, which includes no Michigan rivers! But I digress….)

The cover of the new book notes that it includes “original poster art by Anderson Design Group,” and I must say the art is nothing short of spectacular. Full-page color illustrations introducing each state’s featured parks, reminiscent of classic 1930s travel poster style, are gorgeous! So come in, pick up a copy for your cottage or downstate (or even out-of-state) home, and fuel your travel dreams.

Showcasing a few older books, too --

Possibly "new" to you, eh?

Usually I have only new books on the front tables but decided on Wednesday to give the round table over to used books for a change. After all, previously owned and loved titles are still the bulk of my inventory, and they deserve a turn up front. 

One life is not enough! We can read others!

The cart by the front window also holds used books, from Cat-Who and Alexander McCall Smith cozy mysteries to lots of rock-’n’-roll from the Sixties forward.

Cart of gently used books

Film crew in bookshop!

Thursday, September 3, was a little different at Dog Ears Books. A crew arrived and set up to film a short scene for an independent film being made largely in Leelanau County. One of the producers is the son of an author friend, which is how my shop became a small part of the larger project. 

It was fascinating to watch the process—to see how many people were involved, how much equipment, how much time, for what I judged to be less than a minute of footage! The same crew was at the farmers market this morning, and people have mentioned spotting them along the Lake Michigan shoreline. Here are a few more of my amateur shots of the scene on Waukazoo Street.

Setting up

In process

The wrap

Losses noted this week

Wendell Berry of Port Royal, Kentucky

Gloria Steinem of New York, New York

Hugh Willey of Northport, Michigan

Rest in peace. You will be sorely missed!

Longer break coming up --

I’ll be gone next week, heading north again for—how long? Not more than a week, I’m guessing, and to make up in advance for being gone at all, I’ll be open most of Labor Day Monday, for those pausing on their way home or arriving to begin their September vacation.

"But you're already up north!" "I go farther north!"