(My) Earth Day 2024 in Northern Michigan

How green is the woods, at last!
 

Out in the Woods, Foraging

 

Earth Day breakfast salad

Sunny and I are out earlier and earlier these days. I find my treasures, and Sunny finds hers. Mine on Earth Day were leaves of the toothwort plant for my breakfast salad. Sunny didn’t turn up any “new” skeletal remains on Monday, but she’s already done pretty well for herself this year in that regard.

Her latest score

  

In the Bookstore, with Bags

 

The first people in the bookstore door on Earth Day came for book bags, and I was happy to accommodate, quite pleased with the look of the new bags, glad I went that route instead of t-shirts. After all, plenty of other businesses in town have t-shirts (very attractive ones), but mine is Northport’s only bookstore, so…. 

Also, with book bags, one size fits all -- unless, that is, a customer buys too many books for a single bag, but then the fix is as simple as a second bag.

 

 

Earth Day Reading

 

If I want to be righteous and largely ineffective [my emphasis added], I can hold onto my rage and resentments. You have the same choice. You can target me and others for our blind spots. Or you can get about the process of transforming yourself and one another. 

 

-      Chuck Collins, Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bring Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good

 

Born on Third Base might not be an obvious choice for Earth Day reading, but it certainly worked for me. As Collins points out in his foreword, earth’s natural ecosystems are the basis for all wealth, so even the richest people alive (and those to come) are dependent on the health of the planet. Collins wants the 1% to realize that their self-interest is at stake in narrowing the wealth gap. He also wants the 99% to realize that, in order to protect our home communities, we need to forge alliances with the wealthy, and he has suggestions for how to do that.

 

…I urge us all to proceed with empathy, adopting powerful tactics of active love and nonviolent direct action to make this happen. Instead of a class war of shame, I advocate an appeal to common humanity and empathy.

 

I want to add here that partisan antagonism is no more likely to reform our troubled world than is class antagonism. Collins points out that no one responds well to being targeted, blamed, shamed, ridiculed, and treated as an enemy. It’s a stark choice: stand apart and feel superior and watch the world go to hell while blaming others -- or recognize the fears of, as well as contributions made by, those on “the other side.” I say we need to acknowledge our common humanity and reach out, because no one is right about everything, and no one is wrong about everything. 

 

It was, after all, President Richard Nixon who declared the first Earth Day in 1970, spurred to it by the massive Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969. It was also Nixon who first proposed the Environmental Protection Agency realizing that regulation was necessary to protect natural resources. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if today’s Republican Party were to rediscover their stake in the common good? How might that come about? Will demonizing help? Something to think about, because Earth Day isn’t something to put behind us until next year. Every day needs to be Earth Day.

Our beautiful home

Looking Ahead

Meanwhile, on the nearer horizon, this Friday, April 26, is Arbor Day, and in Northport a new tree will be planted in Marina Park, down at the south end near the little sailing school building, with the Tree Committee, Northport students, and community members all on hand for the 10 a.m. planting. 

 

The following day, Saturday, April 27, is not only Independent Bookstore Day all across the United States but also, here in Leelanau Township, the kickoff day for Northport Omena Restaurant Week. As there are five participating food purveyors within easy walking distance of Dog Ears Books, I figure Saturday should be a double-header day in Northport, eh?

The Mood Wasn’t Right

Sunny and a plethora of leeks

Lame Excuses

 

In the past two or three weeks, I have begun and discarded at least four posts for Books in Northport. Titles were: Tough Tourism; The House That Had Everything; “You Should Write a Book”; and Where do I want to go? Abandoned, all of them (though the draft beginnings still reside on my laptop desktop), and I know such finicky self-judgment is probably misplaced, as the nearly formless meanderings I occasionally throw out into the world, posts without any central theme or narrative thread, are often more popular and gain more comments than others I labor over to achieve a “finished” feel.

 

Leaves of dogtooth violet, a.k.a. trout lily

Ah, but then someone visiting my bookstore says, “I always read your blog,” and a note from a friend (received two days after a post finally went up) mentions that she has been looking in vain on Books in Northport for something new, and I know it’s time to kick-start my online presence. You don’t have to be “in the mood” – or inspired – to write! You just sit down and do it! And in the case of a blog, call a draft post good enough and hit that publish button!

Random Fungus (until someone identifies it for me)

 

Outdoors

 

Beginning with Sunny Juliet never hurts (see again opening image), because most people love dog stories or photos, my girl is lively and photogenic, and we get outdoors a couple times every day. Even in this morning’s light rain, we were out for a good hour, and as usual there was so much going on (every day at this time of year bringing signs of new life) that I was pulling my phone out of my pocket over and over to photograph my finds. The rain had decided me against taking the camera, but by Saturday, or Sunday for sure, the sun will be shining and those spring beauties – all over the woods! -- will have opened their petals to the light. 

Spring beauties are biding their time.

Plentiful though the wild leeks are, I never harvest them for my kitchen. If you do, never take more than 5% of a patch, and try to harvest where no one else has taken plants before. That will leave enough for coming years, as leeks are slow to mature and proliferate. 

Leeks close up

Toothwort leaves -- no flowers yet

 

We all have different tastes, in food as well as in books. Toothwort, now, is a different story for me, and I look forward to those peppery-spicy leaves and flowers in spring salads very soon. 

Everything is beautiful in its own way, isn't it?

 

That fungus close up looks almost like a rose.

In the Bookstore

 

Thursday, between customers (all from out of town and all gratifyingly appreciative), I worked with the advertising department at the Leelanau Enterprise on an ad to run in next week’s paper. Since Monday, April 22, is Earth Day 2024, I’ll depart from my usual schedule and have the bookstore open that day – if I’m lucky, with my beautiful new canvas book bags to sell, in keeping with Earth Day’s theme this year, “Planet vs. Plastics.” My regular customers know by now that any plastic bags I put their purchases in have been donated for re-use by other customers, but we really do need to eliminate plastics from our lives wherever possible, in the Great Lakes and across the nation. Agree?

And there will be, as there are just about every week, new books and “new” used book additions to store stock. As for me, I’ve been reading a lot of books set in the West lately, books full of mountains and dry washes, scarce water and hard living. I also made my way through a new memoir – what I call a “grief memoir – by Amy Lin called Here After. Although her husband was so much younger when he died than was mine, there was much that resonated with me in her experience. This, for instance: 

 

We shared a language that was all our own. I am now the last speaker of it.

- Amy Lin, Here After 

 

What must it be like for older adults who have to leave a country they've known all their lives and go to make a new life in a strange land with a whole new language? I am blessed to be able to remain in familiar and beloved surroundings.

Finally, Sunny's Mystery Treasure

Smaller than my hand...

Something's -- someone's -- partial skull, but whose? 

One More Market Day in Northport -- etc., etc.

Friday mornings in summer and early fall are special, thanks to the excitement of a colorful farmers' market with lots of local fruits, vegetables, flowers, bread, cheese, meat, jams and jellies and lots more, all set up down by the marina parking lot, just out of sight in the photo at left. The weather on the last Friday in August was a challenge for all concerned -- driving thunderstorm, horizontal rain, and hailstones, too! -- but September 6 gave us a beautiful morning. 

I like to get to the market early, before long lines form at my favorite vendors' stalls. It has been greatly expanded from the previous year's already wonderful array and is a social occasion for many local residents, along with a weekly shopping trip. Isn't that what a traditional market day is all about?

I had already bought green beans and tomatoes before making a beeline to Kathy's display for a bunch of onions, and it was a good thing I remembered those onions and went after them, because her cucumbers were on the same table, and what would my gazpacho have been without cucumbers? She threw in a couple of small tomatoes, saying they needed to be used right away.

From the Northport events calendar sent out from the NCAC (Northport Community Arts Center), it looks as if Friday the 13th will be our last market day of the 2013 season. I'd love to be wrong about this, but either way you don't want to miss this coming market day in Northport, if you're anywhere near. It is definitely the place to be in our small town on Friday morning.

Report of my Gardening and Gathering

It was a good year for strawberries and rhubarb in my garden. Delicious pies resulted, and there is still rhubarb in the freezer waiting to be canned as sauce. Later summer and early fall have brought wild raspberries and blackberries in abundance, with the jam-making ready now to move into its final phase.

Collards did well. Tomatoes were late but prolific. Sweet little orange cherry tomatoes have a growing habit much like the berries on deadly nightshade, accenting the mysterious family relationship between the edible and inedible. Acorn and butternut squash and pumpkins are looking good. But eggplant? What do you say to eggplant that doesn’t blossom until September? And my pretty little plum trees definitely need to be pruned this winter, branches eliminated so that the trees will put more energy into fruit and less into wood and leaves. It will be worth it. The small golden fruits with rosy skins are delicious.

Recent Photography Experiments

Overcoming shyness about photographing people, I have lately been doing just that – always and only with willing subjects, of course –and have been so pleased with the results that I asked a couple of friends if I could post their portraits on my photo blog. The first two, once they saw their pictures, said yes with no hesitation, and so, far from feeling as if I’ve “stolen their spirits,” I feel I’ve given them a mirror to see their beautiful selves and have shown those beautiful selves to others now, too. I would never do this without the okay of my subjects, but they seem very pleased, and that makes me happy.

Happy P.S. to this subject: A third friend said yes to my request!

One Sad Note

A poor young robin, adult size but still speckled, smacked into our front porch window early on Sunday morning. I’d gotten up early and was out there reading when I heard the telltale THUD! and went out to see what kind of bird had had the accident. Tried to feel for a heartbeat, but such a tiny heart it would be! I was clueless. Left it for an hour, hoping it was only stunned and would revive, but -- no such luck. Picking it up with a paper towel, I saw that the young bird had been feasting on late summer blackberries, and I hoped its short life had been a happy one.