Harbor Beach

A little north of my home is Harbor Beach, a pretty city with a large man-made harbor. After some blood draws for testing today at the local hospital, I had breakfast at Al's Restaurant and I wandered down to the beach.

There's a very long "T-shaped" dock, with several benches for sitting, stretching out into the harbor. Clicking on photos will enlarge them.

Looking west towards the beach and the city.

Side view of the long dock.

Looking north.

Looking south.

East end of the dock.

Canadian and American Flags at the dock entrance.

 

The air has been super saturated with moisture for the longest time creating some beautiful sunsets and some very foggy days.

 

 

Before I moved here I took very small divisions of a few of my plants from the garden in Royal Oak. I transplanted them into the north woods which I fenced so I could let the dogs run. I thought the combination of the dogs and the fence might work to keep out the deer and so far it's working great. It's only the beginning of the second summer here but some of the Hosta are really enjoying life in the wild.

 

I am not going to remove all the native plants from the woods; instead I will try to keep the larger native plants under a little control in order to make the garden look somewhat natural. My rule in R.O. was: - if the plants cannot survive the dogs running through them, then they don't belong in the garden. Tough plants will make it. Worked back there and I'm sure it will work here as well. However, my dogs are medium sized Icelandic Sheepdogs which are between 16" and 18" tall and weight between 25# and 35# and don't do much harm. Perhaps larger dogs like Labs might be more destructive.

Along the margins of the wild north gardens are the branches and trunks of dead trees and shrubs I removed in order to open things up to the sun, wind, and rain. That north forest was virtually impenetrable before I move here. Machetes would not have been able to work there because it was so overgrown. I never burn vegetation and branches I remove; instead I cut things up and let nature recycle the nutrients in them for future plants and animals to use.

Clearing things out I found old tires, cooking pots, lanterns, fishing plugs, dozens of old glass bottles, some intact, a few broken. I tossed the broken ones in the garbage and cleaned out the intact ones and put them on shelves in the pole barn. I wonder if glass bottles are eventually going to be 'rare' antiques, things from the past. If so, what I found might one day, perhaps decades from now, be worth something.

 I read somewhere that the Pacific Ocean is littered with hundreds of thousands of tons of plastic. How incredibly sad for marine life and what a statement about the possible future. Are there just simply too many of us?

 

The daisies (above) are 'wild' and work perfectly in my opinion. Scattered in amongst the domesticated plants are some jewel weeds (below); hummingbirds and butterflies love their orange flowers which appear later in the summer.

 

 

The dogs never tire of watching and wondering what I'm doing. Very puzzling behavior, dad!!

 

Kata and Kria - best buds

Kria, Korpur, Kata, Totty, Bear, Pila

 

I just read an interesting article on the internet on why some people don't like black dogs. Honestly, Korpur is one of my best dogs ever; he has a wonderful temperament. I wish I could clone him.