Michigan, museum, fauna, flora

We had a lovely time in Michigan with friends Brian, Chantal and Emily. Lots of fun including sunset swims and fresh fruit!

Emily has some very fashionable lounge wear!

The wildfires in Canada have been making for some hazy skies especially visible at the horizon at sunset. The sun will appear as a very defined red dot and disappears before it hits the horizon.

In early August, we overlapped a night with Annette, Dave, Nadia and Sylvie before they started their week vacation. We had a great time hanging out and visiting the beach with them, and then climbing this very tall dune the next day. (Full disclosure, John and Dave climbed the dune with the girls while Annette and I took photos as they ran and rolled back down!)

Meet Liam’s foster cat Rex. Rex is staying with Liam for a few months while Rex’s human Bobby travels. Rex has long hair and a regal presence. Here he is studying a hair tie, which I brought him, thinking that he’d responsibly play with it like Debbie’s cats Stewie and Layla do. We quickly decided that not all cats are safe around hair ties, and shortly after this photo was taken, the hair tie was removed, which Rex was fine with. It left him with more time to stretch out on and under Liam’s nice chairs!

John and I celebrated our 33rd anniversary (pearls) on Tuesday! To celebrate, we went to Heritage for oysters. Delicious and celebratory!

Later in the week Sarah and I went to the Driehaus Museum, which is a historic building that is very nicely restored and open as a museum now in the River North area. Wednesday evenings are free, and so we went to see the house museum and also to see an exhibition of watercolors by Rory McEwen.

McEwen painted in watercolor on vellum, making dramatic use of how he positioned the subject and of large amounts of white space. I’m particularly fond of the painting below. Also note the lush wallpaper – the house, built in 1879, is complete with Gilded Age furnishings.

We are laughing here because it was really hard to get us both into this photo with the sign in the background!

I also did some much needed weeding of our parkway this week. The false sunflowers, brown-eyed susans and milkweed are enjoying summer and hopefully providing a lot of nourishment for pollinators!

Meanwhile, in the back yard, Liam’s fern is loving the really hot and humid weather we’ve been having. The aloe plant up on the cinder block continues to try to walk away from its pot. I don’t know what to do about it!