The Rest of the Summer

When I wasn’t in the office doing research or galivanting across the state/country with my visitors, I spent the summer much as I have the last two summers. I walked, biked, and bussed my way to all corners of Ann Arbor. I went grocery shopping and attended church. I trekked through parks, natural areas, fields, forests, and fens; visited the farmer’s market; watched soccer; ate ice cream; and overall had a pretty good time.

Besides going to the arboretum a fair amount, I visited a couple of parks that I hadn’t been to before. Both were nice areas, but both were also plagued by my number one complaint about Ann Arbor parks: traffic noises. Is it really nature if you can still hear the cars roaring by at fifty miles an hour? If a tree falls in the forest and nobody’s there- Anyway, Furstenberg Nature Area on the east side of Ann Arbor features woodlands, prairie, wetlands, and marshes along the Huron River. It also connects to Gallup Park, which I’ve biked through on the Border to Border trail. I saw the river, some swans, and interesting clouds.

Clouds

All the way at the southeastern corner of the city, technically in Pittsfield township, is Lillie Park. I biked there, discovered the Costco and airport, did not get run over by any motor vehicles, and biked back, for a total distance of 21 miles for the day. Again, the park itself is nice, but it’s nestled right up in the intersection of I-94 and US 23. Nothing like some motors revving to go with the birdsong and wind rustling through the leaves. I walked some of the trails through the woods and across/around a couple lakes and learned about eutrophic ponds. In a eutrophic pond, plant matter accumulates faster than it’s carried away or decomposed, so the pond will eventually fill up and become moist forest or a meadow.

The eutrophic Duck Potato Pond

After peony season at the arboretum, I went back a couple times. In summer, it’s quietest when it’s raining, right after it rains, or when it might rain at any second, because that keeps the drunken tubers off the river and the fair-weather, also possibly drunk, picnickers away. My discovery of the season was very tall grass. It was taller than me, which sometimes isn’t saying much, but this was tall grass.

Very tall grass

Additionally, there was another visit to the botanical garden for yet more cactus/succulent photos. We survived another year of art fair. It was not a good year for the artists. Every single evening, it poured, and the high winds flipped at least one tent. As usual, I walked around but did not buy anything. I volunteered at a couple of engineering outreach events. At one, I mixed two hundred pounds of cornstarch with water to make a viscoelastic pool that I then walked across. It felt like I was being initiated into the ChemE secret society, except it was in broad daylight and a couple dozen middle school girls were watching. At the other, I was the photographer and got paid for the first time ever for photos that I took. I can now say that I’ve been a paid photographer. And finally, the two ice cream flavors I tried at Blank Slate this summer were peanut butter cone crunch (peanut butter butterscotch ice cream with caramel and chocolate covered waffle cone pieces) and campfire s’mores (caramel ice cream, chocolate ganache, graham crackers, and marshmallow cream). Would recommend both.