Fall at the Arboretum

My latest quest was to find fall colors at the Arboretum, but it’s not like I really need excuses to go stomping through the mud. While the weather was still considered tolerable (and downright nice some weeks) by the majority of Ann Arbor, I took to wandering through the Arboretum after church on Sundays. I wasn’t expecting much, because unlike New England, Ann Arbor lacks 1) hills, so you don’t get good views of expanses of trees, and 2) maple trees, which affects the yellow/red color balance. Yes, it is possible to be persnickety about fall colors. Nevertheless, it still looked nice in Ann Arbor, just not as spectacular as miles of rolling hills covered in yellow, orange, and red.

A fall colored tree

Early in the season, there wasn’t much, just some isolated branches and tips of trees. After a couple weeks, I found a whole tree. This was one of the days when it was too nice to not be outside, though, so it was still worth being at the Arboretum, and the very tall grass was still there. A few weeks later, we hit what was probably peak color. I had a concert the week after that, and then was heading out of town the following week, so it was definitely the peak color that I saw. The more forested trails were covered in leaves, and a lot of the beeches/elms/sycamores/whatever were nice and yellow.

Fall-ish trails

View from the overlook

And then I went away for a week and came back to snow. Six months of winter, here we come.

Fall Flavors

Another month, another visit to Greenfield Village. This time, one of my college friends was visiting home, and I joined her and her parents for Fall Flavor Weekends at Greenfield Village. It was a cool, cloudy day, but I was still surprised by how uncrowded it was, not that I was complaining. I guess Fall Flavor Weekends aren’t a huge deal compared to some of their separately ticketed events, but I enjoyed it. Mostly things go on in the village as usual, except with more cooking and demonstrations.

When we arrived, we first headed in the direction of the farm, where they were threshing, and later baling, wheat. The thresher was powered by a steam engine that would have made the rounds to each farm as needed and also periodically let out giant plumes of smoke. From there, we visited the mid-19th century Firestone Farm, home to Harvey Firestone, the tire guy. He was friends with Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, and apparently the three of them would sometimes go vacationing together. At the farm, they were in the middle of lunch (featuring cabbage, squash, and a bread or cake?), and were making apple butter in the basement.

Threshing wheat

We next briefly looked around the Liberty Craftworks area, but it was mostly business as usual for them, though the print shop did print up some recipes for ham. On our way to lunch, we walked through the farmer’s market set up in the pavilion, which I had never seen open before then. For lunch, I got pork and beans with cornbread at A Taste of History, and it was delicious. I still really appreciate that their food tastes like food and not salt and oil.

Barns by the craft shops

After lunch, we wandered through the rest of the houses that were cooking. McGuffey’s birthplace (~1800, Pennsylvania) was making rabbit stew and some sort of English pudding that gets boiled. The Mattox family home (~1930, Georgia) had crackling bread and peach cobbler. Outside near these two houses, they were also making cheese and butter, plus baking apple pies (three of them, cooked in three slightly different ways – how do I get a job that involves more pies?) on an open fire. Then at the Edison homestead (~1915, Canada – this was Edison’s grandparents’ house that Edison would visit) they were having ham, a grape/celery/mayonnaise salad, and something else involving rolled fried spinach. The Susquehanna plantation (~1860, Maryland) was cooking crab cakes and biscuits, and finally, the Daggett farmhouse (~1760, Connecticut) was cleaning up by the time we got there, and had just finished brewing a batch of beer. We learned about some of the different things they used to flavor the beer, and the grains that were cooked into a mash and could be eaten as a sort of breakfast cereal before fermentation.

Overall, I liked the event; it was a different look at the houses in Greenfield Village and they kept it pretty low key. No crowds, a bit of behind the scenes, and food. What more could I ask for?

But wait, there’s more. The last fall flavor is mine. I had been watching The Great British Bake Off again and decided what I really needed to do was bake a cake. Specifically a nice complicated upside down apple cider cake that involved cooking apple slices in cider, melting butter and sugar to caramelize, arranging a layer of apples on the bottom of the pan, baking a spice cake (from scratch) over the apples, and turning the whole thing upside down. It’s a bit of a pain, but worth it in the end, because it’s not like I have better things to do with my time. (Research? What research?)

Upside down apple cider cake

Birthday Hockey

Part of my birthday celebrations this year included hockey, because after four years in pep band and dozens of hockey games, the sport grew on me. It was only the second time I’ve ever paid to go to a hockey game, but I did get a slight staff/faculty discount. One of the few perks of being a grad student is that we’re considered both students and staff, so we get all the discounts.

The reason I chose this game was not just because of the discount tickets, but because Clarkson was coming to Michigan. Clarkson, like Cornell, plays in ECAC hockey, and finished directly behind Cornell in the standings last year, so I figured I’d watch some conference friends(?) and get an early indication of how the ECAC season might shape up. With that in mind, I headed to Yost Ice Arena on a cool fall Friday night. Yost Arena is probably nicer than Cornell’s Lynah Rink, but I like Lynah and its wooden benches, low rafters, and no video replay screen. Yost, like a lot of things about Michigan, is almost too polished. Life is messy. It has rough edges. It’s not all shiny and sparkling chrome and glass. But Michigan hockey is better than no hockey at all, so I forked over my money and entered the high-ceilinged, aluminum-clad arena.

Near the end of the third period, tie game

It was early in the season, which usually means teams are still getting back on their skates, so to speak. This game was no exception, with players falling and more crossed signals than typical. Clarkson ended up scoring near the end of the first period on a power play, then conceded an even-strength goal midway through the second period, and that concluded the scoring for that game. ECAC plays a single five-minute sudden death overtime period during the regular season. If no team scores during overtime, the game ends as a tie, which is what happened on this night. Apparently for Big Ten conference games, the tie stands for NCAA records, but after the first overtime, they play a second five-minute sudden death overtime, except 3-on-3, and if the game is still tied after that, there’s a shootout and the winner receives an extra point in the Big Ten standings. For this out of conference matchup, however, the game ended as a 1-1 draw after a single overtime.

Third period, student section and hockey band in the background

There was a rematch the following night, and Clarkson came away with the win, which is what I would have expected. Michigan had home ice, but Clarkson (and Cornell) started the season ranked pretty highly. Overall, neither team was particularly inspiring, but Clarkson’s defense looked more organized, and though their offense wasn’t as active as Michigan’s, they had more dangerous fast breaks. All said, it wasn’t a bad game to watch. I brought my DSLR and experimented with shutter speeds, and I got to see what might be my favorite penalty¹ – too many men on the ice.

¹Hockey penalties are great. While most cards in soccer are for “unsportsmanlike conduct,” in hockey you get penalties like boarding, hooking, slashing, cross-checking, charging, high-sticking, holding, holding the stick, elbowing, interference, roughing, tripping, and playing with a broken stick. And of course, too many men on the ice.