Babs on Sunday*

Winter – Grand Traverse Commons

Winter – the road to the Writing Studio and Bait Shop

Winter – Witness tree

Winter – Belted Galloways at Providence Farm

*I am shamelessly stealing from Mrs. Uphilldowndale’s Spud on Sunday series.

As we have discussed, I have a lot of catching up to do around here.  Babs Young has been sending her weekly Michigan Pics the whole time.  I have enjoyed every one of them, but I am not going to post two years’ worth here right now.  Just the ones for this month.  The text in italics, like all the photos, is by Babs.  I have added commentary.  You know how I am.  (Click on a circle to get the full picture.)

Top left: This is winter in Traverse City at Building 50 at Grand Traverse Commons. The orange man is part of the Man in the City Project.  I have to say that guy in the fedora looks exactly like all the private eyes of my beloved 1940s noir novels. The Commons draped in snow with the red-hatted towers against a winter sky – that’s pure Babs.

Top right: Winter has arrived!  Indeed it had.  That was taken in the morning as Babs headed to my house.  Bereft of the Torch Lake Cafe, she picked me up and carted me off to Charlevoix for brunch at the Harbor Cafe followed by a poetry reading at JRAC.  Marla Kay Houghteling rocked, by the way.  She read from several of her books, but the one I had to buy was Assisted Living, an extraordinary evocation of her mother’s life and decline into dementia.  I’m going to keep it for awhile, but I told Rob the Firefighter that it was really for him – a sort of guide . . . just in case.

Bottom left: Winter has finally arrived here.  OK, I know.  You’d think it arrived twice.  In a way it did.  And it will probably arrive another time or three too.  Stay tuned.  Anyway, I liked this picture a lot because I like witness trees – the big old ones that marked property corners and shaded farmers stopping for lunch and withstood the rigors of Mama Nature in all her moods.  Many of them are very old now.  Like all of us, they cannot live forever, but oh my they have lived well.

Bottom right: How about some Belted Galloways cleaning up the Providence Farm garden?  I admire the Belties very much.  They are one of the many additions to the agricultural portfolio up there at Providence.  There will be more catching up to do about the Romeyns.  They have been busy.

We are making progress.