Author: Nancy J. Moncrieff

September has arrived, and the weather has done its first-of-September pivot, with nighttime temperatures in the forties and days in the seventies.  Dave Rexroth, chief meteorologist for Seven Action News, tells us that the first of September marks the beginning of meteorological fall.  Weather folks, it turns out, calculate seasons in three-month chunks that start… Continue reading September Quickening

Sue and I hadn’t walked more than a couple neighbors’ yards from her house this morning, when we came upon a nice-sized euonymus bush in a plastic pot on someone’s lawn extension.  Sue said she’d go get her car and collect the euonymus for her daughter.  Sue had already talked to Angela, who’d put the… Continue reading Bush Procession

The lights flickered at church before the service began, last Sunday.  They don’t usually flicker.  They flickered again some minutes later, and flickered periodically as the service progressed.  I cannot have been alone in thinking, Oh, no; this may be expensive to fix.  Our building dates back to 1868; any repair is likely to be… Continue reading Breakfast and Basking

     This morning, as the dog and I were walking, the expected rain arrived.  We were prepared for it, Rascal with his thick coat and I with an umbrella.  The rain on the leaves was the only sound at the time, a quiet shhhhh.  It was a gentle rain, whose edges move in and wrap… Continue reading The Sounds of Rain

     Janice and I went to the Great Pages Circus this Wednesday.  We bought tickets online and showed up at the Washtenaw County fairground, only to find no sign of a big top.  Given the near-perfect flatness of the fairground, if there had been a circus tent there, we would have seen it.  We parked… Continue reading Circus

As Sue and I started up the path by the Huron River today, we could see that the Cascades section of the river was full of activity.  Canoers, kayakers, and tubers, as well as little guys with just lifejackets for flotation assistance were everywhere and so excited.       “It looks like an outing,” Sue said,… Continue reading Turnovers

Decades ago, while visiting Daughter Number One in Wyoming, I bought a pair of earrings from the artist who’d made them.  I admired the elegant curves and sculptural quality of his work.  So did he.  “Syncline and anticline,” he said, pointing to specific parts of the jewelry.       A syncline, he told me, is a… Continue reading Syncline, Anticline

The Ann Arbor Art Fair starts today.  It’s a big deal—the largest in the country–a juried show with a thousand artists that attracts half a million art lovers a year.  It’s also known for featuring the worst weather of the summer.       You don’t know which type of terrible weather will happen, but you can… Continue reading Art-Fair Weather

Daughter Number Two has been off on an adventure.  With a small group of friends who’ve gone camping together for years, she’s been camping on Isle Royale.  Isle Royale is the main island in an archipelago of some four hundred fifty islands in Lake Superior.  Although the archipelago is closer to Minnesota, it sits within… Continue reading Isle Royale

Shrieks and laughter told Sue and me that today was a busy day on the Huron River, even before we could see the water through the trees.  People were clearly having a fine time, both on the main body of the river and on the Argo Cascades.  The Cascades is a series of nine gentle… Continue reading All in the Wrist