vegetable gardens
not big but there’s a science
to making gravy
In the book Sundog, Jim Harrison writes of an May Morning in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula;
A cold dawn with the wind shifting to the north in the night.
I tried to scrape frost from my windshield with my fingernails.
No wonder vegetable gardening isn’t a big item up here, while the making of gravy is a science.
I stole this image of a ski trail up there above the bridge, the Mackinaw Bridge I mean, was taken by my friend Katie who live up there and swears that she loves it.
For myself, I guess, all I need is the picture and that is as close as I want to get.
Mr. Harrison, and he was the UP’s biggest fan, said this:
Above the Straits of Mackinac, the Upper Peninsula sat alone, perhaps the least-known land mass in the United States.
In this age where every niche on earth has been discovered and rediscovered countless times, there is an open secret why the upper Midwest is generally ignored: it is relatively charmless, and it competes with Siberia for the least hospitable climate on earth.
On the other side of the river, the road entered an enormous swamp some thirty miles in width, with very few other cars on the road. For a while the lack of any traffic caused a vertigo as if I had been abandoned.
Apparently on a Thursday night in May in the Upper Peninsula no one goes anywhere, but then where would they go?
[Enter] the UP, as it’s called, [You] enter a timbered-over, rock-strewn waste, a land so dense and desolate it became obvious to me that the most redoubtable survivalist couldn’t survive.
On the other hand I live in resort town and it is the off season.
Apparently on a Monday night in January in the Low Country no one goes anywhere, but then where would they go?
The picture makes a nice contrast to my usual ocean side views.
The Google says where I am and where this this picture was taken are about 1200 miles and about 14 degrees of latitude apart distance wise.
But where it really counts, the google says it is 7 degrees Fahrenheit right now up north while it is 67 degrees down here.
No wonder vegetable gardening isn’t a big item up here, while the making of gravy is a science.
No Haiku For You 