icky oil

Good morning.

Well, as I'm sure many of you have heard, the gulf isn't the only place with an oil spill. Right here in Michigan, we've had a spill of over 800,000 gallons of oil into the Kalamazoo river.
It came from a pipe taking oil from Indiana to Canada. It doesn't come through Lansing, which has the Grand River, but flows just south of us through the cities of Battle Creek and Kalamazoo. The river runs right along the Fort Custer Recreation area we stayed at earlier this year. I even took a pic of the river when we were there since it has a very nice boat launch for Kayaks which no one will be using now for the foreseeable future as they've banned everything from the river.
They've even evacuated up to 80 properties along the river because of toxic fumes.

The river is very popular with Canadian geese, which as you can see aren't going to fare well during this catastrophe.

Having a spill in a river is almost worst than in a lake. In a lake it just floats around, but a river just carries it along, and with the water levels high due to a lot of rain, the river is flowing faster. Right now it's a long ways from Lake Michigan, and there's several dams and small lakes in between. Hopefully they'll be able to get it all before it reaches Lake Michigan.

And in other news.....

It's been another busy week in the Salon including today and tomorrow. It's been warm (mid 80's) and sunny, and looks to be a nice weekend.

And to leave you with a more pleasant view, a pot out on the arbor by the pond.

Fountain grass in the middle, with 3 varieties of sweet potato vines and purple petunias.

Have a great weekend!