Wednesday, June 12th - back to the cooler weather for a couple of days

We've had a couple of really nice days but now it's back to rain and cooler temperatures. It was meant to rain overnight but I'm not seeing any evidence of it this morning. In fact when I let the dog out at 5:15 there were a few rain drops on the pavement but nothing serious. I guess it's waiting for later today. We are supposed to reach a rainy high of 14' later - it's 13' now and overcast so I guess this is as good as it's going to get for the day.

Lloyd has been working really hard the past couple of days with a little help from his friends. The shingles are now complete on the roof of the garage. It was a time consuming and tedious job but with some help for the last few days it's finally done. Thank you Bernie for assisting as well as finding some additional help. As they say, many hands make light work!

Yesterday was a clean up day. We had a huge pile of scrap pieces of wood, branches that were either cut off, or blew off the trees, and various other bits and pieces of wood that needed to be disposed of. It was a clear calm day - the perfect day to have a fire and burn off the debris. I'd also had some trouble with the lawn mower on Monday evening so he had time to fix that and finish the grass cutting as well. A pile of split fire  wood is waiting to be moved, the veggie garden should be plowed up in the next couple of days thanks to another neighbour, and we'll be well on our way. The trees are now out in full leaf and with the grass cut it's starting to look pretty great again - one of the reasons we chose this spot.  My flower gardens are doing well and I picked up some herbs yesterday. A couple more to track down and we're done.  I also picked up a really pretty rain gauge yesterday so I can tell just how much rain we actually receive each time it pours. I just checked it and my suspicions are correct - no rain received over night but it's just starting to sprinkle now at 5:30.

My new rain gauge, complete with stained glass butterfly

One of the salesmen I work with is a keen photographer. He hasn't done a lot in a while but is getting back into it. He enjoys taking photos of animals, birds and landscapes and is very patient when it comes to waiting for a bird to return to his deck or his feeder. He was like a kid with a new toy yesterday when the new lens he has ordered  for his camera arrived - this thing is massive.  It will be interesting to see what he comes up with using it.  He decided to start a blog to post some of his photos and here's a link to it - check it out....

http://paulswildlife.blogspot.ca/