Climatalogical

I just brought Pax up from his hidy hole in the basement, thinking the storms were over, when bam! pretty much in the back yard, and the power gone for a few seconds.

Hot, steamy, and wet, which is great growing weather, unfortunatley for weeds as well and desirables. This morning I worked up a couple of good blisters and a lot of sweat hacking with a hoe, and this evening Sue and I did the final pulliing.

So, the sea of weeds is no more, but also gone are all the beets (impossible to separate weeds from beets).

All of which proves the point that it is really imposible to run a garden remotely. (Is there an app for that?)  The new plan, which probably should have been initiated years ago, I think, is to use landscape fabric, everywhere but where useful things are trying to make a living.

Do You Weed Me?

This is the weed that has completely dominated the Whitewater garden since it became ours. I've battled the monster for four years, but it still keeps coming back, strong as ever. There must be trillions of eternally viable seeds in what otherwise would be great garden soil. Can anyone help me identify it? (The stuff surounding it is purslane, I know, and I can deal with that, or even eat it.)

And here is a smart looking asparagus patch—circular in orientation, and manageable. Since aspergrass migrates, a circle is a good idea, it seems to me. Once the center is vacated, it can be re-fertilized and re-planted, and then it's concentric.

"Even if I knew tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree."
                                           —Martin Luther

Hot Summer Day...

...and up to Victoria Lane to hang out with the grandkids and have some burgers and homegrown salad—the wading pool and hose spray nozzle welcome afternoon attractions.

All five grandkids have incredible memories, and even after a month's absence the play picks up right where it left off. Fortunately, hot llama was postponed today due to the heat.

The huge, dangerous ash trees around the community center in Starin Park have finally come down.

It Does't Pay to Be Away

A little storm damage to the Whitewater house. Nothing big, just some water in an unimportant part of the basement. But it meant cleaning out some downspouts and replacing a not-so-ancient sump pump.

The afternoon to Riverknoll to see all the progress made there and to hang out with the grandkids.

No photos.

Road Weary

Back in Whitewater. The usual long drive—a quick transit of customs, but maybe half an hour lost due to an accident blocking the highway at Appleton. The yard looks fine, but the garden is 98.7% weeds. Today was also the long-awaited release of the Georgian Bay Forever economic impact study...not quite a tsunami, but still worth having, and more on that later.

Stopped for a quick dip in the Menominee River at Marinette.

And, back home, found the asclepias prospering.

That's a Wrap

Day's Eye, aka Oxeye—eye of the day, or, eye of the ox...

A rew last minuite adjustments... 

And, we are pretty much done with cottage work for this year. (year 6, I believe). Boat also pretty much done, such as it is.  Let the wild rumpus start!

Counterclockwise

Down on the pier watching the pine pollen drift by below, in a counterclockwise direction, at about a quarter of a knot. Not sure how to explain bay circulation, but it certainly does exist. Overall, the bay is perfectly flat, as it has mostly been the past two months, giving the McLean's Mountian windmills a rather rocky initial startup period. So why a current?

Today, also, the air was so thick it was hard to decide if walking or using the backstroke was the more efficient mode of transportation, and from time to time the thickness coalescecd into something resembling rain. Not a grandkid kind of day. 

But a garage kind of day. The garage has pretty much gone wild—bulging and quaking, and snarling whenever anyone got close.  Today we tamed it, although it wasn't easy, and resulted in a trailer to the dump, which is never quite fun. May it never rear its ugly head again.

A little piece of planet Earth I picked up as Pax and I walked Fraser Beach today. Beautiful fossilized bit, maybe about 1.5 million years old.

Dark skies, not showing well in this photo.

Dampish Day

Sue left early to finsih up boatwork (polishing and cetoling (teak finish treatment)) but got rained out and had to have breakfast at Twin Bluffs, where she ran into Paul Purvis and his group doing their regular morning meetup. Eventually the rain stopped, and Sue went work and got a lot done, so the boat is pretty much ready for launch. I meanwhile sat back and had various cups of coffee and a leisurely breakfast of blueberries, granola, and yogurt.

Clouds and drizzle in the afternoon, mixed with sun and clouds. Humid and sometimes hot and sometimes cool, depending on the activity level.

We called out for pizza tonight. (Not) But Sue made a pretty nice one!

Misnomer

Lupinus

SoggyDogInus

Second Day of Summer

Even here in the land of genuine dark, there isn't much dark these days, the sun spending little time below the horizon on its diurnal journey. Sue got to the boat early, but not early enough, to do boat work before sunstroke while I did stuff around here. After that I joined the boat crew, and the hour spent sanding was enough for me.

Later in the afternoon, when the sun was lower and we had recuperated somewhat, we decided to go for a wind ride, just for fun. The wind was patchy, but we caught a lift and spent a pleasent hour on the water.

Boat Day

Time for Heliotrope, at last. Over to Gore Bay, pretty early, to get the cover off, clean the deck and cockpit, and polish the topsides. Rather too much sun sun, of course for such things, but ameliorated by a gentle onshore breeze. The old girl looked good, in spite of being now 36 years old (and in the family for the past 28 or so).

Back home we hid a while from solar rays (in other words took naps), then Sue painted a bedroom wall while I did some pier work and went kayaking. With the Bay windless and flat I paddled through acres of pine pollen and cottonwood fluff. The amount of pollen produced is astronomically prodigious—the kayak split a yellow sea.

The water remains up, in fact, perhaps still inching upwards. The old mudflats are now home to countless pollywogs who are starting to get round and chubby in preparation for losing tails and growing legs. Gonna be a lot of frogs. 

And then, we Sue and I went swimming for the first time this year. Obviously, we lived to tell the tale.