Midsummer's night.

Well, it's officially summer but you sure couldn't tell it by the weather around Willow. Our average temperature around here is 10 degrees F below the normal average. Normally this time of year here is warm and dry. Almost every year since we first bought the cabin near Talkeetna by this time in June we would be praying for rain because the fire danger was so high. It was around this time of year in 1992 that fireworks started a forest fire that burned from Wasilla to just south of our house here in Willow. We didn't live here then but we had just bought the cabin in Talkeetna so I did keep an eye on it and had to drive through choking smoke one weekend to get to the cabin. Yesterday I noticed the Forest Service sign indicating fire danger around Willow was low. This is the first time I remember it being low in June.

Speaking of the cabin in Talkeetna. Since Mary and I moved to Willow we decided to sell it because it just didn't make sense to own a cabin in the wood when you live in the woods. Maija and Brad bought it from us last year and Brad has been working really hard to fix it up. Mary and I didn't use it much at all the last 5 years we owned it so it got really run down. So far Brad has it sided, new windows installed and insulation installed. Last weekend I went up to help him demolish the deck since it was getting pretty rickety. The whole deck was just a rotten mess. We barely even had to use tools to tear it down. I'll go up again this Friday to help him get the new one started. He wants to get it done by the Forth of July. The way he works, no problem.

My house painting is not coming along quite as good. I did get all the windows scraped down to bare wood but the sanding is taking for ever. It's a good thing I started when I did. Maybe I'll get it done before the snow flies this fall.

This week is Scott's and Maija's dog week. They belong to Alaska Dogs Gone Wild fly-ball club. Maija runs a couple of her dogs and Scott trains his Sweat-Pea but she doesn't compete yet. He is going to run a dog, a Jack Russell terrier height setter, owned by one of the club's members that can't be there the first couple of days. It is fun to watch the dogs having fun running the course. Some of the owners take it a little serious but all in all it's a good time. This is their third annual Summer Solstice competition with teams from the Lower 48 competing against the Anchorage club. Since this is all non-professional the teams from the Lower 48 usually don't have a full team so the Anchorage club fills in for them. I'll probably go down tomorrow and watch and Mary will go down Thursday.

Time to go to work.....