It's the last few days of July and we still have only hit 70 degrees a couple of times. The last couple of weeks we haven't even gotten to 60 degrees. The one really nice thing is the forest fire danger has been in the low to moderate levels all summer which helps for good nights sleep when fireworks have been going off all day.
We got a good start on painting the house before the last rainy spell started. I have the last third of the north side to finish and that will bring us to half way. I does look nice. I just hope we get enough breaks in the weather for me to finish it.
Next weekend Scott is going to come up on his vacation to help prepare for replacing our front deck. Then the next weekend Brad is going to join us to do the actual construction. The current deck is not built correctly and is not safe. The railing is rotting and the decking is just plywood with the supports spaced way too far apart. The support posts are starting to rot out because they didn't use pressure treated wood. So pretty much the whole thing has to come down. Brad has a lot of experience building decks so he is in charge of the job.
I started berry picking yesterday. Things are a little late because of the cool, wet summer. Cloud berries should be pretty much done by now but they are just starting to ripen. I got a nice bucket of black currant berries and there are probably another bucket full left in the patch. Mary got a nice basket full of red currants that we had for desert last night. Looks like there will be a good crop of high bush cranberries in August but it looks like the lack of sun has dampened the blueberry crop.
A week ago I came down with some kind of bug that kept me in bed for almost the whole week. I don't know what it was. I am pretty sure it wasn't a cold or flu since I didn't cough and sneeze and my stomach wasn't upset, too much, so I don't think it was the flu. Whatever it was kept me in bed all week. Mary even had to take care of the goats. Every time I felt good enough to do something I would end up back in bed shivering. Luckily it rained almost all week so there wasn't much that could be done outside. So now I have to quit writing this and get to work on outside stuff before it starts raining again.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Friday, July 11, 2008
Up to speed
I haven't posted anything for a while so since it is drizzling out, again, I figured today is as good of time to update as any.
So, since my last post I have been getting a lot of use out of the new chainsaw. I've been clearing the buffer around the house of brush so in the event of forest fire it is a little easier to protect the house. Mary also started a new garden area on the old goat pen so taking down the willow around that area helps get a little sun on the plants and reduces the number of mosquitoes around the garden.
On the 5th of July Brad and Maija threw a deck warming party on their new deck at the cabin. The weather was perfect and the bugs were well mannered, for the most part. I got a chance to walk around the property and was surprised how dry the lot had become. When mary and I first bought the cabin in 1990 the lower half of it was so wet you could hardly walk on it. By 1995 that area was covered with 2 to 3 foot high birch trees. By 2000 the lower part of the lot was so overgrown with 12 to 15 foot tall birch trees that you couldn't walk down to or even see the lake. One good thing about all the trees is that it makes the cabin almost invisible. Since we pretty much stopped using the cabin when we moved to Willow that feature helped to keep intruders from doing any damage to the property. Now that Brad is up there almost every weekend he has started thinning the birch so the lake was actually visible, a little, from the deck.
I haven't gotten as far on the house painting as I had hoped but I do have all the windows scraped, sanded and primed and I have washed the whole outside of the house so we are just about ready to start painting.
This summer has been kind of cool and damp but we have finally started eating things out of our gardens. Mary has supplied swiss chard and some herbs from her garden. We have eaten spinach and radishes from my garden.
So, since my last post I have been getting a lot of use out of the new chainsaw. I've been clearing the buffer around the house of brush so in the event of forest fire it is a little easier to protect the house. Mary also started a new garden area on the old goat pen so taking down the willow around that area helps get a little sun on the plants and reduces the number of mosquitoes around the garden.
On the 5th of July Brad and Maija threw a deck warming party on their new deck at the cabin. The weather was perfect and the bugs were well mannered, for the most part. I got a chance to walk around the property and was surprised how dry the lot had become. When mary and I first bought the cabin in 1990 the lower half of it was so wet you could hardly walk on it. By 1995 that area was covered with 2 to 3 foot high birch trees. By 2000 the lower part of the lot was so overgrown with 12 to 15 foot tall birch trees that you couldn't walk down to or even see the lake. One good thing about all the trees is that it makes the cabin almost invisible. Since we pretty much stopped using the cabin when we moved to Willow that feature helped to keep intruders from doing any damage to the property. Now that Brad is up there almost every weekend he has started thinning the birch so the lake was actually visible, a little, from the deck.
I haven't gotten as far on the house painting as I had hoped but I do have all the windows scraped, sanded and primed and I have washed the whole outside of the house so we are just about ready to start painting.
This summer has been kind of cool and damp but we have finally started eating things out of our gardens. Mary has supplied swiss chard and some herbs from her garden. We have eaten spinach and radishes from my garden.
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