OK, let's do the weather extremes first. Wild west winds stripped the hop hornbeam of its blossoms, making it look like snow in June. Then heavy rains overflowed the troughs. Then blistering heat put everyone in the pool. And then for a change, pink at sunset was just as dramatic as red at sunrise.
This week's garden show was colour-full and featured a lot of women's names. The rocks are covered in Trailing Veronica. Bursting in the pond is the water Lily. On the hill is wild Rose, not to be undone by domestic Blaze Rose and her friend Lupin.
Meanwhile, other evocative feminine names appearing are Maiden Pinks, fleece flower, and Canterbury Bells. Nice, eh?
But the big nature story this week was the appearance of a (200-pound?) black bear right outside our window! At 9p.m., the light was dim so the pictures are gauzy. It stretched up to a bird feeder, ripped it down easily, and munched away oblivious to us 10 feet away and gobsmacked. It also rolled the feeder base like a pinwheel and made sure it got every morsel. Then it came over to the window with its nose on the glass literally inches from us, before sauntering away casually into the woods. Nature channel!!
The other big event was a 900-mile one-day round trip to the border of Quebec to get ---- did you guess?--- another red ragtop. It's one of the few models I've never had! One hint to its age is it has a CD player and a cassette deck. The colour is so bright it's called Red-iculous!
The new plate is one of the blue ones to be replaced soon for technical reasons. But with a good cleanup and wax it's now up the hill and ready to roll. We'll be driving in a local car cruise this afternoon. At a time when things are looking dark in the world, the name of this Solara was easy to pick. May we introduce ---- Sunny!
This week's garden show was colour-full and featured a lot of women's names. The rocks are covered in Trailing Veronica. Bursting in the pond is the water Lily. On the hill is wild Rose, not to be undone by domestic Blaze Rose and her friend Lupin.
Meanwhile, other evocative feminine names appearing are Maiden Pinks, fleece flower, and Canterbury Bells. Nice, eh?
But the big nature story this week was the appearance of a (200-pound?) black bear right outside our window! At 9p.m., the light was dim so the pictures are gauzy. It stretched up to a bird feeder, ripped it down easily, and munched away oblivious to us 10 feet away and gobsmacked. It also rolled the feeder base like a pinwheel and made sure it got every morsel. Then it came over to the window with its nose on the glass literally inches from us, before sauntering away casually into the woods. Nature channel!!
The other big event was a 900-mile one-day round trip to the border of Quebec to get ---- did you guess?--- another red ragtop. It's one of the few models I've never had! One hint to its age is it has a CD player and a cassette deck. The colour is so bright it's called Red-iculous!
The new plate is one of the blue ones to be replaced soon for technical reasons. But with a good cleanup and wax it's now up the hill and ready to roll. We'll be driving in a local car cruise this afternoon. At a time when things are looking dark in the world, the name of this Solara was easy to pick. May we introduce ---- Sunny!
