A Great Summer

It has been a wonderful summer, one of my best in a long time. I
can look back at all the time I have had off, good long stretches to
play with Kevin or get things done around the yard, even take a trip
with my daughter and grandsons...

This year Kevin and I managed
to get quite a bit done on the yard, notwithstanding our--okay, MY,
battle with all the critters and varmints. It began with a few
squirrels who have a nasty habit of peppering the ground with broken
branches andpine cones as they prune their wooded high rises . If they
are the least bit bothered with your presence, they will pelt you with
their trimmings. The old adage, "Don't look up" works well in this
case, too. Along withlilliputian -sized potholes dotting the front
acre, we discovered they were also stripping the aspen saplings of
their leaves! In the last two years I have nurtured and nursed, trimmed
and weeded, barricaded and sprayed offensive natural ingredients on
those trees to keep the deer away and the trees and most of the bushes
have survived the larger animals. It will be a challenge to figure out
how to outsmart the squirrels with their bark-stripping and leaf
eating. Now I have a new adversary no bigger than a cell phone; it is a
7 stripe ground squirrel, alias; Timber Tiger, look-a-like to our
beloved Chip and Dale
friends.
Oh they are so cute and lovable
looking as they dart from hide-out to hide-out, bomb craters they have
lovingly and tenaciously dug out as refuge from hunters on high or
their larger tormentors, the gray squirrels. They WERE cute until my
bulbs began to disappear, they WERE cute until my rock garden looked
like the Smurfs used a rototiller on it, they WERE cute until my ground
cover garden showed up with tunnels.
I know, I hear the words, "They were there first and you moved into THEIR territory".
And
I have always been one to say those very words myself, until they
became MY problem. So my solution for next year will be to lay down
chicken wire, then we will all be happy.
There have been a few
freezing nights now, the leaves on the aspens are turning that
wonderful lemon yellow and wood smoke wafts through the air fromwood stoves. The aspens have grown enough to finally "shhhhh
" when there is a breeze, one of my favorite sounds and the bucks that
pass through every night have lost all their velvet. They've left
pieces of it on the smaller pine trees they've been battling. They are
just now in the early stages of pretend fighting and so every now and
then we can hear the click-click-click of their antlers as they test
their budding prowess in the arena of life.
This year we splurged
on ourselves and bought two kayaks so we could explore the 50+ lakes
and ponds in our area. Our first adventure took us to Devil's Lake,
only about 9 acres and 12 feet deep at the most, but a lake that is so
clear and refreshing from one end to the other with most of the color
being that alpine blue-green. We tested our kayaks for several hours,
stopping for lunch and to tether ourselves to a large boulder in the
water. Shortly after that we headed for the loading area, ready to head
home after such a wonderful lazy day. Kevin noticed that my kayak
seemed a bit heavier than his and that quite a bit of water was
dripping out from the dry storage area in the rear. When he popped off
the seal to look inside he discovered about ten gallons of water that
had seeped in during our time on the lake. I know now that when Kevin
gets silent, something is in the works. Twenty minutes later we were in
the parking lot atREI, unloading both kayaks when Kevin says, "Well, do you want to stay in the truck or come in with me?" Hmmm
, I think most women will understand why I chose to stay out in the
truck. Needless to say, about an hour and a half later there were two
new and better quality kayaks in the trailer as we headed home. The
very next weekend we were able to take out the new ones back at Devil's
Lake and this time not only did they perform better and with more ease,
they didn't seem to absorb any water.