Change in the weather

After 5 weeks of hot and sunny weather, the long awaited rain arrived. We are still in a level 2 drought, and under a total burn ban, but we had one or two days of fairly steady rain that has to have helped remove some of that tinder dry base that was everywhere.
With the rain though, has come mud, and lots of it! It has slowed the progress on the sheds a bit, but in between rain showers, we still venture out and get some work done when we can.

Despite the rain, work on the road continued, and while I was in Ottawa for a day last week, running errands, they finished fixing the steep grade, smoothed everything out, replaced the first layer of stone in that area, and covered the entire upper and lower road with the final coat of finer stone! You go away for a day and everything changes. I can't believe how quickly the last of it got done. Rob has promised to post here and will hopefully fill everyone in on the details of the road work with some photos.

In the meantime, Rob has been getting drainage and stone into the sheds, and also cleared a bit of a path to the new house location, I trimmed a few branches away so I can walk easily along the path and try to walk there every day and get a feel for the land there. We are still hoping to start with a timber frame addition on the log cabin, and then progress to a new house later, but need more information from the building inspector this week, before we can finalize our plans.

The woods are quite different where we want to build the new house. We try to go down there at different times of the day, to note the angle of the sun, as we are looking at passive solar options, and we have noticed there is almost always a breeze coming in off the river, so should take that into consideration too.

There is a nice path that leads to the river's edge, and I like to go down and see what is along the shoreline. There are at least four Great Blue Heron's that hang out here, but they are pretty shy. As soon as they hear my feet on the rocks, they fly away.  Yesterday one flew up into a tree, but after I waited about half an hour for it to leave I gave up! It was rather far away for a good photo, but I did manage at least to see it as it landed in the tree across the river. Amazing wing span.

There are some interesting little shore birds that swoop along the river too, but I haven't been able to identify them yet. We hear the kingfisher most days, and in past years there was an osprey that would fly up the river, so we hope one is still around. I need to park myself in a chair, and just sit a while with my camera I think.

I've put up a hummingbird feeder, and within a few hours, the hummingbirds arrived, and we've been enjoying their antics ever since. Yesterday three small Yellow Rumped Warblers flew in around the porch. It's been fun trying to identify what birds are around here.

While the guys were out with their bulldozers, tractors and excavators the last few weeks, they told me every day a doe and fawn would come out to watch them. Now I quietly walk around the same area several times a day and never see them! I can't believe that with their big noisy machines they see the deer so often.

So I was rather pleased to finally see one on the road in, although from a bit of a distance.

The change in the weather has made for a bit of an odd week. We get outside to play with Jet, or walk, or try to get some outside work done whenever the sun pops out for a while, or the showers at least stop. In between we try to catch up on paperwork, make some changes to our PC setups, and work a bit on the cabin.  Rob is also working on the building plans. We track in a never ending pile of mud and stone into the cabin, the next house gets a mud room!

Last night the clouds cleared long enough for us to go out just before midnight in the hope of seeing the Perseid Meteor Shower.  We took our chairs out, walked up our new road to the top of the property and plunked ourselves down on the old concrete pad and gazed up at the stars for a while. Caught a bit of the show. It was fairly warm, no bugs out, and absolutely wonderful to be out there. And the stars - well - with no lights from any nearby cities, (it's pretty dark out there!) the stars are phenomenal.

Yesterday afternoon a small storm blew in while Rob was clearing some trees to give us a good turning point at the end of the lower road. I was out at the river's edge and could see the dark clouds coming in. I ran back to the cabin just as the rain hit, and went to get the truck so I could go pick up Rob. He was already driving back, soaked to the skin, but with a huge grin on his face. "It was the most fantastic rain" he said - "and there were little rainbows every where you looked" .  Next time maybe I won't worry about getting my camera wet.