…and just like that it’s Summer!
Where do the days go? First I’m wrapped in a blanket then I’m sweating! How did that happen? Ah Canada. It just miraculously appeared Summer it did! It seems we spend nine months of the year complaining about the cold, then it’s too hot! Maybe it’s a Canadian thing, I’ll ask someone from Wisconsin! We’ve had a weird one, fires burning to the North, not TOO far North either, a 100 km away, early mornings inundated with layers of smoke swirling across the lake like something from a surreal dream, and who ordered the sun to come up at 5 am? Geez! A girl can’t get a good night’s sleep if I have to get up to enjoy those amazing sunrises! Ha!
Smoke, which is made up in part by soot and water vapor, scatters visible light and obscures the view. Infrared light passes through the fine particles in smoke, providing a clear view but changing the light, everything is tinted in a rose-coloured/orange sherbert way. The windows were closed for a few days and you could still smell it. My thoughts were with people being evacuated from their homes and lives, what would we do I sat and wondered as our neighbouring Airbnb had a huge bonfire one night with 80 km winds…I messaged the Airbnb owner, later in the week the Township put a fire ban in effect, ah, poor cottagers and renters can’t burn down the area with their campfires…arseholes! I am becoming a curmudgeon, wait, maybe I just am!
But I sat thinking, how fast could we pack the trailer up to get out, or would we simply be fleeing with what we had on our backs and of course, the traveling mewberries!
I have an early-warning raccoon system in place. It is Rocket at the kitchen window, standing on the stovetop, announcing his girlfriend is here and he would like to go out and see her in long howling wails of passion…orange cats. This is one tough bird feeder, it has survived a few bear maulings with Brome’s help and this young lady was shooed off, the smoke must make her think it is later in the day than it is! I’m not sure if our little trash panda is a young mother, but she is a girl! We’ll wait and see if she suddenly arrives with a whole family in tow!
The smokey air has been hard on the older horses, Maya, Dusty, and Phoenix have all been on steroids at some time due to the air quality and laboured breathing. The hot humid air doesn’t help either. The donkeys, nah, eating to their heart’s content in fields of buttercups! Alice likes to wander out with us as well when we head up to the fields, she is such a beautiful cat:)
Hard to resist them! Scritches all the way around! I went looking for the Raven children. They have all fledged and are performing acrobatic feats of sliding down the metal barn roof and generally being loud! They were looking for shade on the day I was out, it was hot, and two were huddled looking for shade on a rail fence. I walked up to a single one perched on a post, talking to him/her/it…unperturbed, yeah I know ya lady, whaddya want? Another glamour shot? Should I look left? Right? you say…I got both;)
Swallowtails-who knew there were so many different kinds! Jennifer has a magnificent Preston Lilac by her house down at the horses that has been covered in swallowtails! Three different kinds one afternoon! It was as if the bush was alive with all that fluttering! Stunning. Mother Nature…the best artist ever!
Well, I will sign off for now, there are crazed cats hounding me, or would that be appropriate, maybe main-cooning me (?) that would like to go sniff where Miss Raccoon was last night and there are chipmunks to chase! Woohoo, unless you are a chipmunk, but that will be a whole other story, maybe tomorrow! I apparently have some catching up to do. I’ll leave you with the old man in the buttercups, hard to believe he is in his 30’s…what a guy! He still has so many opinions…Ha!
