The pace has picked up at work and with so much needing to be done outside and all the craziness inside... I've felt swamped. The good news is that the crew finished the work in the house. The not so good news is that they left behind a lot of clean-up and organizing to be done. I'll post pictures when I'm happy with the arrangement of the two rooms.

Two weeks ago we had a massive storm blow (literally) through town; trees were down or uprooted, metal pole barns were shredded, all the streets were blocked with branches and power was out for six hours. We were very lucky - hundreds of branches and sticks to be cleaned up but we didn't lose any trees. My camera battery was depleted at the time or I could have shown the truly massive limb that fell right next to the polytunnel, or the large branch that flattened my potato patch.

Shown here are two limbs that formed the top third of one of our trees. They had broken in the storm but were still hanging in the tree until another storm last night shook them loose. We received 1.5 inches of rain while my parent's farm four miles away got 2.25 inches.


The days have been brutally hot with high humidity so I'm far, far behind on weeding.

My neighbor came over yesterday and tightened up my clotheslines. I think, like me, he suspected his kids had been hanging on them. Now, back up to the original height of over six feet, they are safely out of reach.

The wet weather has been a bonus for the toad population. My lawn mowing was a slow affair since I kept pausing to let the babies hop out of the way. :) While clearing a pile of sticks today I disturbed the patriarch (or matriarch?) of the local population. It covered the palm of my hand (and promptly peed on me) before I shifted it into the flowers and safety.

Another weekend has flown by and it's back to work tomorrow.