Smiles, everyone... Smiles!

   Miss Leah and K are getting to know each other, and it's looking like a beautiful relationship is taking place... 

   Meanwhile.. down at the cottage... remember that float we just had to have?  And then we popped before it even hit the water, but we patched it?  Well it's been sitting out in the cove for a good part of the summer - and just the other day I decided to take a peek underneath because someone happened to mention you oughta flip that thing over every ten days or you'll get barnacles and those suckers can be sharp.  

  Well I heard what he said, but it kinda went in one ear and out the other because... LIFE... and all that.  So the other day, I went out there, hauled it to the dock and flipped it, just to see what maintenance might need doing (scraping).  To say that half the sea life that lives in the Atlantic was living under that raft, attached to it even!... is just slightly an exaggeration.   It was SO FAR GONE, I kid you not, there was no scraping of those 2,000 barnacles gonna happen in this life time, so.. I slashed the thing, let the air out, and allowed the crab hanger-on-ers to scurry back into the water.  Crabs!  We had been sitting on CRABS!   There had to be 2,000 of those too.  I did not take a picture, but I shoulda.  

    So.. the slashed raft remnants are real heavy and sat there for a day or two while we went on to other stuff... and yesterday the Mr. and I decided to go sit down at the cottage for a few hours in the shade and enjoy the water view and breeze.   Well, hell.. that breeze smelled like a dead whale carcas surely washed ashore just upwind of us.  Only it wasn't a dead whale.. it was the dead raft and all those barnacles that had now baked in the sun.   Our poor neighbors! Who live there during summer and were very gracious... Smell?  We didn't smell anything.... (lie! but a kind one).

   Back here on the farm, after a torrential rainstorm and returning humidity - I'm cleaning house, restocked the fridge and  am now procrastinating with the catching up on editing for next month's edition of our local publication (my day job) .  I'm trying not to pay too much attention to the news, because holy wow, what a clusterf*ck no matter what you're general opinion is on absolutely anything.  

  The Mr. and I are coming up on our 30 year anniversary in September.  No one was ever kidding when they've said  *How Time Flies*.   For whatever the reason, mostly work related... my guy is always concerned with the weather, and in particular, rain fall.  Every time it rains, he runs out to that cheap plastic rain gauge and comes back in excitedly announcing the inches fallen.  "Two inches in the past two hours!"....  "just 1/2 inch today".   Or if I'm closer to the reading of the gauge... "What's the rain gauge say??"....  

   Recently I was at a friend's home and saw the most beautiful rain gauge in her garden.  The perfect gift, I thought.. for the guy who has everything except a nice rain gauge, which he practically worships in all it's cheap plastic expression.  This.. is on the way...  more fitting of the beloved position it holds in our garden, wouldn't ya say?  I'm not being paid to say it, but if you'd like the same one, it can be found in the Wind & Weather catalog. 

Till soon, friends...