The Summer of Oh-Oh Nine

What can be said about the summer of Oh-Oh Nine? Enough rain to make Vancouver jealous, and little time to get out and work on projects.

It rained:


And then the sun came out:


And we could count the nice sunsets on one hand:


The observant among you will note that our farmer across the road didn't even have time to finish mowing the hay on his field in one fell swoop before more rain came.

The rain hindered us in more ways that one.

(Even Cooper looks despondent).

Between rain showers, we worked on the slate patio that is still not done. We just ordered the last tiles we need to complete the job. It's not that we calculated badly, it's that we had about 30 tiles that were either split or almost unusable due to their poor quality. The good news is the company is replacing them free of charge, and the bonus is that we get to keep the old tiles because it would cost too much to return them. We can still make use of some of them as stepping stones, or in between garden beds (but don't even get me going on that...).

Our cedars really liked the wetness, but our strawberries not so much. Most of them rotted away before they even ripened. The ones that ripened tasted of water. It was not a stellar year.

All this rain made it hard to even take out the tractor and mow the grass. Heavy tractors and clay soils don't mix very well. I think Eric managed to get the job done maybe 4 times over the course of the summer. Our property looks like it needs a good weed-whacking, stat!

We added someone to our menagerie. Meet Plumette:

That's Plume-ette, not Plum-ette, because her tail is like a plume. Yup, she's missing a chunk out of her ear. She's super affectionate and was abandoned, until she met us, that is. We obviously have SUCKER printed on our foreheads, both Eric and I. And yes, cats sit on tables at our house. It's not encouraged, but it's also not completely frowned upon either, as evidenced above. Plumette was very pregnant when the above photo was taken, but her full story is for another post. That and many kitten photos...