A Very Welcome Rain

It only lasted about half an hour, but this morning a thunderstorm passed over and graced us with a nice steady rain.  There was thunder and lightning, but no drenching brief downpour.  All the plants appear to have received a good drink, and they sure needed it.  This is the first rain other than a spit and a drip in five weeks.  We've been watering both the lawn and the flowers, and crops, already behind because of the wet cold spring, are now crying for rain.  This will help a lot.

It's actually a challenge to get pictures of rain falling, but the view out back shows it a bit.

Raindrops on the driveway or the road are the best illustration, in the absence of a convenient pond.

 Each drop created ripples outward on the deck.

And the plants just soaked it up.  Reducing exposure for these photos while editing them seems to show up the water droplets much better.

*****

I did write my rant yesterday, but in the end on reading it I decided the accusations were too personal.  I am still angry about being put to bed at 7 p.m. some days, but I need to find a constructive way to deal with it.

Coffee Time

Easy but bumpy drive downtown today for coffee  with the boys. My fluorescent orange hat gets lots of attention.

 Working on a bit of a rant today about the home care crisis here in Ontario. I'm tired of being put to bed at 7 o'clock every other weekend and it seems I will have even more 7 o'clock evenings in the future.  I think I should sleep on it before I post it.

 We are having our bathroom re-done. We are at the drywall stage now. The two drywaller's arrived at 5:30 just as we were sitting down to supper!  Seems they just come and go as they please.

Beautiful evening though, sat outside for quite awhile.

Meaford Harbour

I've fallen way behind sharing pictures of our visits down to the harbour.  These pix date way back to Canada Day, July 1st.  And a beautiful day it was.

These are quite different views of the harbour, from over at the Coast Guard dock, in the southeast corner of the harbour.  I'd been looking forward to seeing the boat up close, but of course now I couldn't get on it at all.

So we worked our way over to the main pier.  Have I told you how painful it can be to drive on gravel?  Then we walked out there, and got some great views of the bay.

Sailboats and reflections.

Up on the lookout you could see where they had repaired the breakwall.  All the lighter coloured boulders are new.  Unfortunately I wasn't around to get a picture of the ice damage that led to the repairs.

Another rare picture of the old man.

And another view of the harbour.

Back by the harbourmaster's office were these glorious big Daisies.

It's Day Lily Season

I've been seeing lots of orange Tiger Lilies that so many people have for two weeks, but now our own Day Lilies have started blooming.  There are literally hundreds of varieties, with different colours, different shapes of petals, different size blooms, and so on.  There is a Day Lily breeder here in the valley, so most of these unusual varieties we got from them.  Here's what we have in bloom so far.

Not all our Day Lilies at the other house were bright red or orange.  We had some pale pink and some bright yellow too, but Mrs. F.G. made the mistake of asking me to pick out the ones I'd like to transplant.  As you can see, I like the bright coloured ones!

Hosta Blooming

We have more Hostas in our garden than any other single type of plant.  We had 2 or 300 at our former house, but we only brought a few here.  Still, we've got 30 or 40, so they're interesting to watch when they start blooming.

Even though they were only planted last spring, well spread out, some of them will already need to be moved next year.

I like the purple/mauve ones, and particularly like to take close-ups, so here are three pair of shots.  These are all smaller varieties, at least by the size of the leaves.

 Two Hostas in the back yard seemed to bloom in a different way.  Compare it to the above ones which all tend to have blooms emerging out of one side of the stalk, well above the leaves.  These ones have leaves on the high flower stalk, and blooms emerging from, the axil of the leaf.  Have never noticed that before, even though we've been  growing Hosta for 20 yeara.

This is the flower stalk of those two once it fully flowered.

I Think We're Getting Some Rain!

It's been dry here for weeks, even though it has rained heavily further south in Ontario.  Today was brutally hot, under the 'heat dome' they've been forecasting.  There have been heat warnings for 2 or 3 days.  But out for a ride this afternoon it had cooled off considerably in spite of the forecast.  So I checked the radar.  This is what I found.

Two maps from the Weather Network, both showing the rain (green), heavy rain (yellow), and the second highlighting the thunderstorms (red).  Both storms are moving straight east and we are located on the south shore of Georgian Bay, directly east of the red patches on the second map.

Yes, I think we're getting rain.  We'll just stay inside and watch the storm.

Around the Block

Recently I have taken to driving 'around the block' to explore and get some fresh air.  It's not really a block but a long street that ends at a main road.  I stay off the main road, as there are no sidewalks in sight.  But I've got my bright fluorescent orange wide-brimmed hat for visibility.  Everyone I meet likes it.

Just around the corner is this beautiful patch of Day Lilies, 'Flowers of the Field' as we call them, but others just call them 'Ditch Lilies'.  As they started blooming, all the ones in the sun bloomed, but those in the shade of the hedge didn't bloom until two days later.

Brilliant orange in the sunshine.

An interesting enclosure decorated with glass lanterns and plates.

A nice small barn behind another house.

And I was quite surprised to see that one neighbour keeps racing pigeons!  I haven't seen a pigeon coop like this in about 60 years when another neighbour three doors over kept homing pigeons.  Once he allowed us kids in for a look.

 And every time I look up along one of the streets I see all these wires that keep our homes functioning.