| Hello All, Things are good in "The Great North Woods", the weather has remained unseasonably cool. Which means the garden is coming along slower than usual. We are yearning for fresh tomatoes! Although we are getting cucumbers and carrots. The strawberries are done for the year but we are getting plenty of blackberries now! Yum! The days are finally getting a little shorter! The month of July is always tough because it begins getting light about 4:30 a.m. and the sun does not set until around 9:00 p.m. and it stays light until after 10! It seems that most of the noisier birds have left the forest after raising their young ones. Where they go I have not a clue, but they do seem to return in the fall. The smaller birds, the yellow finches are still around, and they come to our homemade feeder and birdbath. In other animal news, the chickens are doing great, the new hens have not come on line yet with more eggs, but it should be anytime now. Buddy (the king of fetch) got a MUCH needed bath and a haircut this week. He has long golden hair, and he runs through the berries and brambles. When he gets too hot he plops himself into whatever moisture he can find! Lately he has been using the old bathtub full of water that was set up for the ducks. He was VERY smelly. The boys washed him and trimmed him up! Shaq the cat had a snake the other day, Jon saved it and returned it to the forest. There is a very wily mole in the yard. He is not consistent with his burrowing. We will have to get him before he undermines the whole yard! The ducks are doing fine, the boys have been trying to keep them out of the dogs food. They have developed a taste for dry dog food! We went to our friend Pats' house up the hill a couple of nights ago. He has 3 new llamas that we wanted to see and he needed help putting some hay up in the loft of his barn. When we arrived he was just finishing cleaning up after one of his new llamas had spit on him! He said it was green, slimy, and very smelly! All the boys went in and pet the llamas, but for some reason Lorelei decided to stay on the outside of the fence, hmm can't figure that one out! I told her that llama spit might be a great hair conditioner! The boys are all doing well. Adam is still playing the piano. They have built a "secret fort" no grown ups allowed! They work on it for hours at a time. Cody, well he is Cody! He chases the ducks, plays in the dirt, wants to always turn on the water, loves that the blackberries are ripe, and wants to do everything the big boys do! He is so 3 years old! Earlier in the summer Adam had wanted to buy a rubber raft. Our old one had rotted out and some mice had decided to eat some of it. I suggested that we save up and buy a canoe! The boys agreed. They earned money by watching over our friend's houses when they were away on vacation. This included taking care of their animals, (sheep, chickens, rabbits, fish and cats) and watering yards and plants. Then they went to my work and spent a day helping the owner with yard work. They did great! We ordered the canoe and picked it up last week! It is not a very fancy one, but it floats! Lorelei was NOT too keen on the idea. Some of her words about it included, "tip over", "unsafe", and "Cody is not getting in that thing". I assured her that the boys were in good hands, after all, "I have a canoeing merit badge," I said! I don't know where it is, and it was about 30 years ago that I received it, but hey I got one! She was not amused! Anyway we got it home and we were looking at it, and Cody climbed inside. He said "daddy this is a bootiful boat". As luck would have it, that same night Gary, a friend called and left a message that he would be over near his pond working for the next two days. I had talked to him earlier in the year about a place to fish with the boys and he had told me about this pond. He said come over anytime and use it! The next afternoon I called Gary on his cell phone, he told me about where he would be. We were getting ready to go and Cody was saying, " I want to go in the canoe!" I told him to go talk to his mom. Finally she very reluctantly let him go and refused to go along and watch. The spot where Gary said to meet him is only about 5 miles from our house, so off we went. As we approached the area we saw down the road Gary's' unmistakable blue Isuzu pick-up. There is no telling how many miles this truck has on it, but I guarantee it's a bunch. We pulled up alongside, in a field where Gary had pulled in to talk to his brother who was feverishly working on what looked like a water line. Gary and his brother are farmers. They have different fields spread around the county. It seems that they are always working. Gary greeted us, I asked how things were going and with a soft smile he said, " pretty good, except the combine broke", he held up a worn out bearing and said that he had already been to the small repair shop in the very small town down the road. He obviously had rerouted back to where we were rather than head on in to a bigger town to get his much needed part. I told Gary that we could always come back another day if this was a bad time, he said that now was fine and to follow him. Down the road about a mile we turned onto a dirt road, about a hundred yards down the road we stopped on top of a levy. Gary explained that the pond to the north was his. We continued on around heading toward the far end of the pond where the dam was located. The road near the dam was so overgrown with blackberries, Gary finally had to stop, he got out and as he leaned into the back of the little farm truck he yelled to us "I hope you aren't worried about your paint" I said "nope". In amongst all the "stuff" in the bed of the truck, Gary comes out with a machete and starts whacking away at the berry vines. Within a few minutes we are parked on top of the little dam and Gary is explaining the lay of the land. What a great little spot. The pond is about a half a mile long, about a hundred yards wide at the widest spot, and there are lots of dead tree stumps and other great cover for fish and wildlife. Gary's cornfield borders the west side, and a row of forest is on the east. Gary said that he and his family never fish in the pond, but he knew of some guys that caught fish in it years ago. I knew that our farmer friend needed to get his combine going, so we said goodbye. We unloaded the canoe and drug it down the bank. What a great time we had. We did not bring any fishing poles for this maiden voyage, but we soon wished that we had. We saw fish everywhere! We paddled from one end of the pond to the other. Cody of course wanted to help paddle. The little canoe held the 4 of us with no trouble. Adam took the front, with Jon and Cody in the middle, and me in the back. We paddled until our arms ached. Adam was pleased at how well the canoe slid through the water. When we were paddling in unison we could actually make some pretty good progress. We watched the Osprey circle overhead, we flushed some ducks alongside the pond. What a great afternoon. We arrived back home and Lorelei was pleased that we all came back alive. A few days later Adam, Jon, and I returned to the pond with fishing gear. We caught bluegill and bass about as fast a we could reel them in! Today we are getting ready to head over to the coast. We will stay overnight tonight in a Yurt near Waldport. Not sure what adventures we will go on, we do not have anything definite planned. See Ya, Glynn Jr. |