Put away those flannel-lined jeans and woolens, summer has come at last!
We managed to go directly from the cool and rain of May and early June to heat and humidity and drought. But the heat wave broke, we got a soaking rain, and for the moment the weather is almost perfect. Ah, summer!
No garden this year. Between our May vacation, a dead truck battery, mechanical problems with our friend's rototiller, and digging up the back yard for septic system repairs, we never got the garden in. That's the bad news. But the good news is that this frees up a lot of time for us to go butterflying!
We've been out looking at the butterflies every weekend for a month now. Our part of the Vermont Butterfly Survey has greatly expanded this year so we have a duty/excuse to visit several areas regularly and report what we find. We also are supposed to take pictures of anything new that we see in order to document its presence, so I have an excuse to take a zillion digital photos. It's too bad that the butterfly season here in the North Country is so brief. I could do this year-round without getting tired of it.
I've also led a couple of bird trips for the local Audubon chapter recently. Somehow my enthusiasm for birds gets eclipsed once the butterflies come out, though.
Work plods on. It would be nice to retire and be able to do the important things in life full time, but the Bush recession has put the kibosh on any ideas of early retirement. I'd better get used to it...
I hope all is well in your corner of the world.
Peace,
Terry
7/14/03