Thursday, March 18, 2010

Spring on The Lake

Well spring is certainly 'springing' on The Lake. The birds are here in force. We have had Canada Geese here pretty much all winter it seems, the Swans are back and the male is busy as usual trying to clear The Lake of all danger to his forthcoming progeny. It is a full time job for him, he charges across The Lake in full fury, wings smashing against the water, honking loudly and literally running across the surface. A frightening sight indeed. It is a pretty scary sight and sound for me so I can only imagine how the ducks and geese feel. They take off, fly over him and land elsewhere on The Lake. So he has to start all over again. Very frustrating!
This morning we saw a fox, yes, just after 8.00 o'clock in the morning he (she?)trotted right across our backyard, down to the water, turned around and went across the neighbors yard where two geese were floating in the water. He ignored them, but they moved a little further out, then surprisingly they swam slowly after him, following him as he made his way along the shoreline. I can only think that they have a nest along there somewhere and were concerned about him finding it. He disappeared into the undergrowth and we wondered about a fox out in the daylight. I thought rabies, although he looked healthy and perky, Julia said maybe he has a family to feed. Who knows. Anyway it is very exciting here on The Lake in March. Today is forecast to be the first 70 degree day since last November, then tomorrow it is supposed to be 72 and 73 on Saturday! Wouldn't you know it, the guys just finished putting the stove and chimney in a few days ago. That is the reason for this awesome weather! I have kindling and wood stacked by the stove waiting for a cool evening, but, it looks like we may have to wait until next winter to enjoy it! The trees are all bursting out, including the potted dwarf fig that I put out onto the deck yesterday. The lawn is looking green, how appropriate as it was St. Patrick's Day yesterday, but Julia informs me that the green is all clover. (Again appropriate for St Patrick!) Whatever it is, it is green, I'll take whatever comes, no weed killers for us, having all grass is boring, the variety of weed flowers is much more exciting. And we don't want fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides washing into The Lake do we?
Global Warming seems to be back after a short hiatus! Whatever, I don't want to fight, we will see, what will be, will be. But we still want to try to reduce, lower, diminish or neutralize as much pollution as possible.
The weather today is perfect, just the right temperature and sunny. My neighbor Bill arrived at our house this afternoon in his "Boat", a pedal boat - the S.S. Poorman! We know how he feels, I think he is in the same situation as us, with his mortgage being somewhere around the same as his income! Our two mortgages are actually more than our total income! If we could only sell our old house (Now down to almost half the original asking price.) or our English Cottage which we put on the market a couple of weeks ago, we might be able to hold things together for a while. Even if we could just rent Dock Road things would not look so dire. But as they say, these things are sent to try us! We don't think we need any more trials though!
The snowstorms of the winter certainly changed our landscape, five feet of snow will do that! We had a nice hedge between our yard and our next door neighbor, but that is flat now. I spent a good part of today picking up fallen branches and have quite a pile. We only lost a few, mostly small, trees but a lot of the bigger trees have lost a large number of their branches. Over at Dock Road, (still not rented or sold), we also lost trees and branches, as well as a hedge, and the beautiful Camellia bush was heavily damaged by the snow. The greenhouse/solarium was sagging and I had to jack up the central support, an estimated 3 to 4 tons of snow on the roof had pushed the central support pole and its footer about 3 inches into the ground! I jacked it up, dug under it and poured more concrete on top of the old footer. It seems to be working so far.
The world has another mouth to feed. At 6.30 am this morning (10.30 am in the UK) my niece had another little girl. Our second Grand Niece. Her name is Molly India and she weighed in at 7lbs 13oz. Mother and daughter are doing well and are at home already.