The deck progresseth!

This morning dawned breathtakingly beautiful over the Lake. As it is on many mornings the water was like a mirror, not just smooth, but like silver, well not silver, pink, no not pink, blue, or was it white, or black or . . it's hard to tell. Lets just leave it at breathtaking. It was 5.58 am and as I stood there spellbound, still in my PJ's, a Great Blue Heron flapped lazily in and landed gracefully - well sort of gracefully, for a Great Blue Heron - on our pier. Not a minute later another landed next to the pier in the water, the first one saw him coming and turned his head sharply to watch, then he turned back to watching the water - for breakfast? The second Heron who had landed in the water, walked calmly under the pier (Heron number 1 had his back to Heron number 2 and so could not see him.)Suddenly I saw Heron number one lean way over the edge of the pier and dip his head way down so that he could look under the pier, he had heard the second Heron walking through the water. After a little confusing back and forth they both took off into the sunrise - if that wasn't something to see I don't know what is.
Those Herons are amazing, I'm not sure if they are graceful or awkward or what, sometimes they look as gracefull as a ballet dancer and then they look as gracefull as a new born colt - all legs, going every which way.
The header here says the deck progresseth and it does, the contractor - our friend Larry - arrived and started work. Once again his helper did not show and soon there was much phoneing going on. Later I found out that his helper was no longer his helper! Larry told him no workee, no payee. So Larry is now doing the deck himself.
Back to the more pleasant subject of Great Blue Herons and The Lake. Later on that morning as I sipped my coffee and read the paper, I saw a sudden movement out of the window, by the Lake. Looking out I saw a Heron running along the top of the bulkhead, which is about 8 or 10 inches wide, his wings were half out - for balance? - and his long legs looked like they were caught in an egg wisk. But what really caught my attention was my immediate impression that a small dinosaur was running along the top of my bulkhead! At first glance it looked exactly like one of the Raptors in Jurrasic Park. Soon it reached the end of the bulkhead, jumped down into the water and continued running, in the water, until it reached my neighbors house where it ran up onto the lawn and stopped. Then it just stood there completely still. Finally I got tired of watching and went back to my paper, when I looked up a few minutes later it had gone.
In the afternoon the stump grinder man arrived with his $54,000 machine - that surprised me too, until I got the bill for the stump grinding! He removed 5 stumps that I was afraid would put my mower out of action if I missed seeing one of them in the long grass. They had been cut off to only 3 or 4 inches high, which seems real nice at first, until you start mowing and can't see them. Last year I had hit one and it did the mower no good at all! In fact I need to get new blades, it bent them, I straightened them out somewhat but not completely. So it wobbles and shakes. A sixth stump, the biggest one, had been cut off to about about 18 inches high. I built my firepit around it and after burning several fires the stump has completely gone. I considered burning the other away in the same fashion but didn't want to have 5 more dead areas of lawn 8 feet in diameter dotted about over the lawn.