Deer Fly Season

(Editor's note: After a couple of weeks of computer problems, I'm back up again. Sorry about that.)

There's been no rain for a couple of weeks. The heat is beginning to melt away the

lakes, and the rivers and streams are lying low, black puddles of stillness waiting for the regenerating downpour coming this weekend, according to the forecasts. In the garden, it's beginning to look like late summer, potatoes withering under an early blight, the fault of escapees from last year's crop spreading it. Raspberries have been a bumper crop, and peas have come and mostly gone. It's deer fly season. Tomatoes and corn coming on strong. Garlic is good; apparently Jink agrees.

We went camping up to Lake Umbagog for a few days. It was windy and cold. On the last morning, on the paddle back to the state park where the car was parked, we were visited by a pair of bald eagles, who swooped overhead, checking us out.

My summer building project. I've sold it as a mud room/walk out basement utility room, but really it's going to be the boat building shed. On the right is the sheep barn. Above is the kitchen. The underside of the kitchen floor is slab polystyrene insulation, last year's weatherization thing. You can just make it out. The bottom of the last post, (there were three others) was cut out and it sprang true after probably decades of misalignment. There was never any foundation, and the bottom sill resting on some rocks on the ground got pushed in by runoff, snow melt and fill material coming off the stone retaining wall which I am excited about digging out.