Another nice day, though windy. Almost cloudless skies, though a while ago we were promised some showers.  We could use a good rain about now.

I am writing this on Doreen's computer; I am in the process of fixing mine, so of course it doesn’t work at all now. Luckily, thanks to networking, I can drag files over from mine. Maybe tomorrow, with a fresh mind, I will go after it again.

We went to Tisdale on Wednesday, then Melfort and Saskatoon on Friday, coming home Saturday evening. We didn’t see a lot of farming activity going on; one combine working (and kicking up an awful dust!), two or three seeding outfits, and some harrowing. Cec Ewen tells me his sons are just about finished seeding, so maybe it’s getting close to finished. Okay, I’ll go along with holding off on the rain until seeding is all done, but then we want lots of rain!

On Thursday night, Dave Steiestol was hard at work with a Bobcat down at the Marina, and Elwood was hauling clay away. This morning, it looks as if they are ready to pour a cement pad. They are getting ready to move a new Tackle Box in. Rumor has it that Kelly bought Connie Schmidt’s tea room; it is a very nice log building that will look great down by the Marina.

There were thirteen geese on the beach, and they seem very tame. This morning, I rode my bike around the peninsula and came within ten feet of one. It kept its eye on me, but didn’t look too alarmed. The way it was sitting, I wondered if it was on a nest, but I didn’t go back to check.

The beach is looking better; the gullies cut by runoff have been filled with fresh sand, and the piles of seaweed along the waterline are gone. Jim tells me the ice pushed the seaweed onto shore and mixed it with sand, making it impossible to fork. They pushed it out into the lake with a tractor; the sand then fell to the bottom and the weeds drifted away.

It was the same at our dock, but I didn’t have the equipment to push it out. I managed to scrape away enough to get to our dock; the seaweed was quite rotten and pretty well disintegrated.

Being home alone the other day, I decided to go out in the boat, throw out an anchor, and read for a while. Once I got out a way, though, there were whitecaps, and the wind made it too cool for reading. So, back to the dock and the boat sits idle again.

We are missing the best part of the day for boating - early morning. Doreen gets up and does yard work, and I sleep in and then make breakfast. Once she gets this gardening out of her system, we’ll get out more. Maybe we will even buy fishing licenses. I hear talk about some pickerel and jack being caught, though no great quantities.

We have a wren house outside our bathroom window, made for us by grandson Danny some years ago. There has been a wren visiting it, but that is no sign they will live in it. Doreen tells me the male readies several potential nests, then the female picks out the one she likes best (or finds another male that does a better job of nest-building). Anyway, I looked out yesterday morning and there was a cliff swallow at the entrance; it would reach away in, then withdraw, then reach in again. I don’t know if it was trying to dislodge a wren, picking nits, or what it was doing. Pretty soon, along came a wren; it lit in a nearby branch and puffed up in its aggressive pose, with wings held out to make it look bigger. It didn’t attack, just kept moving closer, The window was closed so I couldn’t hear it, but suspect it was making lots of noise. The swallow kept a close eye on it, and next time I looked it was gone. We haven’t seen the wren since, either.