May 29^th, 2005:

Not too bad a day; overcast, light winds and occasional glimpses of blue sky, and the deck is dry for a change. It’s been day after day of cold, windy, wet weather. No heavy rains, but some days it just didn’t quit drizzling. Most mornings the rain gauge showed anywhere from 1/10^th to 3/10^ths of an inch bringing us up to over two inches since May 17^th. Prior to that, we must have been one of the dryer areas. Now if we could just get some nice, dry, warm weather so seeding can be finished in decent time, and so we can get out and weed our planters before the dandelions declare victory!

I don’t believe I could even bend over to grab a dandelion - we just walked home from a fantastic smorg supper and, as usual, overdid it!

The long weekend was certainly a commercial success - Sheryl tells us they exceeded their fondest hopes at The Cove - but was curtailed by cool, rainy weather Monday morning. There was some sunshine later in the day but by then a lot of vacationers had left for home. Not all - in mid-afternoon Monday there were four kids splashing around at the beach.

The Cove experimented with a live band, and had a standing-room-only crowd Saturday and a good crowd Sunday. Everyone in the Park ran out of quarters, loonies and toonies Sunday and I hear eggs were in short supply. A good start for the summer season.

Connie said she had a wonderful weekend at the Beach Café; their Sunday smorg was a huge success. Rose at the Park Store also said it was busy, though the Victoria Day weekend is not normally a big one for her.

Further on that strange fox – it looks like a red fox on the front and a coyote on the back. Elton Soll says it is a cross between a red fox and a silver fox and would likely be referred to as a cross fox. He says if you look down on it from above, there is a perfect cross on its back.

Pretty well all the birds are back, though we don’t see many of them. At least the orioles and goldfinches are regular visitors. Doreen puts orange halves on the deck railing, and the orioles like them. We have noticed rose-breasted grosbeaks pecking at them, too. We occasionally see different types of sparrows, but they don’t hang around long. Mostly we get pine siskins by the hundreds - the ground is crawling with them under the niger seed feeder. I don’t think we spend enough time looking out our windows. We haven’t seen or heard any white-throated sparrows yet. Surely they should be showing up soon.

There seem to be a lot of rabbits around this year. They come and go, but I can’t see any regular cycles like they are supposed to follow. I suppose one of these days a lynx family will pass through and thin them out again. Or maybe that cross fox will move in closer to the Park.

Sandy and Blaine are spending the weekend with us and brought their three little fuzz-balls: Mojo (tiny but thinks he’s a German shepherd), Tia (cute and cuddly, but tends to be noisy) and Ginger (she’s the independent one). They are not even ten weeks old so we spend quite a bit of time following them around with a piece of paper towel. They don’t like to be out of sight of people and can be yappy if left outside in a pen; otherwise they are pretty quiet. Rough-and-tumble is their main pastime, and they spend a lot of time at it. They should grow up knowing how to fight.