Pouting...

When will this rain END?!!? It has been raining off and on for about a week or two but today it has rained ALL day - not even a peek at the sun today... I don't like it.

Tomorrow is the kids soccer tournament - it had better be better weather, we are going to be out there from 8:30 until after 6!!

I will stop pouting soon, but not yet.

This spring...

We had the most amazing May... it was hot and dry and beautiful and green! I have never noticed this much green up here... and flowers and trees galore! At the kids school I walked by a tree, which I have walked by almost every single day for the past three years without noticing it, and this year the tree was spectacular. I am fairly certain it is a variety of crab apple but its flowers were red and almost resembled an azalea - and the smell!! It was really amazing.

I think that there have been more varieties of trees and flowers blooming and green showing than in the past years due to our earlier than usual thaw. I don't know when our last frost was - but I think it was near the end of April. I kept expecting one in May - every other year I have planted my garden too soon and then had snow and or frost come along and spoil my plans. This year I kept waiting and it never did frost or snow through May. So I finally planted veggies and a few flowers near the end of May... which is of course, why we got snow last week. Although thank goodness it didn't seem to frost at all and the snow was gone quickly - we are back to normal weather, although a bit rainy!

Another result of our lack of a late frost (at least I think so) are mosquitoes. Before we moved up here everyone kept talking about the bugs up here and how bad they are. I have not been bothered by bugs at all since we moved up. There are certain areas - at marshy lakes and in the woods, where there will be more mosquitoes, but not in my yard. It was no different than anywhere else I have been - until this year. I think that normally the late frost must kill off a bunch, because this year without a late frost - holy crap!! It doesn't matter what time of day or how hot it is - they were out there biting! I am hoping that the snow killed the little buggers because that was most unpleasant.

June has just begun and we have already exceeded the total precipitation that we had for all of May - and it looks like we will be having more... but May was nice while it lasted.

Switch!

Well, yesterday before the storm it was about 25 degrees... hubby received a very nasty sunburn while fishing. Today we woke up to snow!! Tomorrow is supposed to get back up to 17 degrees... I think the weather has a mood swing disorder!

Storming...

The summer storms started early this year... we started the thunder storm season last month and today had (are still having!) a good one!

As I was driving the kids home from school I noticed the wind sock on the hospital sticking straight out and blowing Northward, about 3 blocks later at an elementary school the flag there was blowing completely Southward... needless to say, the storm broke pretty much straight on top of us! With pounding rain, hail, huge gusts of rain and plenty of thunder and lightning (and apparently a few power outages!) it has been entertaining... and typical. We have been having beautiful weather in the mid-twenties and this weekend the fair is in town - so of course the weather is going to turn!

Anyway, I am enjoying the storm - although I bet my baby plants aren't!

Today...

Washed the cars in the front yard...
did gardening...
played in the hose with the kids...
played bocce ball...
inspected flying ants and carpenter ants...
had freezies outside...
got a sunburn...

... I guess spring is over and now we have summer!

Quiet Rain

It is raining today. I don't know when it last rained here, probably October. This spring we have had slush and rain mixed with snow, but this is the first time we are having rain all by itself. It is a very gentle rain, one that you don't even realize is falling until you look into a puddle or go outside. When I dropped the kids off at school Allan was asking why he had to wear his raincoat since it isn't raining, only to step out of the van and realize that it was. He thought this was fascinating and when I left I could hear him trying to explain to his friends that where we lived before "you always KNEW when it was raining before you got out of the car". Obviously he has forgotten the torrential downpours we had last summer which led to the flash flood!

I don't think this rain will last, I can already see the clouds have lifted on the horizon (it is handy living where it is flat, sometimes). It has been a nice rain though, hopefully it will wash some of the dust/dirt away that was left when the snow melted, freshen everything up a bit. Although I have been thoroughly enjoying the beautiful sunny weather we have been having, sometimes a rainy day isn't so bad.

The Meltdown

This year, spring was a little later in arriving. In each of the past years that we have lived here, we have missed the "big melt" while we have been away for spring break... this year, we got to witness it. It was actually kind of fascinating, watching the piles and mountains of snow disappear - and they weren't slow about it! These huge piles of snow have basically created a huge layer of water over almost the entire town - there have been rather large rivers running down the sides of the roads and the kids have thoroughly enjoyed the mud that is everywhere.


Every year, the Kinsmen's Club hosts an Easter egg hunt at the park beside our house. This is the first year we have been in town for it, so we were happy to join in and we met up with quite a few of the kids friends too. It was great fun; they had the kids in different age groups and all of them had to find two hard-boiled eggs with numbers on them. Kids ages 6 and under had to find pink eggs in the playground, ages 7-9 had to find blue eggs a little bit into the forest and the 10 -12 year olds had to find white eggs, deeper into the forest... all in the snow. They gave the kids about 15 minutes to find their eggs then they called them all back and they drew a grand prize winning number for three of the eggs and all the kids got a chocolate bunny. It really was well done, and fun!

Anyway, a day or two later we went back to the park to look through the forest to play and find eggs that weren't found during the easter egg hunt (we found about 10!). It was astonishing to see how much snow had disappeared in those two days and to see the creeks that had cropped up... we also found something else in the forest, she had left a lot of "chocolate eggs" in the spirit of the easter egg hunt!

We didn't notice her until we heard her "huff"... we were pretty darn close at the time!!
You can see the moose behind us, an also how much the snow melted just two days after the easter egg hunt!

Later on, during that long weekend, we decided to take the new (to us) little quad out for a test ride and we had a lot of fun there too. We were up on a flat on top of a hill, that eventually goes down to the Beaton River. I rode the quad for a bit and let each of the kids have a turn riding it (with me on the back)... Maria did great, she rode a few laps very carefully and slowly. Then Allan hopped on and pegged the gas full tilt! He was good once things were explained a bit more, but boy oh boy, the kid likes speed!

Just before I let the "speed-demon" have a turn driving!

Meanwhile, just over a little hill from where we were riding, the kids found a stream that had formed from the snow run-off. It was a pretty fast moving stream and the kids (and us too!) had great fun floating things down the creek and watching it go over the waterfall at the edge of the field.

Maria and Allan found a bunch of bones from some large animal, I am thinking it was a moose, but there wasn't a head so I can't be certain. They had been there for a while but were still fascinating! We also found some animal tracks which I am thinking were probably lynx?

I have since been told that the bones were from more than one animal... the spine you see here hubby thinks it is a deer, whereas the leg and hip bones were BIG and likely from a moose.

Now, my front yard is completely free of snow, my backyard is almost free of snow (the places where it had been piled and where the sun doesn't shine yet are still snowy), I have raked the snow-mould off my lawn and I have my first flowers blooming. I love this time of year!

I am pretty sure this is a hyacinth, but it is tiny... only about 2 or 3 inches tall