Wind

The tall pines bow in obeisance to the force of the wind. Other weaker specimens simply lift from the ground, roots and all, or snap under the strain. The roar of air passing through branches at 80 kilometres per hour competes with the sounds of the cracking and crashing of trees and branches. Being in the woods is dangerous.

On the lake, usually placid, white caps froth and churn, racing the wind to the distant shore. Boaters stay off the water until the storm passes.

The flame blown out, the hamburgers are still raw on the barbecue.

Tomorrow the cleanup begins.

An ill wind…

As I look out at the lake today I’m reminded of the old adage, “’Tis an ill wind that blows nobody any good”.

We are now into what is arguably the worst weather season – that depressing thaw, freeze, thaw cycle that we go through every year as Spring begins to flex her muscles before bursting on the scene, fully formed, some time in April.

Today is no exception as rain pours from leaden skies to erase much of the snow in the woods and turn the  hard-packed roads to sheets of ice. Puddles of water gather around the door sills and on the driveway. It’s damp and it’s dreary – the kind of day where the best medicine is a good book and a roaring fire.

But the rain has also flooded the lake, melting the snow on top of the ice to create another puddle, this time one that’s about 300 acres in size. And with temperatures forecast to drop to –18 tonight and expected to stay cold for the next few days, we’ll have some of the best skating in the country. All free, and right at the back door.

It’s going to be great!

Everyone complains about the weather....

One of the defining characteristics of being Canadian, they say, is that we like to complain about the weather. Well there’s certainly good cause to do so this summer (?), especially in Eastern Ontario.

The only thing that got us sanely through a miserable winter with near-record snowfalls was the weather forecasters promising us a “long, hot summer”, starting in April. Well, to be fair, we did have a week of summer-like weather in April, but since then it’s been in the crapper. May was just miserable and cold. June, with 22 days of rain, has been dubbed Junuary by some. July, which is when we expect to be basking under hot, sunny skies, has been mostly below normal highs, grey, and with at least a 40% chance of precipitation virtually every day. And there’s no end in sight as rain and cool temperatures are forecast to the end of the month.

Enough is enough! Golfers are wearing out their umbrellas from the constant opening and closing as shower after shower passes through. Motorcyclists have stripped every last piece of raingear off the shelves at the local dealers. Vegetable gardens, if they are growing at all, are weeks behind where they should be. Mosquitoes, deer flys and other damp-loving insects are out (and biting) in record numbers. My furnace actually started up one morning. In July! @#%&#@

Now the weather guys are insisting that, in fact, they were right all along and that the summer so far has been warmer than usual. The justification for that stunning assessment is that it isn’t getting as cold at night because of all the cloud cover, so the average temperatures were slightly up over previous years.

Well, I don’t know about you, but when someone tells me it’s going to be warmer than usual, I don’t expect to have to enjoy that excess heat swatting mosquitoes in the dark!

Who'll stop the rain?

This is getting depressing. We've had nothing but rain it seems since mid-April. Now it's been 10 days since I got my new ride - and it's rained every day but 1! I'm sick of cleaning and polishing, I want to put some miles on! I want to scrub the nubbies of the new tires! I want to go to Pakenham for an ice cream! I want to ride!