Indian Summer

7:00

7:37

8:31

I'm getting tired of saying it but it's another great morning on the lake although clouds may be arriving to block out the sun.  It was a balmy 58º this morning, 20º warmer than yesterday's 38º. I paddled for 45 minutes, over to Long Point, across to Sandy Bottom, and home without getting any good photos.  Every time I pulled my camera out, the heron flew away.

Kayak Morning

Autumn Foliage

A Spot Of Heron

Paddling Home To Woodlawn

Yesterday turned out to be a busy day although I did not plan on it.  Just as I was having my breakfast, after paddling and blogging, Austin, our handy guy, arrived, ready to work on our lake wall, filling the cracks and areas of erosion with concrete.  So I put on my dirty work clothes, my knee boots and the two of us went out there and worked until lunchtime, with a break for me to drive off to Home Depot to pick up four more bags of concrete,  One thing we were not good at was estimating how much concrete we needed because we went through those four bags by noon and knew we still had quite a bit to do over the weekend.  When Evie went to Wegman's to shop, she stopped at Home Depot and one of their guys helped her get four more bags of concrete into the car.  While Austin worked with the cement, I worked on ripping off the grass from the top of the wall so we could put a layer of cement on when we were finished with the wall.  

As I mentioned, Austin finished with the four bags just as I was done with the wall. He did a great job and it was made easier because the lake level is as low as its been in years.  He took off and I went in to have lunch which Evie had made while I was out working, a pot of Turkish wheatberry soup and toasted cheese sandwiches.  She then drove to Wegmans and Home Depot while I had my lunch and watched my show.  I finally finished my Longmire, the ending a bit of a bore because it's always the same, a long, difficult chase for the bad guy, with Walt falling, hurting his leg or ankle, but carrying on.  

I tried to nap but wanted to get one more thing done which has been bothering me, bringing in the buoys from the lake.  They are attached to cement blocks, so it takes some muscle to raise them up from the water and toss them in the Gizmo, our rowboat.  There were eight of them and it took me a half-hour because the lake was calm, making it easy to grab a buoy and hoist it up.  The ropes and cement blocks were covered with zebra mussels, the bane of our lake.  I cleaned the blocks off, threw the ropes away, and will clean up the buoys later today.  

Evie returned home just as I was finishing, so once the goodies were put away, we both went out on the dock to enjoy the sun for the first time in a week.  We stayed out there until cocktail time.  We decided it would be a good night for a Manhattan and I had found a cheese called Borgonzola, from Aldis, a combination of triple cream brie with blue cheese. It was so cheap, $3.49 for 8 ounces that I should have bought more.  It was really good, too.  At Wegman's this cheese would be at least 18 dollars a pound.

View From Our Porch at 5:37

We stayed out on the porch (it was warm enough) until dark, listening to music, enjoying the cheese, and a Manhattan.  For dinner, Evie bought a rotisserie chicken from Wegmans.  Along with the chicken, we had roasted Brussel sprouts with maple syrup, Frank's hot sauce, and Dijon mustard, our new favorite way to roast them.  We watched some of the depressing, always, news concerning the terrorists, not a militia, which we're planning to kidnap or kill the Governor of Michigan.  Where am I living?  In a banana republic. Trump, typically, said the wrong thing,  complaining that Whitmer did not 'thank him' for the FBI's thwarting the plot, an agency whose investigators  he once called 'human scum.' 

Is there anything this guy won't say?  We ended the night with another upbeat political show from Denmark, called Borgen, which showcases how a government should govern, with truth and integrity.  It's better than West Wing.