June 2009
Summer at last!

As you can see here, the first day of summer, Father's Day June 21st, was a sunny day in Richmond and a day of logging. Waita had been talking for quite some time about taking out the tree we'd planted in the front that was supposed to be a Box Elder. Reality was it was anything but, the leaves were not variegated and it didn't turn bright red in the fall, plus it would always seem to get infected every spring with some bug and time had come to put your money where your mouth is and Waita played logger, something she must have inherited from her dad.

Here she is with our neighbour's friend Marc holding up a drywall square in order to provide a pictorial record that what we took down was within the 8 inch diameter guideline laid down by the Green Police. It sure is a lot brighter and much more open in our front yard!

As you probably know by now, we have our hanging baskets done with primarily perennials this year. This one here hangs on the south post of the patio and shows itself in backlight for a good deal of the day. We're waiting for the Clematis in the center and the Ajuga to start flowering for some additional colour.

The 'darling' canines have shown a propensity for chewing from the day each of them got here. The damage they have done ranges from the front of the hide-a-bed in the family room to chewing on just about every conceivable wood surface they can find in the yard. That included a table we'd made a number of years ago out of bits of recycled fence boards. Time had come to do something about cleaning up said table so the old recycled cedar fence boards were removed, a new piece of ½ sheathing was cut and we found some inexpensive slate tiles at 'Restore' that we put on top. We purchased 6 tiles and with a bit of cutting we made them work for both top and sides. Once the slate was on we both felt the original legs were a little skinny so we re-purposed a set of legs from an old red cedar end table we'd been given as a wedding present to give the whole presentation more heft. Some grout, 3 coats of sealer and I think you'll agree it looks spiffy.