Summer Extension

Hi, everyone!

It’s raining today, but we’ve had a long stretch of warm, dry weather! The nights have started to get a little colder, but the days still feel like summer!

At Sodus Point, the sun is now setting over land, instead of water. There’s been wildfire smoke in the air, so we’ve had hazy sunsets. One night, there were sailboats headed out, but it was so calm they were barely moving!

In town, my big adventure was having the carpet cleaners come! I helped Grandma and Grandpa move all the chairs and small tables off the carpets that were going to be cleaned. That gave us lots of space for the carpet cleaners to work! All the other rooms got really crowded!

The carpet cleaners brought a very long hose that stretched all the way through the house! It connected to a pump on their truck outside! They started at the far end of the house and worked their way backward, pulling back the hose as they went. We couldn’t put the furniture back until the next day, when the carpet was completely dry.

We had a partial lunar eclipse of the harvest moon. My groundhog friend is back! Something came back and nibbled all the impatiens again! Grandma says it’s probably deer, because my groundhog friend is too plump to climb into the window box! Grandpa started a plumbing project by making a hole in the bedroom wall behind the master bathroom shower. He’s going to replace the control valve with one that keeps the water temperature constant.

Last weekend, we went out to the bay Thursday night so Grandma could kayak on Friday. There were a lot of birds around Newark Island! Grandma counted 37 mute swans near the southeast corner. Right at the north point, there was a great blue heron sitting on a rock. At the southeast corner, the cormorants have taken over a grove of trees. The water is low enough that the turtles can sun themselves on the remains of a dock pier.

Uncle Steven and Thomas came out Friday night to stay over. When we start to see apple bins sitting in the orchards, we know it’s time to go apple picking, ourselves! Saturday morning Grandma and Uncle Steven and I took Thomas to Burnap’s Farm market. On our way to the apple trees, Thomas took a detour through the corn maze. He ran all the way through!

Aunt Kara told us what kinds of apples she wanted, so we started with the Honey Crisps. Then Thomas picked some Snapdragons. I think we got some mystery apples, too!

When our bag was full, I stopped to make friends with some sunflowers. Picking is hot work, so Thomas needed a cold drink! There was a special sale price on pumpkins, so Thomas picked his for Halloween.

Before we left, Thomas and I made friends with the chickens and goats.

There was a sale on butternut squash, too, so we came home with squash and a pumpkin as well as our apples! Thomas and I tried a Snapdragon apple as a snack. It was yummy!

Grandpa is working on a project at the bay, too! He is putting framing under the boathouse eaves so he can hang soffit to enclose them. He had to cut up a sheet of siding to make backing for the soffitt supports. Grandma held boards in place so he could fasten them! That gave me a chance to look at the water level in the bay. It’s getting very low!

One of our maple trees at the bay had a poison oak vine climbing up it. When Grandma killed the poison oak vine, the tree started getting mushrooms all over! Do you suppose the poison oak was keeping the mushrooms away?

Love,

Lion-san