h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

We can have days to weeks at a time of it. So when you've a cooling trend expected, let us know, ... rev-up the "-Jet", ... and have the Sangria chilling.

A nasty bit usually lasts only a few days, a week max.. then a couple days of slightly cooler temperatures and lower humidity.. just long enough to catch a breather before the next few days of mosquito soup..

I'm not at all familiar with your region, and generally horrid with geography anyway. Are you near any large bodies of water? We've a medium sized bay, that really pumps the moisture into the air when the sun gets serious about it's job.

The Carolinas are supposed to have one of the best climates in the state.. Charlotte is equidistant from the Blue Ridge mountains and the ocean, so it gets a bit of each weather pattern. There are a few lakes in the area, and of course rivers and streams, so there is humidity, but it's generally not too bad... though further South it probably is..

If you wanna know lakes and rivers, visit ANY part of Manitoba. You can't go 30 miles in any direction without finding water.

We're a small hop (measured in hundreds of yards) from Lake Ontario, the 2nd smallest of the five "Great Lakes". When the sun starts percolating it, ... that's a LOT of gallons becoming air-borne.

Any-who, ... how's your day been getting along? I'm 2-ticks away from the garlic and pointed-stake treatment for another archaic radio thingie.

Not much going on.. met with the gardeners to discuss having beds tilled and such.. still waiting for the stone to come in for the counters.. etc etc

You're going to be well in to the summer before stuff is generally in the shape you want. What-ever notions or projects we devise, we try our best to have them implemented before July. So that what-ever time we do have can be better spent relaxing ... After the preceding 10 months or so of constantly doing something, somewhere, for someone ...

We're mostly having new beds cut and tilled and then a few landscaping plantings.. nothing major..

The first 5 years we had the house, each spring I'd cut in another bed or idea somewhere. This year, neither of us could think of anything new that we wanted. A couple of shrubs and a few more perennials went in this past week-end, but that's about it.

Besides this continually growing hay-field that I have to tame after work again.

It'll take another couple of weeks for all the annual flowers we planted to start to flourish. But once we've some proper colour going, I'll get some pics for you and a couple other folks. To feed out the MSN wires ...

I try not to plant annuals all that much.. of course I'm lazy so that might have something to do with it..

With us, some of it is cost for the sheer number of perrenials we'd need, and the rest of it is still an experiment as to what breeds will survive which exposures we have. And weather, and soil, and negligence ...

We're thinking lots of daylilies... here they are nicknamed ditchlilies because they grow in every ditch by a road... they're pretty and they take care of themselves for the most part.. then of course other things as well..

Hmmmm, there's an idea that eluded me. Lupins ... They are considered the "provincial flower" of Nova Scotia as they grow wild in every part of the province. Our general climate in this part of Ontario isn't too dissimilar. They're predominantly in a rich blue, about 2 feet tall, but there are also white and pinkish ones ...

That sounds lovely! We're doing the same with the daylilies.. they grow in a variety of colors as well..

It's always best to do indigenous plantings anyway... they become minimal effort to maintain and attract many of the local birds and wildlife. and occasionally the errant chicken..

Mentioning wild-life, and not necessarily of the wicked-beaked-variety, ... I had a visitor to my front lawn this morning. Around 5 am, I noticed our boy- frozen. Not a twitch to the tail, nor a sound. Looking out I saw the largest racoon I have ever seen. And except for the mask, 100% silver grey. A lovely looking critter, just sniffing about the base of one of our maples. All too soon, he got mored and quite rapidly scooted across the road and off to the back-corners of town.

Maybe he sniffed residue of some of our nocturnal visitors, ... perhaps the third generation of skunks since we bought this house.

Well, well, well. The infamous profanity filter just bit me. When naming the visitor, I used the term I've always used, an apostrophe and the last four letters. I should have known better.

skunks? I think I'll stick with the occasional chicken..

The racoon was a surprise. There are quite a number in the far eastern part of the town, bordered by a respectable stand of trees. But to come as far across town as he/she did, ... Perhaps the dinner options are thinning 'over there'.

As to the skunks, it's a very rare day that I smell any of them. The only spoor they leave are the occassional grub-seeking nose hole in the lawns ...