Otherwise known as the summer thread.

Here's where you can write about summer plans that may have been cancelled and stuff like that.

My plan was for a spring trip to England so that's past already. We usually go every two years, "we" being me from Ontario, my daughter from Vancouver and her umpteen children, my ex-wife from Switzerland and another daughter who works in exotic places, most recently Afghanistan. My Mother was disappointed that we didn't all turn up on the doorstep as usual and seems quite unable to grasp that, if the lock down ends, we can't just reschedule for the week after.

We had no plans to begin with for summer, so luckily nothing needed to be cancelled or delayed.

My spring/summer plan was to put all of the contents of my vast and bulky wardrobe in the storage boxes under my bed, and bring out the pathetic little things for summer and hang them up. I might have had a couple of days between? But NO we seem to be going full bore into summer and one day this week it's going to 'feel' like 29....not to worry October and snow will soon be here!

Yesterday I nearly expired at work...the heating system hadn't caught on to the change and it was attempting to make us all as cosy as possible.

I need a new Chimney liner and what with the fact that they can't do it when there's snow, and the C19, and I need the roof to be replaced - the few weeks of Not Winter are going to be pretty well action packed...

This is a blessing of the pandemic I hadn't considered. Office heating and cooling systems take a week or so to adjust to changed temperatures outside so it's usual, upon the change of season, to have a week of freezing in the office or gagging from the heat. In the corporate atmosphere with which one suffers it's deemed inappropriate to wear a coat, or nothing, or to say "**** me, I'm freezing (or boiling)" and so one attends in clothing matched to the outside temperature pretending not to have chattering teeth or a problem containing one's dripping sweat.

It's a revelation, this forced working from home, so much time is wasted going to an office where the facilities are worse than they are here. The firm has a website on which people post constantly how much they miss the office; they need a good slap.

We were going to France to introduce youngest son to my childhood haunts and school friends. So instead we used the money and bought a boat. Not a huge brand new boat, but it floats and has a fridge for the wine and beers. If you need me I’ll be somewhere in the middle of Lake Ontario...TTFN

We have one week booked in Costa del Kamloops mid July. I heard the weather gets pretty hot there so I'm looking forward to it,

Here we go in NB leading the way again!!! We have a special heat and humidity statement in effect for the next 3 days We do everything better, and before everyone else, don’t we ? This is a good thing ?

It's 29C with thunderstorms here. We've gone straight to August.

It hit 20C here yesteday for the second time this year. In the last week we've struggled to hit double digits. Looks like it'll be warm for the next week enabling us to slip seamlessly from "When will spring arrive" to "Bloody blackfly! season".

I've bee out raking the thatch out of the lawn. We have lots of dead patches but its greening up. Unlike most of our neighbours we don't pay for the "nutrilawn" outsourced lawn care service so they have nice green lawns and we don't. It's almost as much a source of neighbourly pride as having a shiny black asphalt driveway sealed with tar every year. Again, not something we do.

Last year one of my neighbours observed that the gradual but persistent decline of our ‘lawn’ into mostly moss meant it was nice and green but didn’t need mowing. I am going to assume they were being genuine.

An old school horticulturist that we used to talk to at a garden centre referred to the "40 k/h" lawn i.e. it looks good when you drive past at 40km/h (or 25 mph if you are dbd33). That's what we're aiming for. Moss and clover are a part of that strategy!

If only there were no dandelions to ruin that idea.

Supposed to be between 18-20 all week, a mix of sun and clouds with a couple days of rain foretasted.

There is no point in trying to compete with the neighbours here over plant growth. It's what they do. They each have 100 acres or more and they have those exciting looking irrigation machines with light aircraft fuselages.