Warm November weekend

This past weekend was especially warm for November (went up to 75F) and particularly notable for the return of the water in our lake. The remnants of tropical storm Ida dumped about 4-8 inches of water over a two-day period, resulting in about a foot of water topping off the lake at 660 ft, its "full pond" level! We haven't had the lake at full pond for what, 3 years now? Last year it was about 15 feet below, precluding us from ever launching our powerboat the entire year. This year we had the boat out but almost had to pull it out due to decreasing lake levels. Luckily we had a fairly wet early fall which allowed us to keep the boat in till just past Halloween. Now, with Ida's contribution, our dock is floating (yes, floating!) on a foot of water, for the first time in a long time. The water has actually submerged the beaver dam behind the house allowing me to canoe out to the lake (Corey missed out, attending the SuperComputing conference).

I'm home alone this week but luckily I was only given one gardening-related task, and that is watering the whatever-those-leafy-plants are underneath the deck. I also took a pic of the grass germination, thinking that Corey might like to see that. I also took the leafblower out and cleared the deck as it was starting to accumulate. I did a couple of other things around the house, but mainly I've been focusing on the meal plan and figuring out what to cook and how to do it. That and of course taking the cats out for walks in the forest. Below is a pic of Sidney finding something that must have been particularly odiferous. She rolled around in it for quite some time. I think Harley later found it as well. Lucky for me the scent was detectable only by the feline proboscis and not mine. Mine's a little stuffed up by a cold. Luckily it must be a low-grade variant because it's not too debilitating, only just slightly annoying.