Anna's time in Nordegg

In the days after the long weekend, Anna spent some time at the cottage with her friend Raquel.  They spent a lot of time together through the week.  Part of the time they hung out with Arlette, the little six year old that lives next door.  They were pretty good about being patient with a little girl that was so much younger than them.  

I took them up to Fish Lake one day to go swimming.  We also went on ATV rides around the area.  One day they baked a cake together.  In the evenings they often played board games, sometimes including little Arlette, while I prepared the evening meals.  I made them my Beef Stroganoff, as well as a pasta dish, and some BBQ chicken.  By mid-week Margarit came out to join us and she also took the girls up to the lake.

I worked on Anna's bunk bed a little.  The only things left to do were to lacquer some of the panels, and to fit the folding desk.  Anna is bothered by the lacquer fumes so I looked after this for her.  We will bring the parts of the bed home to the city over the next couple of trips.  Then we will buy a mattress for it, and set it up in her room.

We got a little rain late in the day on holiday Monday and into Tuesday.  It ended up being around one quarter inch, which was great.  It really kept the dust down and freshened up the trees a little.  Hopefully we get more in the days to come.

There are dozens of little birds hanging around our property.  These are Pine Siskins and they love the bird seed that I have been putting out in our feeders.  They are becoming very tame and you can approach them easily, particularly when they are foraging on the ground for spilled seeds.  Anna even got them to eat out of her hand.  We have run out of seed now and will have to pick up more when we come back out.  Unfortunately these little guys are known to fly into windows and break their necks.  I found a few dead ones on the ground around our cottage, but you wouldn't notice based on the numbers that are still visiting the feeders.  

I had a part bag of mixed nuts that I was feeding to the Whiskeyjacks last winter.  Whiskeyjacks mate for life and there was an adult pair with a yearling that would eat out of our hands last winter.  But I haven't seen them around all summer.  However, when we put the mixed nuts out in the feeder, they suddenly re-appeared.  It looks like there is a younger one with them, so perhaps this year's baby.  The yearling from last season probably struck off on his or her own.