Canada Day 2022

The July Long Weekend was kind of a bust this year.  The weather was not very nice, and it remained cool and overcast the entire weekend, and into the beginning of July.  This was pretty much the same weather that we had through the latter part of June.  This is a far cry from the heat wave that we experienced at this time last year.  At that time records were being set and we hit a temperature of +40C out at Nordegg.  So far in 2022 I can't recall a day that it got any warmer than about +25C.

I headed out to Nordegg by myself on the evening of June 27th.  I hauled a load of aspen paneling, and a few other building supplies, out with me.  Margarit, Annelise and Helena joined me at the cottage on the evening of June 30th.  Hailey stayed back in the city as she had to work.  It was a pretty low key weekend and we didn't do anything really exciting.  As a result of the poor weather we mostly just hung around at the cottage... had a couple of nice meals... watched some movies... etc.  I did some work in the guest cottage and got three of the four walls finished in the bathroom.  My cousin Vic and his wife Susanne were camped nearby with some friends and they came over for a visit one afternoon.  It was really nice to see them again and I think this was the first time we connected face to face since Covid.

On Sunday the 3rd it was just cool and overcast but wasn't really raining.  So I dug out the log splitter and tackled some firewood.  We have a huge pile of logs in the yard that date back to when we cleared the lot over five years ago.  Some of it is starting to get a bit rotten and it needs to be split and dried so it can be used.  I didn't work on this pile a couple of years ago when I could have, as there was a family of woodchucks nesting in it.  But they moved on after the babies were born, and we haven't seen them since.  There is now a big chunk taken out of the log pile, and the wood pile is slowly getting replenished after I burnt it all last winter.

The July long weekend is typically the busiest weekend of the year out at Nordegg.  A lot of people came out this year, and there were vehicles at most of the cottages.  Town was also very busy as a lot of the people camping were stopping there for food and supplies and something to do in the rain.  By Saturday evening you could tell that a lot of people were beginning to pack up and go home.  By Sunday there was a steady exodus out of the area.  By Sunday evening it was dead quiet and back to the way that I like it.

I noticed that we have quite a few bunchberries on our property.  Not quite as many as I saw up at Alexo, but they certainly are all over the place.  They look really cool when there are fresh rain drops on the leaves.