First Days of Summer

June and Mercury Retrograde were Brutal. Capital B-rutal! Car insurance snafu that took almost a month to straighten out.  Three trips to the DMV in Quincy and a mountain of paperwork to wade through just to get the truck re-registered.  Computer problems.....still not sure if it's my laptop's WiFi card or glitches with the Comcast wireless.  Either way, it's driving me insane.  The parking spot in town we've rented for almost 2 years has been blocked off by the lot owner, despite him being the one to tell us we had to pay to park there (his actions have targeted every business owner on that part of the street, as well as several Mass Maritime students, and we are not the only ones super pissed off).  Sagan was first limping for almost two weeks, then he got really sick with diareah and vomiting, which fortunately only lasted a day or two. I wish I could say the same thing about the residuals smells left behind on the carpet, even though I've cleaned them several times. And then we closed out the month with a flat tire on my car that was unable to be fixed, necessitating the purchase of two new front tires.  So much for chanting 'rabbit rabbit rabbit' on June 1st!  At least we come through these shitstorms stronger....some of them could really tear a couple apart, but not with us.

Still, we had really great weather with only a couple of humid days, which made for great walking.  I was on the Canal one morning and the train bridge went down.  This was the first time I saw the Coast Guard (on the right) stop a boat and make them turn around and hold, against the current, until the bridge went back up again.

Almost turned around.  This is done for safety purposes, even though the boat was still pretty far from the bridge, but the current was flowing towards the bridge very quickly. 

Took me three years to see the train on the bridge and now I've seen it three times since May!

The summer flowers continue to bloom and amaze me.  I think the key to gorgeous flowers might just be a winter full of snow and polar vortexes.  I've been told that this is clematis.

Such a pretty shade of purple!

Photobombed by a bee.

I love the pattern of the yellow center.

Why did the......oh nevermind.

Nice sunset clouds too.

July 1st started with high humidity and temps, and the first tropical storm/hurricane threat of the season, with 'Arthur' making a serious attempt at battering the eastern seaboard with high winds and rain.  Just in time for July 4th.  How humid was it you ask?  Humid enough to cause this to happen in the Canal, something I've never seen outside of San Francisco.  The fog bank formed just inside the train bridge and stretched as far as I could see.  The cold water hit that hot, humid air and made low lying fog. 

July 4th was just too rainy and humid to go downtown for the parade.  We hung out at home, watched TV, played online, and then I decided to try a recipe for homemade vanilla cupcakes, which I had to make red, white & blue.  I'll NEVER go back to using a mix again.  These are light, not super sweet or greasy.  

Decided to use Cool Whip to frost them because that's not overly sweet, topped with colour sugar and strawberry slices.  I halved the recipe and it made 8.

Soooooo good!

To add insult to injury to poor Sagan, who had a really rough June, I took him out the night of the 4th in the middle of the storm and I thought he slipped off the step to the ground....it happened so fast, I whipped around to see if he was OK to see a fluffy white tail disappear under the deck with Sagan's whole face in it.  In the time it took me to yell NO! and pull his lead, the skunk had unloaded a full dose of stinky spray in his face.  So if you happened by my house at about 10:30 that night you would have seen me & Russell in the pouring rain and wind, scrubbing poor Sagie and hosing him off.  Luckily we'd acted fast enough to get it all off him and no smell remained, but he was more than happy to head into his crate for a snooze!

Canal Sagamore Bridge to Scusset

I finally got around to walking the section of Canal between the Sagamore Bridge and Scusset Beach.  It's about 2.5 miles one way, 5 round trip.  

I took this from a small pier that was over the water where people were fishing.

Fantastic iridescent clouds

Cool clouds in general!

 Just about across from the Sandwich Marina.

Another iridescent cloud

 Biplane

Sandwich Marina

Back of Joe's Fish Market on the water and the Sandwich Coast Guard Station in the background.

 Considering this is a no wake zone, you still see plenty of wakes.

Eastern entrance and the Scusset Beach jetty on the left.

The power plant, a blight on the landscape since the mid 60s.  All these years I thought it was a hydroelectric plant but it runs on oil.

Canal Cruise.

The Bouchard, one of the Canal's frequent flyers

 I see this barge a lot too but I forgot to get the name.  It's Steven something.

The Sagamore Bridge is supposed to be painted soon.  They've been prepping it for almost 2 years and they stop in summer because of the traffic.  It's a 4 lane bridge but they put it to 2 lanes for work and traffic backs up for miles and miles.

Miscellaneous Projects

A few months ago I found a pair of old earrings in a junk shop for $2.  The peacock blue crystals are so pretty.  I took the earrings off the backs and made a beaded hairpiece out of one of them.  This is the first time I've ever made this particular style.  Usually I do either round or oval shape. I was pleased with how it came out.

Rainbow beads in a mini bottle.  I had to use a head pin to make them stack evenly, and put the head pin into the cork bottom.

Another rock with a paint dot tree. 

And a triple moon rock.

Fall tree

And a heart.  I also made a paisley but it didn't come out that good.

I found the pattern online somewhere and it made me laugh so I made it into a card to send to Axe.  

And speaking of cards, my bff Marsha's birthday was this month so I did a beach themed card using an old fashioned linen postcard reproduction with a poem about walking by the seashore.  I added shells, beach glass and some pearl beads to it.

Inside of card.

Finally, this was another pattern from the internet so I did it into a book mark.  I changed the black R and diamonds to the house colour of copper.  Then I stitched it to some stiff felt so that it keeps the shape and hides the stitches.