One more time!

I wanted to post a couple more pictures of our flowers and garden but have been having trouble, so I guess I will just keep trying until it works.

Our clematis, which we think is more than 20 years old, keeps growing and blooming profusely. This year it climbed up to the eaves of the house and was covered in blossoms. We decided to add another plant beside it to add some contrasting flowers.

The snapdragons and petunias were all volunteers again this year, I just had to move them around to suit my fancy. In the front corner of the flowerbed I decided to just leave them and this is what it looks like. There is no lack of color there.

Our garden, (third picture) is looking really good this year and we have already enjoyed a lot of the "fruits" of it.

The last picture, shows some of our tomato plants that we have in the flower bed close to the house. There are a lot of tomatoes on them, but they need to start ripening. I am anticipating lots of toasted tomato sandwiches.

Flowers

It's mid July and the flowers around our house are in full bloom and providing lots of color and enjoyment. Here are a few pictures so that you can enjoy them too!

More weekend pictures

It was a gorgeous July weekend and so we were able to show our friends how good a Manitoba summer can be, except for the mosquitos of course. We enjoyed being in and on the water as well as just sitting on the beach in the shade and visiting.

Entertaining friends

We had the privilege in early July to host JohnDavid and Louise and sons Andrew, James and Aaron, friends from PA. We met them 2 years ago on our MDS trip and have visited them in their home and have kept in touch and so it was fun to be able to host them here and show them some of Manitoba. We picked them up in Wpg the day after they flew in and brought them out to Rosenort. The two oldest boys were very eager to have a ride on the big tractor, and it was okay that it was blue. We took them to a BBQ in their honor at Bert and Elma's, to which we had invited all the people who had worked with them on MDS too. The next day we all headed out to the cottage and enjoyed a relaxing weekend there with them, Ron and Eleanor, Bert and Elma, Erik,Amber and girls and Kristy and Graham. The weather was great and we enjoyed time in and on the water and visiting, eating and deepening our friendships. After the weekend they spent another night in rosenort at Bert and Elma's and then we got to see them again for lunch at the Cafe before they headed in to Wpg again, this time to spend the night with Ron and Eleanor before flying back home early Tuesday morning. It was a busy time but we enjoyed having them here and entertaining them as well as spending time with local friends.

Jayda's smile

How can anyone resist smiling back ! I think that one of these days she will surprise us and just laugh out loud.

Grand-daughters are beautiful!

Here is our little princess in yet another princess dress that I got to sew for her. This one she wore as a flower-girl in her Uncle Ty and Auntie Steffie's wedding. This wedding was in BC and she got to go on an airplane. She loves these fluffy dresses.















Look Grammy Jo! Look what Kissy brought me! She also likes casual clothes and was quite excited about the dress that Auntie Kristy brought her.















And then there's Jayda. She is at a very cute stage and just right for holding and cuddling and Grammy Jo loves to do that. She still sleeps a good amount but also has her awake times where she will willingly smile for you. She is very responsive and seems like she even tries to talk back with coos when you talk to her.

Clean-up

Kerry and Lon and Peter worked hard and by the end of the day the yard looked like this. they made a couple of fires on the beach and burned a lot of debris and came home pretty tired. There was still more clean-up to be done though and on the July long weekend the work continued thanks to Larry and Sylvia, Jay and Andrea and Graham and Kristy who spent a number of their holiday hours cleaning up. Even this weekend we spent some more time taking down another leaning tree and cleaning up and burning more branches. The yard is starting to look more like normal now.

More storm pictures

A day or two after the storm, Kerry took Lon and Peter with him and headed up to the cottage to do some clean-up. They were met with a big job but thanks to good chain saws and lots of persistance, they made good progress in the couple of hours they were there.

Storm damage at the cottage

On June 23 the Whiteshell was hit with a vicious wind storm and Betula Lake, White Lake and Big Whiteshell were the hardest hit. There were a llot of uprooted and broken trees, and in some ways it reminded us of hurricane damage we have seen down south. At our cottage on Betula there were a lot of branches strewn across the yard and some downed trees. The cottage and boat house escaped damage, except for the mast where the hydro comes into the cottage. That was broken and needed fixing before hydro could be restored.