If you've been reading my blog you'll realize we have a small lake in our front yard. Many, many years of drought has caused the water level on this lake and its attached beaver pond to slowly recede. After eating themselves out of house and home our resident beavers moved upstream to more plentiful "pastures", so dam maintenance ceased to be done allowing the lake to drain even more. Our 55' deep bored well (as opposed to the deep wells many folks around here have), which is probably fed underground from the lake, has also been affected by drought; we've had to control our use to some extent these past few years.
Our lake provides a fabulous habitat for water foul and an endless source of beauty for us to lay our eyes on every day. It is part of a large water-shed that meanders its way through the Boreal forest in a series of small lakes, creeks and beaver ponds. We have depended on our lake ever since our arrival here in 1974. We have bathed in it, drunk its water, watered our livestock, irrigated our garden, and, in winter skied, walked and ice skated on it. In every way our lake is a blessing. But this blessing has a down side, one we had nearly forgotten about in these dry years.
When I first arrived here with my 6 week old baby I was afraid to get out of the truck. There were so many mosquitoes I thought they'd eat us alive! Over the years we managed to control the population somewhat by clearing out the trees around our house and barnyard and by keeping the grass cut. With the aid of our drying climate, the nasty little blood suckers eventually thinned out to a tolerable level. I had almost forgotten how bad they could be - until now.
In early spring it snowed and rained and snowed some more. We've been oo-ing and ahh-ing about the rising lake level for a month or so. It's now nearly as high as it was when we first came here and at least one beaver has moved back in. Rather than going out 20' to find water deep enough to feed our water pump, this year it's located just over the bank. We watered the garden twice, trying to encourage germination. Then, just like days gone by, the June rains arrived. Now it seems to rain some every day. And the mosquitoes, my god are they ever plentiful! I have these sticky fly catchers strips on lots of my windows. I'm not catching flies, I'm catching mosquitoes! They buzzz, buzzz and dive bomb while we try to sleep, covered up to our chins despite the heat. I've seriously considered buying or making a mosquito canopy over the bed so I can finally have a peaceful night.
One of us walks our dogs every morning. Along with gloves, jeans, boots and long sleeves, our newly acquired bee bonnet has become essential. It's either the bonnet or copious quantities of bug repellant, and I hate putting that stuff on my skin. Here's some pics from today's walk, mosquitoes buzzing around my head while I stopped to smell the roses.
Safe in my bee bonnet.
I've always loved the moss, looks like a lawn outside a leprechaun's house.
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