Sira Learns to Swim

Our leo puppy, Sira, learned to swim today at 4 months.  She took right to the water and can out swim Milos already, ha.  I kept him on a leash so I could get a good video.  She also does a great job at tracking.  Not sure which to pursue with her.

Here she is:

Summer 2011 List

The summer lists are always long (and the Maine summers short).  Three of our top priorities are checked off for this year -

1 - Take a vacation - had a great trip with friends to Montreal.  We discovered that once we leave our drive there is only one big-town between us and Montreal (Sherbrooke, Quebec) - guess I never looked at the map, ha.  Next time it is Quebec City - nothing between us and them and that is the way we love to travel.



2 - Clean up the old animal watering hole near the road end of the driveway.  It ended up being a lot deeper than we thought as the bottom was full of dropped limbs, trees and weeds.  All cleaned up and evened out.  And the good news - the frogs have moved back in already.

3 - remove the stone retaining wall and make a short-cut drive between our house and the back garage.  The snow-removal equipment is all stored back there.  When we have a couple of feet of new snow, it is a real bear trying to get around the present driveway.  This should "ease the pain". 

4 - Enjoy the sunsets

Let's see ---  what's next..............

Third flows the charm

We have had to repair our overflow to the pond 3 times now.  Previously, we used the pipe in the dam method, but ice flows and heavy rains caused it to lift / fail twice.  this time, we went with the stone spillway / overflow method and I like the look.  Now if it just makes it through the next Maine winter...

Pond in the Maine Woods

As we approach the completion of our passive-solar bermed home (although a home is never complete), we have decided to concentrate on another goal - a pond.

Our hope is to have a medium sized pond (1/2 acre or less) close enough to the house to enjoy but far enough away for wildlife to feel comfortable. Our first choice of location was not possible when we had an inspection completed and discovered it was "wetland". Maine has many regulations about working in a wetland and we were not so set on the location that we wanted to start the 'process'.

So, we went to plan B -
The pond will be behind the detached garage and down the grade (to keep it lower than any house drainage). Of course, this ended up being one of the wettest Falls ever and it has been a muddy challenge to get it shaped in. But, it is presently in good shape for Spring. We hired the digging after David dropped the trees himself.
I will get a few more pictures as the surrounding area gets cleared (still this month if the weather cooperates) and then we will wait for the Spring thaw and keep our fingers and paws crossed for a full basin.
The full sized pictures are in the Gallery. Under Industry>Lot>Pond



sharonbetts
ponds
maine
passivesolar