Johnson Family

All preperations are underway at The Johnson Family homestead for camping on Lake Pemaquid next week. There are tents and totes and bags and baskets piled everywhere with the wide assortment of camping gear and other equipage and sundries that are needed to live for 6 nights in a tent. It’s difficult to move around our little reisdence with so much stuff out of storage and in various stages of inspection.

This is our third year doing this. Deb’s sister and her family and one of my brothers and his family will all be camping at Lake Pemaquid next week. A total of 13 of us. Plus my sister-in-law’s sister and their familys total 20 or so and are camping as well. With so many cousins it’s a great deal of fun for Erica. For me it’s rarely a vacation of relaxation but is usually enjoyable in any case.

The campground does have wifi. So I’ll check in from time to time.

We start camping on July 12 and then leave to go visit family in Connecticut on the 19th and returning to work on July 21.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

We joke in Maine that we have many more than four seasons. Depending on the Mainer and their geographic upbringing then you will get slightly different answers. This is probably true in other places but I’ve not heard many examples.

So for me there is the Fourth of July, Summer, Foliage Season, Autumn, Winter, Mud Season, Spring and finally Black fly Season. Yes, black fly season is in full swing now. The excessive amount of water that is around and the warm days make for perfect conditions this year. And the massive swarms are demonstrating some amazingly large examples. I could have sworn I saw some the size of a small house fly today.

I stopped for some road construction today and could barely see the flagger due to the cloud of black flies around him. I felt so sorry for him and was glad when I could move on.

So unless we are saved by a couple of days of overnight frost then it looks like this will be a particularly bad black fly season. By the middle of June they will pass and all of the activity and excitement around Independence Day will arrive marking the change of the season.

Oh, and for the record, I still have snow banks in the yard! Reminders of the long winter we had.

It’s been raining hard for over 24 hours now. All the brooks and streams have filled their banks and many low areas are experiencing flooding. The new lawn is gone. We have some erosion that will need to be fixed and then I’m sure I will need to reseed. Fortunately, the next several days look like fair weather.