Summer has arrived!

Dry days, highs in the 80s, even up here at 8600 feet, have settled in Ouray for the foreseeable future.  I'm maximizing my deck time, which unfortunately means the interior of the house doesn't get dusted or otherwise cleaned.  I'm just fine with that.  No one is enjoying the lack of thunderstorms more than Dempsey.

Coming up the very first part of MFL yesterday from Camp Bird Road, 50 yards or so below the Fickerts' driveway, I came across a bear in the road.  At first, I thought it was someone's dog I didn't recognize, but it was just a young bear.  It ran off into the woods towards Barb and Steve's house before I could get a picture...but I did roll up all my windows.

I'm doing daily algae skimming on the pond. There seems to be a lot clinging to underwater plants in the shallow part near JP and Michelle's, so I plunked in three packets of bacteria there.  Compared to last year's crop, this is nothing, but I plan to stay on top of it.

We have officially run out of fish food - 50 pounds! - and I texted Aaron to see how long he usually feeds the fish.  He advised he does so until November and gave me their garage code so I could use up their supply.  Does fish food go stale?

The cootenanny continues as we are up to five of them now.  I saw four of them flying over the pond on Monday before they were joined by a fifth.  

Camp Bird Road good and bad news:  the good news is the potholes really slow down traffic.  The bad news is that they've gotten so big you could build some condo units in them...but it really does slow down traffic.  Other bad news is the dust is horrifying.

Also bad news on our water pump situation:  Ed, our super-duper water guy, finally got the part we needed, and it didn't fix the problem.  When Byron comes back from Texas towards the end of September, he will bring the software program (?) needed to fix it.  In the meantime, Scott Purdy and our household are switching off going down daily to turn on a pump manually, let it run for two hours, and then shut it off. 

Mike spotted this mushroom on MFL
just above Camp Bird Road

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