Loch Ness in Vermont.

6-23-21 VERMONT: After a dry week we got rain, 0.8 inches, Monday  night and another 0.15 inches on Tuesday. Yesterday was cool, we had a fire in the evening. Today was warmer and very sunny, and I got back outside, I pruned shrubs around the entry steps and weeded a couple beds.  

Val and Steve left for NYC Tuesday after taking us all to dinner at Jesse’s Monday night before the rain.

The rain left everything well watered. Monday AM the mowers were here, and I walked them though the pasture to make trails free of tall grass and, hopefully, ticks, but leaving the wild flowers and, especially, the milkweed unmowed. 

Today I saw a turtle in the upper pond for the first time this summer. A couple of days ago I was sitting outside the new house with the camera looking for birds when I saw something swimming across the pond, faster than the frogs or turtles. I got a couple pix of a big snake, maybe four feet long. It swam to the bank and disappeared. I went to look immediately, but there was no sign of it or a den. We sent the pic to several folks and the consensus was—garter snake, very big garter snake. I favored a diagnosis of water snake, but the herpetologist at the Montshire Museum of Science said garter snake. 

New blooms: feverfew, lychnis, Russian sage, money plant, false indigo, water lily.

The snake at the halfway point. The tail is at the right margin of the shot.

The game cam saw a turkey in the pasture and a bunch of deer.

My favorite peony, a single, looks more like a flower, than the big doubles.

Goats beard is happy in deep shade.

Water lilies. These are pinkish, later ones are white.

Steve and I with identical beverages, made with gin and a small amount of dry vermouth.

Nice sunset after the storms.