It's been some time since I've posted but things in my environs have been so quiet and boring I feared reading of such might cause you to become comatose.
The unusually warm weather has sure played havoc with many things. This will be a year without any apples on my trees and the thought of not being apple to press cider certainly is discouraging. The lack of rain fall and the triple digit temperatures have resulted in my grass becoming brown and brittle. When you walk on it it sounds and feels as if you are waling on straw. Of course the weeds have continue to grow and they are the only thing green in my yard. If anything the heat seems to make them thrive.
The lack of rain has dropped the area lake levels to the point that launching my boat is very difficult and the high water temperatures has made the fish lethargic and unwilling to bite. With my sonar I've been able to locate vast schools of fish but we haven't had much luck in triggering a hit. Friday evening we fished for several hours and only caught a few small fish. Nothing worth the effort to clean them and had we done so the resulting fillets wouldn't have fed a small child.
On Saturday I built 2 minnow traps with the hope that using the baitfish common to the lake would trigger a bite but that effort was in vain. I set both traps in shallow water and as I was backing out from setting the 2nd trap I dislodged the first and had to reset it. As I did I found that it had caught over 2 dozen minnows of an ideal size for crappie. As it turned out 2 minnows were more than enough as we never had a single bite.
I've been thinking about our darlin' Thistle and about how many things have changed since I left Europe in 1967, It's hard to believe that they will be driving across several countries as they travel to her husband's new teaching position in the Czech Republic. When I was stationed in Germany borders were heavily guarded and I remember looking thru binoculars at Czech soldiers as they looked through binoculars at me. The entire border was restricted and we were not allowed to enter into a 5km buffer zone between us and our potential foes. Now East Germany no longer exists and entering the Czech Republic is not much different than it would be to drive to Ohio.