The Summer wind, the Summer wind….

It was more like a nice breeze today and very nice and warm. In fact, I was enjoying my first cup of coffee sitting outside in the sun in my morning robe.It was one of those days making you forget about the last rain storm, the nasty cold April we had and the resulting sullen mood you got into. I am sure humans need sunny days for keeping a mental balance. That gets me into something I have often thought about. There is a peculiar problem with alcohol in certain areas around the globe. Most of those areas are way up north. Scandinavians are known to drink a whole lot, so are Russians and the population in northern Canada. What they have in common is a very long dark winter with little sunshine.  Many people from the far north suffer under depressions. Even suicide rates are comparatively high. I have been living with weeks of grey and rainy late fall days or snowy winters over in Norway. If one has no hobbies or work to go to, life can be really difficult. Luckily I always had work to do, so I was not befallen with such adversities. Springtime and summer are great times of the year. But even a winter day with bright sunshine lifts my spirits. A sure sign that we are into warmer weather are the hummingbirds which come to our feeders again. Bea hung up one feeder right outside our kitchen window. She then rigged up the NIKON on a tripod and waited for the right shot. Every couple of minutes one or two hummingbirds are showing up. We have noticed that they also fight each other off the feeder. The thought of sharing the delicacies must be foreign for them.                                                      Aah that’s good… Spend quite some time in and around my workshop today. 5 years ago I made a wooden table and a matching bench. It was a gift to Bea (or both of us) for our 20th wedding anniversary. I in scripted the bench with “The 20-Year Bench”, meaning that we symbolically had been sitting on one and the same bench for 20 years. Shortly it will be 25 years. Since the two pieces of garden furniture have been sitting outside every summer and endured a lot of rain and sun the wood had been discolored with black streaks. So I decided it was time to give it a work-over.                                     Getting weathered – the 20-year bench I had a real work-out with sanding down the old varnish of the table. Started with a low corning then went higher higher and higher.  The sanding was followed by priming and finally after another sanding the final coating with “Ocean-Blue” high-gloss Latex. The sun did its work and dried the paint and when it is real hardened the second layer of blue will finish the work-over of the table. Then there is the bench to do the same with. After both pieces are done they should be ready for another 5 if not 10 years of service. Both pieces of furniture were actually made of scraps and leftovers from construction orders. After coffee I took a drive to Lubec to buy one of my favorite breads from “Sun Porch Industries” alias Martha’s Home bakery. Picked up some beverages too on my way out of town. A nice beef roast rounded of this day, and if the weather men are right tomorrow will be even warmer. So I hope you will be back here tomorrow. Thanks for stopping by.  blogger Tags: Hummingbird, summer, Campobello Island