The rabbits have been jumping around the garden in their usual mating ritual. The flickers seem to do a very similar dance to the rabbits. They jump up and down and over each other for hours. Very entertaining.

Recently we have been having a large grey squirrel appear in the garden. He doesn’t seem bothered by the reds, nor they of him. Not sure how long he will hang around. Last year we had a black one who hung around for ages, but we haven’t seen him yet.

Today Chris managed to photograph a Rose Breasted Grosbeak with a yellow chest. This is very unusual and is apparently a pigment disorder called Xanthochroism. He is very pretty regardless of his colour. Lets hope the ladies appreciate him.

It is only a few weeks until the girls arrive for a holiday. They found out a couple of weeks ago that they will both be made redundant in a few months, so we will not be doing anything too expensive. There is plenty to do here that is cheap or free, so we will all have a great time regardless of the circumstances.

Lots of our summer birds are now back including the flickers. We are still waiting for cowbirds, grosbeaks and a few others, but spring is definitely here. This is  photo of one of our snowshoe hares starting to loose his white winter coat.

And here are two of the most adorable chipmunk photos you will ever see. Thanks to Chris for these.

They don’t seem to mind when we stand at the windows shining bright flashlights at them, nor will they generally flee if we go near them. Last night they were about again and Chris decided to go out and get some photos of them. It was about 9:30 at night and so very dark. I stood at the window shining the light on them and Chris went out and took photos. He was able to get within a couple of feet of them and here are the results. Are they totally cure or what?

Their coats appear so silky and shiny and with their huge eyes, they look adorable. They are almost between a squirrel and a chinchilla. They get their name from the flap of skin between their legs which acts as a sail and allows them to glide, or fly, between trees. We adore them.

Last Friday we had a good amount of snow fall, about 4 inches which made for a long and not very nice drive home. It was cold Saturday and Sunday but apparenlty temps are going to rise again this week which will take away most of the snow. Very strange. We did have a few days of bone-chilling cold and this was the result of an ice storm a couple of weeks ago. Chris took this of our deck.

We have noted some of the plants starting to sprout and trees are starting to get buds on them, well ahead of time. Trouble is if we do end up getting winter late it might kill everything off before it has had a chance to grow at all.

The deer have not been round as much this year, but the raccoons have unfortunately.

One good thing is we have had lots of nice sunrises and sunsets. This was one the other night.

Looking ahead, Stacey and Amy will be coming out again in June, so that will be great. Not sure where we are going to the them as we went to a lot of places last year and of course Stacey has been a few more times than Amy so has been to even more places. I’m sure we will think of somewhere. Have to get our thinking caps on. At least the weather should be good, although there will be bugs about at that time of year which will be annoying.

Although we have not gone down that far again, it has still remained pretty cold lately and we have had snow although not as much as usual. One day we had freezing rain which was horrible. These are photos of the car after driving 75km in it.

Ice rain

Yesterday we had snow and heavy winds which caused havoc on the roads and made for a very slow journey home. Whilst sitting watching TV last night it was snowing outside but we also has thunder and lightening. How weird is that?

Because of the ice and snow I have been using the Tuscan to drive in as it is better in these conditions than our new Veloster. It is a shame as since we got it we have only done 1300km. I’m sure it will make up for it during the summer.

We were looking at the possibility of getting a second car as I was now travelling to Kingston every day and so we put this one on the list. I had already narrowed the search down to a Ford Fiesta, Mazda 2, Toyota Yaris or Honda Fit. Chris did not like the Toyota or Honda, so we ruled them out. The Mazda did not appear as nice as the Ford, so we had really come to the conclusion that the Fiesta was the best, but now we added the Veloster.

We went to the local dealership and they had one which we took for a test drive. It was really nice and it made up our decision to buy this car. They told us they were expecting an orange one in soon, so we got them to call us when it arrived so that we could see this colour in person. They did so and I really liked the colour, but Chris wasn’t so sure, so e decided to go with the Triathlon Grey which we both liked. Unfortunately the model they had was not the spec we wanted so we would have to order one.

The saga of this process is too long and boring for you readers so I won’t go into detail, but it was not a happy period. However, eventually after much stress our Veloster, in grey finally arrived mid December.

So far we love it. It is full of gadgets and you can activate pretty much everything through voice commands. It has a keyless entry and a push button start which is really cool. Here are some pics Chris took.

As we lost our favourite chipmunk to an evil cat the other week we have been cultivating a relationship with another one. He is not yet eating out of our hands like Chip did but he is getting very tolerate of us so lets hope he will become our Chip2.

Just recently he has decided to dig his tunnel at the rear of our house. He has been excavating for a few days and here is the result – a tunnel with a very large dirt pile next to it which he likes to sit on and survey his land.

We have also been seeing the birds changing. The blackbirds and grackles are leaving and we spotted a few junkos (snowbirds) the other day, a sure sign winter is approaching.

You may remember at the beginning of the year that we had a sapsucker constantly banging on our metal tower when looking for a mate. Well he must have succeeded as we have seen several young sapsuckers in the garden. This is one I managed to get a photo of the other day.

The coming weekend is a long weekend for Thanksgiving and the weather looks as though it will be in the mid 20′s which will be great. So looking forward to that.

Chris got his camera too and when the mantis saw its reflection in the screen it attacked it.

Fascinating creature.

We arrived mid day on Friday 15th July 2011 and parked pretty close to the fairground – parking was free. We had to walk over a walkway which crossed over the main road to get the the fairground area where the event was taking place.

The entrance fee was $17 and I was a little frustrated that they did not offer multi-day tickets. We had to purchase tickets for this day then come back the next and buy them again. We purchased a program too which was $5 but every hour a number was drawn to win $100. Our program number was 10041 and 10033 got drawn – so close yet so far!

We decided to use this afternoon to wander round and get to know where everything was and the come back the next day to take photos etc. The heat was almost unbearable – well into the 90′s, so we drank plenty of water and had several ice creams. The prices for food, beverages etc was very good and did not seem to be inflated for the show.

Anyway, this is a car show and boy did they have cars. Apparently there were over 6,000 there and I can well believe it. I have never seen so many custom cars, hot rods, classics etc. They came in every style and every colour.

I was hoping we would win the lottery whilst we were there so we could buy a few, but it was not to be. A good proportion of the cars on show were for sale, so if you are in this market it was definitely the place to be.

In addition to the cars were hundreds of vendors selling everything a car enthusiast could want from engine parts, to t-shirts. There were some odd vendors there too selling baths and windows – but they didn’t look busy!

We did not get around the whole site during the first afternoon as it got too hot and we decided to go to our hotel and come back the following morning.

The Saturday was busier as we had expected as more people were off work, but because we got there early the heat was almost bearable. We went row by row through the cars and I think we saw pretty much all of them. It was an amazing couple of days and we cannot wait to go back again next year.

There was a also some special guests from Happy Days, signing autographs etc. Joanie was there as was Henry Winkler aka Fonz. He was definitely the most popular and people were lining up for ages to see him. I didn’t other but managed to get a very good photo of him anyway.

Henry Winkler - Fonz at Syracuse Nationals

A brilliant show for car fans, even if like us you know nothing about the actual vehicles, you just admire their beauty.

More photos can be seen in my photo gallery:

We set off on Wednesday 29th at around 8:30am and took a steady drive to Boston. We stopped off a few times en route and had dinner before entering the Boston area. We reached our hotel at about 7pm and checked into our king room which was very nice.

The following day was our anniversary so we set off in the morning for Boston. As promised the hotel provided a shuttle bus to the local T station which is the subway into Boston. It took ten mins to reach the station, then we waited five minutes for the train and then another 15 mins into Boston. Very easy journey.

We had decided to try to get a ticket for the Duck Tours to get an overview of the city before trying to get around ourselves. The Duck tours are amphibious vehicles that drive you around the city then enter the water and become a boat. We had to get tickets from the Museum of Science and got there at 9:50 am and managed to get tickets for a Duck tour at 10:30.

We waited outside for the tour where several ducks were waiting. When the time came we had our photos taken and boarded the duck. There are about 30 different ducks and we were on one called Arbourway Alex a white flowery one. Every duck is captained by men and women who act our different personalities and themes. We had Jason the Argonaut who dressed in a short white toga.

Jason was a very funny and entertaining guy who narrated throughout the tour pointing out all the sights. Every so often someone on the street would quack at us and we quaked back. The tour took us all around the city from the commercial district, financial district, Copely Square, USS Constitution, Prudential Centre, Boston Common and then into the Charles River.

Once we got into the water Jason let some of the children on board drive the duck and took pictures of them driving. The tour lasted 80 minutes in total and was fun and entertaining.

When we got back to the museum we decided to go back to the Copley Square area as it looked nice from the duck, we also wanted to go up the Prudential Building to get a view from the top. As it was so hot we decided to get the T to Copley. Once we got there we wandered around, took photos and then strolled round to the Prudential Building.

The Prudential has a shopping area on the ground floor, but on the 50th floor there is the Skywalk where you can see magnificent views of the city and many miles surrounding it. Take a look at my photo album to see the views.

We spent the rest of the day wandering round Boston and trying not to get too fried by the sun. We had dinner at the Beantown Pub which was awful and definitely to be avoided.

On Friday we decided to minimize our walking as our feet still ached from the day before. We got in the car and drove down to Providence in Rhode Island. We did not know the city so took pot luck in where we parked which ended up being in a shopping mall. We had a coffee there and then took a stroll along the river which was lovely. After a hour or so just wandering we decide to go back to the mall for lunch and then we left and drove down to the coast. We intended to drive into Cape Cod, but at one intersection the traffic going onto the only road which goes into the Cape was absolutely at a stand still, so we decided to change our plans and turned round and went up the Atlantic coast towards Plymouth instead. We forgot it was July 4th weekend and everyone in the area seemed to be travelling to Cape Cod!

We drove without too much traffic to Plymouth, found somewhere to park and wandered down to the beach. Here they have a replica of the Mayflower called the Mayflower II which you can tour. We had done this in 2004, so didn’t do it again but we still got some pics of the ship.

Once again the weather was stunning but very hot, so we wandered along the coast then went into town to see the shops. After awhile we got hungary so went into a restaurant called the Lobster Pot. It was not what we had expected but instead more like a fast food restaurant for fish. However we ordered our food and it was very nice – haddock & chips for Chris and fried shrimp and chips for me.

Afte wandering the town some more and having some very nice ice cream from a local vendor we decided it was time to make our way back to the hotel. By this time our feet were really killing us from all the walking we had done over the two days.

On Saturday we decided to have a driving day to save our feet a little, so we headed north this time. We went into New Hampshire and drove round a large lake they have there called Lake Winnipesaukee. The views were lovely, lakes on side and mountains the other. We stopped off at a place called Wolfboro which is a quaint little town.We had lunch at the Wolfboro Diner and it was very nice. We then strolled round the town and had ice cream whilst looking out across the lake.

Once we finished in Wolfboro we decided to travel across to Maine and drove down the coast. We then entered New Hampshire again then Massachusetts and drove to Gloucester, then after stopping for dinner here we drove back to the hotel.

Unfortunately Saturday night was our last night and in Sunday we had to drive home. Overall we had a great few days in and around Boston. Now back to reality….

More photos can be viewed in my photo album.