End of 2006 Summer

Well, another short season has come and gone here in the New Hampshire Seacoast. We had an especially compressed summer because June was a complete wash out. More rain this past June than any on-record. I spent the month trying to keep our basements dry, and not succeeding at all. The only sailing I did during that time was when Jude and I got Aelena out of moth-balls on Memorial Day weekend, and that was May, not June.

July was better weather-wise, but we had two rental houses become empty and we wound up working on them and then spending lots of time trying to rent them. Just today we're finally getting a tenant in the Portsmouth house after showing it since mid-July.

In August we had a micro-burst in Rye that would be hard to grasp if you weren't here to see it. Out of nowhere, a tremendous wind came down on our little town and snapped huge trees off at about 20-30 feet above the ground. We'd had a lot of rain, and the ground was wet so many other trees were uprooted. REALLY BIG TREES! Many hundreds of trees! It was unbelievable! Power lines and phone poles were on the ground all over town. You couldn't get around at all - the entire town was sealed off. Roads were blocked everywhere. The cleanup was amazingly fast - within a week almost all of the power was restored, but there is still plenty of damage to be seen where people haven't gotten to the trees on their property yet. We lost a total of 9 trees, none of which hit any of our houses, but I had to clean them up. And it took all of August and into September to do so. (Thanks for the help, John!) There are tall trees down in the woods behind our house, but I don't plan on going back in there and cutting them up.

So this summer, I didn't have the free time to go sailing that I would have liked. I got out about 8 or 9 times and hope to sail once more before I bring the boat in for the winter. (I did spend a week volunteering on Star Island, though, and I'll post another entry with my thoughts on that.) Now the pool's closed and Lori has put the winter rug and draperies out in the living room.I've started splitting firewood and we're getting ready for the cold season ahead. It's hard not to love Autumn in New England, it's what follows that's depressing.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my rantings. Hope to see you soon.