Granddad and his ducklings

"FAM-LEE"

For Father's Day our grandchildren gave Al eight little day old ducklings, since we have a little stream on our land. When our children were young and we lived in the country we had ducks and they were so much fun. They even came whenever we called "cheep cheep". You'd hear them squawking from way upstream, coming for food as fast as their little wings and legs could carry them. We even had a little baby we called Genesis, Genny for short.
Anyway, here's Al with his little ducklings, each representing a grandchild, (even the grandchildren in Oklahoma got in on it ), and then there's one for Sean (that's not prophetic=).
Megan could hardly keep her hands off them - they really are so very cute (Thanks guys, it's a sweet gift, and we're both enjoying them so much) Megan and Granddad with the chicks

HANDS ON! Everybody wanted to hold them - so soft and cuddly

Down to the stream they went, and boy, could they swim!

Look at that face - CHICK DELIGHT!

Now they think Al is their mom & follow him around.


They even followed him early this morning all the way down the lane to put out the trash =)

For contrast I just had to throw this in. Last night late I encountered this huge spider near the front door inches away from my feet, and I had flip-flops on, so I covered him with a glass bowl to get a better look in the morning. The joys of living in the country again.

I would not trade it for anything right now, even though we lost our phone service and Internet for a few days because of a bad storm, and the Comcast repair man was scared to death of snakes. As you can tell it's back up and running, and so is the Comcast repair man from the city=)

Then around 5:30 pm today we had another really bad storm and water was pouring through a 5" pipe, apparently from the well, into our basement, while the new septic system alarm was almost deafening, meaning our septic tank was filling up with water. Al had just left to pick up something for the drains at Lowes, leaving his cell phone behind. When I saw the water spouting out like a busted hydrant, I ran out barefoot in the rain behind him, trying to get his attention to no avail. I was soaked through & through!

Thank God the sump pump worked, but with the alarm going off, and all the noise of the water spouting out from the wall about 3 feet up, I could not hear it. All I could do is pray that the rain would stop, and finally just as fast as it started, it stopped spouting out of the pipe.

I guess, according to Al, we still have a lot of work left to do on the cottage before we even think of the outside, like get that pipe plugged, the well checked, and the septic people back to fix it.
I'm just glad I did not go out painting after all today, to get caught in that storm, (plus it was in the 90's), but hopefully tomorrow will be cooler because of it, and our new grass a little greener.