Cattails

Not exactly flowers but the cattails are eye catching and colorful in their own way. We were back at Spring Lake first thing this morning, aided by the arrival of another earth mover next door. They announced their presence at 7am with something that sounded almost like an alarm clock. They have been working all day preparing the ground for a new foundation I presume. 

We took the less traveled trail this morning leaving from the Environmental Discovery Center car park* and circling the hill above Spring Lake which was the backdrop for yesterday's photo.  We were able to let Spike off his lead as we didn't see another soul. He was in his element running around getting his ears full of little stickers and following fascinating scents. He always comes back when he is called so we feel quite comfortable leaving him to it.The seasonal pond, alas, was nothing but a lot of reeds and cattails, but the setting was quite pretty as the sun began breaking through the clouds*. 

We rewarded ourselves with an excellent coffee at Trail House where Spike relaxed underneath the table. It was quite a chore getting the stickers out of his ears once we were home again but he was relatively patient about it. I trimmed his ears and his paws while I was at it.

I went out at the height of the pile-driver -like sounds next door to see the owners, who are living in a large trailer on the property, sitting about ten feet away from the monster backhoe as it toiled away breaking up huge boulders scooping up the rocks and swiveling 180 degrees to dump them into a dump truck. Very similar to the clearing operation six months ago.  I like their hands-on attitude but they seemed too close for comfort to me as they watched from the surviving lawn chairs and sipped beverages out of cans.

Just as the forever-being-built house was beginning to look reasonably good with its new yellow siding, they painted it battleship grey today. I am sitting here looking at it and wondering what they can possibly do next to make it look worse....

More items  arrived in our garage today...2 wall hung toilets and their in-the-wall tanks and boxes of other goodies. We are now waiting only for the valves, shower head and faucet for the bathtub for work to begin. Could be a big if....although there are apparently three valves left in stock....

*extras