Sitting on the back porch

Sitting around on the back porch has new meaning when you see ours.It's about 50' long x 15' wide. It's a patio, spanning the full length of our dining and community rooms. There are three outdoor round tables with umbrellas and 14 matching chairs, two picnic tables, 1 glider, four wood-like chairs (2 regular and 2 rocking) and two large Rubbermaid containers for holding pads for the chairs.

Additionally, there are three fierce-looking owls standing guard, just daring our scores of birds to do a flyover and make a deposit. Yes, they do work, we have no bird poop on our patio! On the west side is a large kerosene grill and along the entire length a railing that is perfect for two large flower boxes that were filled and hung this weekend. Very nice touch.

On the far east end are the remains of a rain gauge..just the backing, no cylinder. I'll have to find a replacement, now that there's no snow to measure, we have to measure something, surely!

And it is from this very patio that this past Wednesday we saw our first fawn of the season. The mother and baby appeared crossing Troupe Rd. and proceeded to race across the entire length of our backyard, sticking right along the tree line. The fawn, and was it ever small, was keeping up with its mother (miraculously I thought) and seemed to fly behind her. What a beautiful sight. We were able to alert the sisters inside quick enough that lots of them witnessed the hoof-race, too. Ah, summer.