Good morning everyone! That sun was just such a beautiful bright orange earlier this morning. Unfortunately that was due to the smoke covering our area because of the forest fires. It was so bad yesterday that at times the sun was completely blocked from view. And because the smoke is so thick it’s keeping our temperatures down. I think we made it to around 68F (20C) yesterday, cool enough for me to wear a jacket. In July. We still have 151 forest fires burning here in the northwest part of our province. The two largest fires are now 379,220 acres, and 422,916 acres in size.

But there are many others around 50,000 to 150,000 acres. Yesterday there was also a lot of ash falling, at times it looked like it was snowing there was so much ash coming down. It even came inside and I find it on everything. It’s very dangerous to breathe that ash, and that’s for everyone, but it’s especially bad for people with certain health problems. The sun is shining, but with that odd yellow/orange color to it, and it is getting windy, so that might help clear out the smoke a bit. All the gulls were here for their breakfast early this morning. And the chipmunks, all 9 of them, have sure been busy! No sign of Slim though.

When he came yesterday he only stayed a short while, ate a couple peanuts and then left again. He must have moved further away, perhaps across the street. Lots of squirrels over there to fight with. Those two new chipmunks are hard to tell apart from each other and from two of the regular chipmunks. But they are friendly anyway. I just need to find a good way to tell them apart. Then I can give them names. But they certainly are a lot of fun, especially having them run all over me. More birds are starting to show up with their young ones, but since I’m not feeding yet they don’t stick around. Grover, my friendly grackle, has come back and he likes peanuts too so he is quite happy. Guess it’s time for more peanuts out there. Happy Friday and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

©2021 Steve McLeod.