Things that died.

We used the same roll of aluminum foil day in, day out, for the last three summers. It was a gem of a roll, never failing us in our time of need, until last week when I really really needed some Heavy Duty Aluminum Foil 18" x 1000', and it died on me. No more foil. Ah well.
Birds are routinely flying into the large windows of our lodge and breaking their necks. One time a hawk was being chased by a bald eagle and hit the window, but didn't die. This little robin wasn't so lucky.
These flowers look so alive and snappy, but they are dead now too.

What is this feeling of warmth on my arms?

Sun! Is here! And so I am sitting here in our boat, down in the river, trying to use someone's internet (the nearest house is over a quarter mile away), and I'm in heaven- I'm not wearing long johns or muck boots or heavy Carhartts, oh no, I am wearing a short sleeve t-shirt! And flip flops! It's heaven I tell you!
Taylor got a small solar panel to charge up our batteries (we have no electricity, and everything is run off of marine batteries or propane or both), and at the same time he also got these jazzy suspenders, so you can see he is a looker and a thinker:
We make a Deluxe Hamburger Picnic Extraordinare for one of the lunches that our guests are here. Presenting the origin of those burgers... The Beef Tube:
Taylor and a friend built a couple of new tents here at our lodge, and Moma has already claimed one of them as her very own:
Hooray for the sun!

A bit of sunshine.

This is the coldest and wettest July since 1928, according to the local newspaper. Four years ago I would have been depressed and moody, but this year I am just moody- a month of pure rain is just plain silly. So here is a picture of our lovely greenhouse on the one sunny afternoon we have had lately. I am going to gaze at this picture and gaze at it some more and then go and gaze at it again:

A word is worth a thousand pictures.

I came into this post with a bucketful of excuse on why there have been no posts as of late, but when I started writing this I thought, hey wait a minute, how do I even know that there are any Loyal Readers of this blog, and I have no interest in explaining myself to The Internet, so the only reason I will supply is that July is the busiest month of the entire year in The Lives of the Beckleys, and I have been spending what free time I have playing with my dog and reading a book of Flannery O'Conner's letters. And writing run-on sentences. But now, with a few minutes time on my hands, check this out (please say that last phrase in a fake Russian accent).
One of the dinners we make is a Kabob Dinner Deluxe, and here is half the pile of food I cut up for it You will also notice in this picture the small size of our kitchen- what you are seeing is 1/2 the total space in there:
Taylor and some other Construction Fools went out to Bear Camp to build some more tent platforms, and spotted this bear from a close distance. Then his camera died, which is why there aren't any photos proving his boat trip out to an island 3 miles off shore in the middle of the night with a drunk captain and a sinking boat, or how he had to jump start the camp's truck using his body as the conductor, which threw 250 volts of electricity through his body over 20 times, and made it so his hand was involuntarily clenched tight for several hours, or how the truck didn't have a tow hitch and so he traded off holding the hitch of a trailer full of drums of water as they drove down a beach, him sitting in the back of Said Cursed Truck while Said Cursed Trailer bounced around on the rocks and almost pulled him off. So, because none of that was documented, here is a very Calm and Pretty picture of a bear, taken right before that bear tried to break into the kitchen and eat the goodies being cooked in it: