Summer in Newfoundland

It's mid July and we are enjoying an unusual summer here in Newfoundland - both weather wise and pandemic wise.

First the pandemic summer - well, Newfoundland opened it's borders to the rest of Canada on July 1 and it seems like a lot of Newfoundlanders have taken advantage to make the trek back home for a visit. A lot of my friends have children and relatives here visiting with many others coming before the end of August. Quite a few people who still have summer homes here on the island could finally get to come for a visit providing they are fully vaccinated. It's nice to see vehicles with license plates from other Canadian provinces around town. 

Newfoundland was probably fared the best of all provinces and territories during the pandemic as it seemed that people listened to our health and government leaders advice during the past 18 months. We followed that advice to the tee and as a result had very few cases of Covid 19. While there were a couple of outbreaks they were handled very quickly and the spread was minimized. Our Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Janice Fitzgerald is considered a "Rock" star here on the island and so she should be. She was very calm even during the roughest of times and kept encouraging people to follow her directions. And on top of that our Premier,  Andrew Furey is a surgeon while our provincial Minister of Health, Dr. John Haggie is also a medical doctor. They certainly maintained their calm and directed us well during the pandemic. As a result we were seldom under a full lockdown. We could go to stores to shop and to restaurants to eat for most of the pandemic even though these businesses were operating under less than full capacity. Social distancing, staying within your bubble and washing your hands regularly was the norm for Newfoundlander - and they stuck to it. 

 Our summer weather has been a little different for the Burin Peninsula and other areas of the island this year as it has been fairly warm but there hasn't been much rain. Go figure! We have had a fair bit of wind though. It's unusual for our dry spell to be during June and July - normally for us the dry spell, if we had one, would be during August. Hopefully there was enough rain to produce a good bakeapple crop this year. I'll update this with my August rant!

I'll update what has happened with our flowers and shrubs since my last report - looks like all are coming along well even with the dry weather.

Gladys and I haven't done much this summer but hopefully we will take a little staycation around the island sometime during the month of August. There are a couple of places we'd like to visit that we haven't been to before including the other side of Fortune Bay around Harbour Breton along with Burgeo on the southwest coast.

The tulips have come and gone & now the snowball tree has taken over that area.

Our hostas are coming along quite nicely.

Gladys's peony has started to bloom and it seems like the flowers are much fuller this year.

Our rhubarb was early this year and we had a good crop but it seems the warm, dry summer may have ended it's season early.

Here's the area under our deck in full growth - the flowers and shrubs are loving this weather.

Finally our black eyed susans are coming right along and will be in full bloom soon.