Another summery day, and just a few sprinkles this evening - so far.  The rain that Burlington and some of the southern part of the state got just didn't materialize for us.  I just looked at the weather map and watched the movement of the storms and our area is mostly clear.  Tomorrow may bring something different - and by Saturday night we may be seeing some snowflakes.  Wouldn't you just know it?  We'll hope we don't get a killing frost to damage the buds on fruit trees.

We accomplished quite a lot today.  The railing on our deck is wood and needs to be repainted pretty often, and this is the year.  We got it all scraped and primed so when the next warm weather arrives, we'll be ready to put on a finish coat.  We have some trim to touch up around basement and garage windows, too.  Fred does a great job scraping off the loose paint - he has much more patience than I do - and it always looks great when he's finished.  It looks so much better even with just the priming coat, we were reminded that a couple of times we never got around to putting on the top coat.  This year we plan to do it right, though.

I was still working out front when the usual late afternoon traffic began.  Normally I don't pay much attention to the cars that go by either going out to work in the morning or when they come back in the afternoon, but today I was struck by how many very nice automobiles went by.  I didn't see a single "clunker."  It seems even teenagers are driving nice cars these days.  No jalopies or fixer-uppers, and not one vehicle that looked to be over four or five years old.  The only older model vehicles I saw were farm trucks.  Not that any of this is important, but it made me ponder a bit. 

Painting outside for some reason makes me want to have a radio going.  I normally don't "work to music," but I took a little battery operated radio out on the deck with me this morning.  It's a vintage Channel Master 8 in a leather case that snaps around it and provides a strap to carry it by. It probably dates back to the 1950s.  We keep it handy just in case there's a prolonged power outage.  It works fine, but I hadn't had it out for a few years, so it needed fresh batteries and some touch-up work on the contacts.  So I had perfect weather, music, and space to think while I worked.  I don't know why anyone would call it "mindless work" - my mind was very busy.  That's what's great about painting - you can let your mind wander to all sorts of places without doing much damage. 

Yesterday I took a picture from West Shore Road of the shore on the opposite side where the old Ailes camp was removed this spring.  There is a nice sea wall there now, and the area looks super nice.  Mark and Robin Nicholson, one of the abutting neighbors bought that lot and it's a very nice extension to their original lot.  Don and Diane Sherwood are the neighbors on the other side (on the left in this photo).