Oh how I LOVE the cooler, rainy days! We needed the moisture here so badly too, just lawnmowing kicked up tons of dust.

After that hot and dry weekend we had last week, it was heaven on earth to see the continuous rain that we've had for the last couple of days. If there hadn't been a break in the rain for a couple of hours I wouldn't have gotten these shots, so I'm glad I got out there when I did.

Otherwise, when I meandered out to the back alley this particular shot would have shown you hundreds of raindrops splashing in the puddle. Pretty yes, but waaaay bad for the camera!













And because of that late winter storm we had this year, our spring "budding" is far behind the norm. But NOW our flowering trees our in full bloom!


The front yard is looking greener now thanks to the moisture, and it's also looking mighty spiffy since hubby finished all the flowerbed weeding and fertilizing. Here you can see our 3 flowering trees (all white, I MUST get something with more colour one day too); a cherry on the left, another variety of cherry in the middle/right, and the pear tree on the far right foreground.







This is the Schubert Cherry up by the house whose leaves turn a deep burgundy in early summer. For now, they are green and sport some wonderful smelling lacy flowers.

The funny thing is, they look almost identical to the MayDay tree flowers out back AND they smell exactly the same! The MayDay tree is a relative of the chokecherry, so I guess it and this Schubert are cousins too, both being cherry of some sort.











And this is the other Cherry tree further down the lawn, whose flowers are full and plump and also smell divine. After the rains, you can see near the bottom of the shot some raindrops hanging on for dear life.

This tree and the Russian Olive are both 6 years old now and doing very well. The others (Schubert cherry and Pear tree) are only enjoying their second year on our lawn so they are smaller. The Russian Olive fills the view of our living room window and is the last of our trees to get it's spring leaves. Even just after one day there are a lot more leaves on it than when I took these pictures.







Our Pear tree is still small but even so, it's very first summer last year sported a single beautiful pear on it! It's pretty scrawny right now but the branches have a perfect shaping to them. Once this starts to grow and fill out a bit it's going to be a beauty.

You can see the leaves cupping a lot of rainwater, and a pretty raindrop hanging off one of them. Other than the dim light due to cloudy skies, this was the perfect time to capture pictures of these.









Out in the back yard, the MayDay tree is huge and in full flower. Boy does it smell GOOD out there!

You can see the similarity between these cone shaped lacy white flowers and the ones on the Schubert cherry out front. This tree was just a few bushy stems and twigs when we moved in here just over 15 years ago. Now it's always in need of pruning back so we can walk on the sidewalk under it; and it also provides some shade from the hot mid-day sun for hubby when he's working in the garage.











And in the very back of the lawn is our very big flowering plum. However, hubby STILL has a ton of wood and other paraphenalia piled up back there, right in front of this beautiful shrub. So we never really get to see it. *sigh* I can't wait for him to finish up back there one of these years.














This morning, the sun is shining and the temperatures are climbing just a bit. The sunshine now will make everything pop even more after all that rain. The nice thing is, we're due for even more rain in the next few days.

Here in Canada it is a long weekend, the Victoria Day long weekend to be exact. And being the first outing for Pammie and I of the year (mostly being cooped up through the winter) AND having a nice sunny day, we headed out on a roadtrip with our cameras to see what we could see.

One thing we knew we wanted to do was get to one of the lakes around here, which we did. We hit up a little village on a lake only to discover that this particular weekend is the BUSIEST of the year and was packed with people. The weather being waaaay too hot, we opted to stop at the little ice cream stand and enjoy something icy cold to cool off with and then head out to another water spot that would be less crowded.


We did find a spot, and it appeared to be a smallish lake meant for boating and perhaps fishing.

Still, it was very peaceful there and really pretty with spring's light green leafage popping out in the trees. This shot is of the boat landing spot and you can barely see a family out there in a rubber raft having some fun.










There was a slight breeze to enjoy but not enough to keep the bugs down, which meant we were dodging my worst enemy, the wasp. And thankfully we'd thought to bring water and kept it on ice, the heat made us thirsty. Pammie's car doesn't have AC so it was pretty hot in there, but once we'd get going at higher speeds down the secondary highways and back roads with the windows down it cooled off considerably.









It wasn't a big place, but there were several nice looking picnic spots, each with a rusty cookspot and a picnic bench.






Being so hot when we arrived here, the very first thing (other than running away from wasps) that was on my mind was sticking my feet in the water to cool them off. However, once we got to the water's edge, we discovered that it was too murky and oily from the boats to warrant putting any body parts in at all.

Still, it was a lovely view and worthy of photographing!









On the way out here we'd noticed a nice old church on the secondary highway, and we wanted to stop there on the way back home, which we did.

This was out in the middle of farming country, with vistas all around us. I'll bet in summer or autumn it's even more colourful and lovelier. It's a shot taken off center with Pammie on the right. It was taken on the gravel road beside the church.








And here is the church up above that road, sitting prettily atop a hill overlooking the area. As you can see it's almost completely surrounded by evergreen trees.

It's actually facing the secondary higway that we were travelling on and because of all the trees around the front and left sides I was uncertain that we'd spot it very easily coming back, but we did!





This is a view of the back of the church, where there was a very small cemetery. The entire church was surrounded by an old fashioned wire fence with a quaint little iron gate painted white. So country, I loved it!




And the front of the church, although with all those trees right up against it, it was rather difficult to get the shot I wanted. Still, I like the way it peeks at us through the trees.





The church was built in 1926. The first thing I thought of was that was the year our parents were born. It's very obvious that it's been very well maintained, a nice new paint job and kept very clean.

You will perhaps notice that some of these shots have been edited with some pretty little photo editing enhancements. I had lots of fun with that!




















Looking up from the front steps.







Around the side and back of the church sits a quaint outhouse that looks like a recent rebuild and obviously in use.

I guess the congregation takes great care of the place but hasn't raised enough funding for indoor plumbing.




















Along a side fence was a cute little bird house. It has the nesting materials sitting inside of it so it's home to somebody with feathers! I've backed off most of the colour in this shot for effect. Pammie spotted another one out front built just like a church. Sweet!





Here's that quaint little iron gate on the other side of the church, our "getaway" car was parked just out of view here.

By the time we got here the heat was pretty much doing what it does to me best, and I didn't take many more photographs after this point. I was feeling weak, dizzy and nauseous but managed to hang in there and not toss any cookies (or water in this case) on the grounds!



















Once we hit the highway again the car cooled off and so did I. It was a lovely trip and a nice day! It's always fun heading out with cameras in hand with Pammie but this being something different was quite special for us.

I hope you all had a good weekend too, until next time take good care of each other.

PEACE!
Love Jude