I guess one of the cons of having a successful skating season is that there really isn't very much to blog about. The first year that I wrote this blog was horrible for skating on the rink, which meant that I could write about
wishing to go for a skate on the backyard rink, or at least complain about the conditions. Last year, the blog's second, was a great one for the rink, but no so great for blog material. See, I wasn't going to just write stuff like "today we went for a skate on the rink," or "today we scraped snow off the ice and skated on the rink." So, here we are, three months after my last article and almost as long since all the ice has melted away...
The above photo was taken on April 23, which was the day that the ice left the brook behind the house for good. Last year, as I wrote in
this blog article, the ice left for good on April 6. I wish I had made a note of when the ice left in 2008; it was probably sometime in June...what a winter that was!
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So, it is now summertime, which means that our backyard rink becomes a small soccer field and a campground. Also, this year, on Canada Day, my family wanted to have a little fire in the backyard to roast some marshmallows. This was a great opportunity for me to shovel off some sod from a high spot that gave me a bit of grief last winter and place it on a low (and gravelly) spot that gave me almost as much grief. I dragged some rocks over the bank from the brook's "beach" and made a little fire pit. We were back out there again last night, and Joe thought it would be hilarious to keep the little fire pit there in the winter so we could skate around and roast marshmallows at the same time. Also, while we were out there last night, a firefly was flying around us. I mention that because I can't remember the last time I saw one of them, and it might have been the first time the kids saw one.
It's a lot easier to work on the ground base of the rink in the summer, so I will probably level off a few more high and low spots and toss some grass seed around before things start to freeze up. Also, there are some strong rumours around the house that we will be building a new deck this summer. I'm hoping to sneak some new boards for the rink into those plans...as you might be able to see in the top photo of this article, the old boards are looking a little beat-up.
There really is no "off-season" for a humble little backyard rink!
