A good reading spot, and more digging

No, not "Dick and Jane" or "See Spot run!" Just a nice spot to have a chair, in the shade but with good light, when we have the kind of weather we are having now. The heat encourages sitting still and reading.

Temperatures approaching 35ºC (95ºF) are predicted for this afternoon. And then thunderstorms tomorrow. Yesterday I finished reading As Always, Julia, which is the 1950s correspondence between Julia Child and her friend and publishing advisor Avis DeVoto. Very interesting.

Yesterday we dug out another tree stump.

But reading isn't the only activity around here. We got the second plum tree stump out of the ground yesterday. It was harder to dig out than the first one was — it seemed to have more roots anchoring it into the soil. The work required a pitchfork, two shovels, the garden hose, and an axe. And a lot of bug-slapping, grunting, and groaning.

Two stumps that will become firewood

I have wondered since the storm that blew the trees down what it was that made them so vulnerable. It could have been their location near the garden shed and the direction of the wind that February night in 2010. Maybe the strong wind blowing over and around the shed and its roof set up some kind of turbulence that the trees were caught in. I say that, but another plum tree on neighboring land also blew over, and our neighbors lost three apple trees to the wind also.

New cones on the blue spruce tree under which
I've been doing my afternoon reading

Whatever — more firewood for the winter, and now we have a place to plant a new tree. We'll buy one from a plant nursery, or maybe two. A cherry tree for sure. What else would be good? Ooh, a cognassier — that's a quince tree.