Watchin' the garden grow...

Not much goin' on here after 7-8 days of rain (about 4" so far). I'd post some pictures of my breakfast or lunch like some bloggers do, but then you'd just have to shoot me for clogging up the interwebs with pointless trivia. Been doing odd jobs, carpentry projects on the house and garage, but that's hardly worth a photo. I guess the best part of this recent weather is that the garden is doing great. We're eating lots of fresh vegetables and the berry bushes are really loaded this year.

The garden's doing great with all the recent rain.

And the berry bushes are really producing too.

June weather summary...

National Weather Service's weather summary for June:
"June 2016 in Fairbanks was cooler and wetter than normal. This
follows 8 consecutive months where the mean temperature was above normal. The warmest day of the month occurred on 17th with a temperature of 85 degrees while the coldest was 40 degrees on the 3rd. The mean temperature was 60.0 degrees, which was 0.4 degrees below the normal mean temperature of 60.4 degrees.
3.29 inches of rain fell during the month of June. This was 1.92 inches more than the normal value of 1.37 inches. It was the third wettest June on record. The rainfall on the 5th totaled 0.45", breaking the daily record set in 1942 by 0.13". Then on the 11th, rainfall totaled 0.95", breaking the old 1940 record of 0.67". The highest wind speed was 37 mph on the 1st, while the average wind speed was 4.8 mph.
Looking forward to July, possible sunshine decreases from 21 hours 22 minutes on the 1st to 18 hours and 12 minutes on the 31st. Continuous civil twilight ends on the 27th of July. The average daily high temperature decreases from 74 degrees on the 1st to 70 degrees on the 31st. The daily low temperature decreases from 53 degrees on the 1st to 51 degrees on the 31st. The forecast for July from the climate prediction center calls for above normal temperatures and near normal precipitation."

NWS WEATHER OBSERVATIONS FOR JUNE 2016

AVG MAX TEMP (F) 69.8   40TH COLDEST OF 111 YEARS
AVG MIN TEMP (F) 50.1   33RD WARMEST OF 111 YEARS
AVG TEMP (F) 60.0   48TH WARMEST OF 111 YEARS
TOTAL PRECIP (IN) 3.29   4TH WETTEST OF 104 YEARS

Ruty, like his namesake the rutabaga, hanging out on the deck. We almost lost him to an unknown illness last month, but through wonders of modern cortico-steroids, he's back, keeping an eye on things again. No need to worry with the watch cat on duty!

A Ride in the Park...

When you'd say you took a ride in the park, most folks around here would think you either meant Denali National Park, Alaskaland, or Pioneer Park as it's now called. But to me, the park has always been the Chena Recreation Area. Just a few miles down the road from our place, it's always been the area of choice to recreate, since it's so close and don't have to drive through town to get there.
Today, took the 850 Moto Guzzi out for a ride there. Surprisingly, there wasn't much traffic on the way out, most of what was on the road was heading towards town. The only incident of note was coming around a turn in the park, there was a large van parked in the middle of the road. And by the middle, I mean his wheels were on the centerline. So I slowed down and passed. When I looked over, I could see it was a tourist company van with with a load of passengers, probably stopped to take pictures. Hard to believe they couldn't pull over to the side of the road and turn on some warning lights.
Anyway, the rest of the trip was fine. Stopped at the 38 mile bridge, where there was a major issue with the river a while back. As meandering rivers are prone to do, it changed channels. Unfortunately, the new channel began to erode the abutments of the bridge. So the state built a huge berm, technically termed a training structure. That forced the river back into it's former channel. While hardly a natural area, it created an option for those who want to pull off the road and spend some some time at the river without being in a developed campground.

Parked on the dike at the 38 mile bridge. The interesting thing about the photo was that there was a clear blue sky out, but the photo looks cloudy, almost like a smoke sky. Go figure.