June 18, 2011 -- At Leech Lake

After waking up at 5:30 a.m. on Friday and not going to bed until 1:30 a.m. Saturday morning I was ready to sleep in. I got up at 9:30 a.m. to grey overcast skies, a temperature of 48 degrees -- I thought that we're only days away from summer -- and little to no wind. The flag is limp against the pole and the lake is near still.

Everything, however, is wet. It obviously rained last night and the forecast is calling for rain showers and thunderstorms on and off all day. As the morning approached noon, a light rain began falling. Looking out over Sucker Bay I could barely make out the trees on the western shore of the bay because the mist and rain made the entire horizon a silvery-grey color and the sky blended with the surface of the lake.

While I was enjoying my morning coffee I decided to take the bandage off my index finger of my left hand and examine the damage I had done to it yesterday with the very sharp serrated edge of my Leatherman.

When I finally got the bandage off, I could see it was soaked with blood. Now exposed, the tip of my finger, which was missing a nice chunk of flesh, began bleeding again. I poured some hydrogen peroxide on the wound, and then covered it with gauze and tape. I didn't secure it as tightly as I did with the original bandage, and I'm hoping that it'll stop bleeding today and begin to heal over.

With a slight break in the rain, I went outside and raked the grass seed into the dirt. I had put a fair amount of seed on the torn up part of the lawn yesterday, but with my finger bleeding all over my hand, and the with the rain starting to fall more heavily, I never did get a chance to rake the seed into the dirt properly. I plan to add more grass seed to the affected area again in a couple of days.

Well, I couldn't wait a couple of days, and at 1:30 p.m. went out and put down more grass seed and raked it into the ground. It was hot work since the humidity today is close to 100%. There is a heavy mist in the air and although the temperature was only 62 degrees it felt more like 92.

And if the humidity wasn't enough deterrent, the mosquitoes certainly were. There were clouds of them swarming over me as I raked the dirt that used to be my yard. There are still numerous standing bodies of water all over the peninsula as a result of the very wet spring, including a huge swamp directly across from Newman's driveway, which in many parts is our property. These gigantic swamps are producing millions of mosquitoes, many of which are the size of house flies. So it was ultimately the mosquitoes that drove me inside rather than the humidity.

I cooled off with a nice shower and then settled down to do some reading. I thought about going out fishing, but it was still misting a bit and looked like it might rain. I really didn't want to get my bandaged finger wet -- and there's no way to avoid getting your hands wet while you're out fishing -- so I remained on shore.