Temperature – 8C (45F).  Fierce, bitter wind.  Dumping rain.  At Nimpo Lake, 40 minutes west, kids were making snowmen yesterday.  Almost the whole month has been like this.  It has been more like November than June.

Three weeks ago we had the annual summer craft fair at the Eagle’s Roost Resort near Tatla Lake.It was bitterly cold.  It kept raining and blowing.  At one point we had a furious hailstorm that sent everyone diving for cover.As I drove to the fair in the morning, I noticed a small crack in the top left of my windshield.  After the hailstorm, it was right across.  It will have to be fixed on the next town trip.

Now we have an extra driving hazard.  At the beginning of the month, the range cows were turned out, which in our unfenced area means they roam along the road.Because of the initial early spring, logging was also started at that time.  Often it is mid June before they let the trucks on the road.

Sometimes we have had a brief flash of sun when it first rises and can shine underneath the cloud layer.  Note that the main mountains are hidden.

Often we are complaining about the heat and drought at this time of year.  The land is certainly benefitting from all this rain.  We’ve had about 6 decent falls since the snow left.  But it has been so cold.The garden is struggling.The kale that wintered (at the back) has shot up into flower stems and they are delicious to eat but I wanted to put something else in there.  I felt pretty mean hauling them out when the little wild bumble bees loved them so much.Occasionally, the sky would halfway clear overnight.  The resulting morning mist made it look more like Fall than June.And when the sky cleared like that, we got hard frosts.  Lettuce.Italian parsley.Strawberries very belatedly putting out the first flowers.And kale.  It becomes very stiff.  I eat it in my morning miso soup.  Picking it in these conditions is like snapping icicles.We did have four warm days in the last 3 weeks.  They ran consecutively.  On one, the temperature reached 30C! (85F).But the cloud was never far away.And back came the rain.