December 24 and all is well

Merry Christmas, everyone!

This is a catch-up blog, to explain various little things that have been going on around here.

First, I want to note that we have some very entrepreneurial people in our vicinity, and I always appreciate this business sign when I drive by.

Last week, we had our annual Christmas Clogging Party, which includes invited guests , friends and family.  We try to be on our best performance, even when it looks—well—silly!  Our beginner’s class did a Christmas song from Hawaii and they went all out to make it look appropriate. 

Our class, a more sedate bunch of ladies, merely did a reindeer boogie song, which featured appropriate antlers and tails.  I am proud to say that I made all the tails.

We ordered a new fridge and dishwasher for delivery December 20, and arrived, much to our excitement.  However, there were two glitches.  The fridge was damaged and so it will be sent back January 4, and the vendor did not include installation services for the dishwasher.  In the meantime, our kitchen is a little crowded, and our old fridge is out in in breezeway, still struggling along.  I feel a bit like the poor folks with my fridge outside, but what can I say?

We left on Monday to go to Ottawa to see Brian’s mom, who turns 96 in February.  I took a picture of Ottawa in the evening, and it kind of looks like it is snowing, but that was merely rain.  The day we departed, there were fog warnings everywhere, but no sign of snow.  It was predicted to go to +17C this morning, so it looks like they will be having a green Christmas.

We will certainly have a green Christmas here.  We took advantage of temperatures in the low teens to go out for a walk in the forest.  As usual, there is always something new to see.

Much of the big downed maple branch has been cut into wood for splitting, but there are still two trees to cut which broke when the maple fell on them.

One of the more amusing signs of red squirrel activity is that they like to hide pine cones in the crook of branches.  Some bushes look quite festive when they are done.

Brian confirmed my other neat discovery.  We have a small grove of poplars near one side of the property, and I thought I saw bear claw marks on some of the trunks.  They were! The tree here is about 8" in diameter, and there were obviously baby claw marks as well of those of a bigger animal.  We are now calling the grove the "Bearclaw Playground".

Finally, I had to include a picture of my primulas outside, which are still growing buds and blooming.  It is a bit strange looking out over a fall landscape at this time of year, but the temperatures are hard to beat.

Brian and I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas!

We have finally returned to the Blog World!

After a long and painful struggle with my computer,  Windows 10 and the Internet, we can finally catch up with some news.  I am sorry for this long delay.

From the inside, the biggest news is that the new ensuite is finally finished.  It looks very smart and modern, and the feature mirror is quite spectacular.

From the outside, the biggest news was the snow storm we had 10 days ago.  At one point, we had over 16” of snow on the ground, and the power was on and off for 3 days, with the longest outage being 18 hours.  When you are on a well, power outages definitely limit available water to a mere trickle.

The community closest to us, Coldwater, got 51.6 cm of snow during the fall, and we likely got that as well.  It was very heavy and wet, and tore down numerous trees and branches, leading to the long blackouts.  We did a damage walk of our property today, and you can see how much damage a single tree could inflict.  The coniferous trees were bowed over with the heavy snow, and many tops snapped.

One of the most interesting findings was that Brian thought he saw a cougar track in the melting snow yesterday.  We went back to check after consulting a couple of field guides, and sure enough, that’s what it was.  The snow was too melted to see much, but the size and configuration of the print were definite.  That’s Brian’s glove there, not my delicate little one.

As you can see, virtually all of the snow is gone, except for a few patches, and we are hearing predictions of double digit plus figures for the weekend.  Needless to say, we are not going skiing yet.

All is fairly quiet in the Malloy world as renovations near their end.  This week, we expect the mirror and the shower doors to be delivered, which will be the end as far as the project goes.  There are one or two minor details to be addressed and then we will have our house back to ourselves.

In the meantime, this fancy new room is forcing the upgrade of other rooms, so I am in the midst of repainting the master bedroom.  This will be the third time I’ve painted it, but over the years I have learned some extra techniques for wall repairs and finishing, so this should turn out the best yet.  This room has always been cold and drafty, but as I crawl around on my hands and knees at the baseboard level, I am finding new areas to chink, with the hopes of improving things somewhat.

Even though the house has sucked up most of my time, I did manage to finish another quilt.  My friend, Rita, gave me a pack of fabric of the most lively colours I have ever seen.  I needed a new winter lap quilt to make up for one lost, so this seemed to be the ticket.  It is hard to be depressed around this quilt.  Fortunately, I found a much more subdued backing.

You might see that behind me, in the forest, there are few leaves left.  We have had a week of high winds and rain, and the trees have shed 90-95% of their leaves.  The temperatures are still pleasant, so this week will be a good time to put the garden to bed for the winter, and to de-frog the pond.  Despite cleaning out our little pond thoroughly each year, inevitably we find anywhere from 1-2 dozen frogs of varying sizes in this little pot of water.  Our tradition is to relocate them to a spring-fed dugout on a neighbour’s property so they can survive the winter.  Witness Brian's efforts, including the dumping of Frog #13.  This year we sent 18 in total to the spring-fed spa.

And finally, the wildlife highlight of the week was seeing a small juvenile black bear in the back yard a few days ago.  In hindsight, the big one we saw in the spring must have been Mom.  The youngster was merely checking things out of curiosity, and we enjoyed watching for a few minutes before scaring it off.  It is heartening to think the area can sustain a bear family.

That's it for now.  The bathroom should be finished by the end of the week, so more pictures will come.

There are a lot of things to tell you about that have happened in a relatively short time.

Renovations: the bathroom renovations are moving smoothly, with only a few more things to be done.  The project is shaping up to be quite attractive.

Fall Colours:  The fall colours were probably at their peak on the Thanksgiving weekend.  There will still trees that were quite green, but as of Monday the leaves started falling, and there are many on the lawn.  This was a view of our driveway and then on the road by our mailbox.  Last night we had our first frost, and today there were brief snow flurries.

Guests:  We had Brian’s sister and brother-in-law up for a visit on the Thanksgiving weekend, and then friends from Ottawa, Hal and Monique Hamilton, for three days this weekend.  I worked with Hal when I started out as a stockbroker.

The Bala Cranberry Festival:  We took the Hamiltons to the Bala Cranberry Festival today.  This is an event in a tiny little town; we tried it last year for the first time, and it was charming.  That weekend was cool and rainy, but this weekend was not.  The place was packed.

A little highway is the main street through town, and the traffic was literally stop-start.  The crowds were huge, and there were all kinds of attractions including many street vendors.

The Bala falls are a beautiful piece of traditional Muskoka scenery with all the rocks and trees.

All kinds of groups were represented, including the local volunteer fire department.  My view was that if my mother could do things with dinosaurs, then I could have all the fun I wanted.

We had seen signs for camel rides, and were laughing.  How ridiculous.  How could this possibly be?  This was before we met Todd.  Monique and I had a rather unique experience.

Tod was from the Bowmanville zoo, maybe a two or three hour drive from Bala.  He had been born in captivity, and now was considered a fairly young camel of 12 years of age, given a normal life expectancy of 30 years.  When he handler was slow in getting started, Tod would nudge his shoulder to indicate he was ready to get going.

On our drive home, Monique noticed two moose very near the road.  I got a hurried picture of one before they moved off.  It was an unique end to a unique day.

Oh, I couldn't resist.  A Thought For The Day from the Bala Cranberry Festival.

I am sure you think I have disappeared off the face of the planet, but when I arrived back from Edmonton, our bathroom renovations had just started a day beforehand.  This meant moving our dressers from the master bedroom (big) to the guest room (little) to hold our clothes while the drywallers were at work.

This is what the room off the master bedroom looked like as a closet.

They drywalled the ensuite and two new closets in our master bedroom.   This meant cleaning the house from top to bottom because drywall dust gets everywhere, despite how careful the workers can be.

A new closet, freshly painted inside!

This week, the carpenter and tiler were big workers, and I was trying to get walls painted so that I wouldn’t have to work around fixtures later.  They were trying to avoid getting their picture taken, which is why the picture is blurred, but you can see they practically were on top of one another.

Today the plumber and electrician were in, so the bathroom is partly functioning, in good time for guests arriving Saturday.

In the meantime, we have had intermittent internet access for a few days (it finally worked prperly yesterday), Windows 10 hid my new pictures (I found them today), and my printers had to be reinstalled for them to work properly (also accomplished today).

Brian is vacuuming as I speak, which is the norm after a day of workers.

Next week will feature a fair amount of painting (including the master bedroom) so pictures may be boring for a while, but I will be better in keeping touch!

Much more work before play....

As we get ready to go on our trip to Victoria, we have been forced to do a lot of work while the weather has been hot and sunny.

I have had several projects on the go; this one is called “The Door from Hell”.  When Brian left for his 3-day kayaking trip a month ago, I thought it was a great time to refinish the lower bathroom door.  It had been painted at least 3 times, and the other side was lovely wood, so I thought I could achieve the same thing by stripping the painted side.  For Brian’s convenience, I was going to get it all done while he was gone.  That was really stupid.  First I tried paint stripper.  Four applications and only half of the paint was gone.  Then I tried steel wool, sandpaper, and ultimately the heat gun.  Then I bought a better quality stripper.  According to a professional on the job, the door was finished in a white “faux finish” that stuck on like concrete.  In the end, I got 95% of it off, stained it and resorted with touch-up paint to cover the remaining white.  Only three weeks later, with many many hours of work done, the door was rehung.  This is called a “Five Foot Job”.  In other words, as long as you stand five feet away, it looks good.

Getting hung up on doors seemed to be the theme, because the next project was painting the white trim on two exterior door frames on either side of the breezeway.  This time, they did get stripped and repainted in just 3 days.

The final project is only part of a longer term requirement.  We had the outside of the house chinked by a professional after we moved in.  It was well worth it for the savings in energy.  What we didn’t realize was that the previous owners, in desperation had tried  silicon (as in bathtub caulking) to seal some joints.  That was a bad thing, because nothing sticks to silicone, including new silicon.  Also, some of the chinking started lifting a few years later because nothing sticks to silicon.  So, at numerous outside corners of the house, I have to strip out all the old chinking, all the old silicon and any other garbage in there.  This is not a trivial job.

Once that is done, then I have to put foam “backer rod” in the larger joints to help support the chinking, and then caulk away by hand ‘til it’s all done.

You probably will never have occasion to chink, but just in case you feel the compulsion, here are some hints from personal experience.

Choose a colour that looks nice on your face, arms and in your hair.

Work from the top down instead of bottom up:  when you go bottom up you tend to place your hands on the area you just smoothed so carefully.  Several times.

When at the top of the ladder, watch your bucket of rinse water.  It makes a spectacular mess when it drops to the ground unexpectedly.

The good news is that this is still better than door stripping.  Mostly.  And you do get worthwhile results.

To while away my time while working, I love to play my IPod, and I just bought this amazing tiny speaker that works incredibly well with it.

The bad news is that two days after I got the speaker the IPod gave up the ghost.  Now Jim has to take me shopping at Costco when I get to Edmonton.

With all that hard work done, it is now time to play.  We leave Wednesday morning for Victoria for Brian’s Military College reunion and our next post will be from there.

A Week of Work and Play

Last week started with a heck of a lot of work.  Brian rented a log splitter from an acquaintance, and we got to work moving split wood into the woodshed (which I built myself). 

We eventually got the woodshed completely filled which sets us up for a cold winter season.  I estimate the woodshed holds between 8-9 bush cords of wood; a bush cord of wood is 4 feet high, 4 feet wide and 8 feet long.  We are both relieved that that chore is done.

In the meantime, I was stripping a bathroom door of 6 coats of paint, thinking this project would take two or three days.  Instead, it has plagued me for 3 weeks.  Some of the older coats of paint were resistant to paint stripper, heating gun, steel wool polishing and sanding.  If there were a thermonuclear explosion, the door itself would burn, leaving behind an intact skeleton of white paint. Another chore was stripping paint from a couple of outside doorframes, which were much more cooperative when faced with the heat gun.  There are no pictures of this, because I don't want to look.

All this work justified an adventure day on Friday.  We started the tradition of adventure days some years ago, where we would go out to something or somewhere new.  Friday featured a trip to French River, about a 2 hour drive north of us.

This little park had a tremendous museum, focusing on the activities of the voyageurs, since this was a main route from Lake Nipissing to Georgian Bay.

A fundamental aspect of the French River is that it is carved through Precambrian Shield by glacial activity, and it is not terribly wide.

We followed a foot trail through to Recollet Falls, which was a challenge to the big freighter canoes.  The change in level was not dramatic, but there apparently were more than a few dunkings.

The foot trail was a challenge to humans.  At first we thought the trail was paved, and then we realized that it was on highly polished rock, sometimes covered by very determined vegetation.

It was a great adventure day because we learned about far more history than we expected, we had a good walk in nature, and we went out for dinner afterwards.  Now back to work.