Life goes on

These last two weeks have certainly seen us going through a see-saw of emotions. The recent passing of Rob's Aunt Dorothy has made us both sad and reflective, but the memories we carry have also brought smiles, and even laughter. Our thoughts are with her family, and we hope they are coping through this difficult time. I know that people will say she had a good long life and lived to be 90, but as I get further up in years, I am beginning to feel that 90 isn't even remotely long enough. No matter one's age; it still doesn't take away the pain of missing someone.

As always - "life does go on" and for the rest of us remaining here, we still have those day to day tasks to attend to. I must say though, that we are fortunate here to be able to take some extra time to contemplate, to grieve a little, and to celebrate a life. With the woods and the river, and the beauty around us, we were both able to turn to the Nature around us to help heal a little, and to give us some time to think about life, and an aunt that we both loved.

If we were reluctant to return to life's other matters, Mother Nature certainly gave us a nudge in that direction this week with some unusually warm days, followed by promises of freezing rain and snow storms. It was time to get some things taken care of before the bad weather arrived.

While we would like to build and erect lovely wooden structures everywhere to house the tractor and other items that we would like to keep out of the snow and rain, the reality was that winter was fast approaching and we needed a more immediate solution. We somewhat reluctantly decided to buy a temporary garage structure, and after a lot of research, chose the best one we could find, and set about installing it in front of the cabin. I would have to say that our hearts were truly not in this project.  We both suspect that these shelters do not last very long, and we prefer not to buy things that may soon become landfill.

However, there is a good story here. In 2001 when we moved our store to a new location, the owner of the store we moved into offered to leave some "granite" squares that were in his showcase. Rob agreed to take them, but when he went to dismantle the showcase was soon terrified to touch it. The squares were ridiculously heavy and mounted in such a manner that he was sure the whole thing would simply come crashing down on him. Nonetheless, he managed to dismantle it, and somehow moved them all back to our warehouse. Where they sat. And sat. And I kept urging him to dispose of them, thinking we had no use for them. But there they remained.  Until we moved. And then Rob moved them all here. And I gave him a hard time about it.

So you can just imagine the glee in his voice, when he told me how he was going to anchor the new garage structure, as we are on limestone and there was no way he could see to insert the earth anchors that came with it. You guessed it - he used the granite stones and bolted the structure to them. Sigh. Now he will never part with anything. But I will admit - somewhat grudgingly - it worked!

Luckily we had some warmer weather during this installation, although it did rain heavily through most of it. Rob was outside in the dark for a lot of it as well. While we are on the topic of not getting ridding of stuff - I noticed that the black light here has been sent to the garbage pickup several times, yet strangely it appears in this photo. Obviously it is still working and useful and not truly destined for landfill yet either.

Rob followed the instructions for putting the shell together but this was clearly not a one person job, and I was of little help as it was heavy and beyond my reach. We struggled to get it together, but it just wasn't working. He finally dismantled the entire thing, and went about it from a timber frame point of view instead, and had it up in no time. Clever guy. The tarps went up over it just as the temperatures dropped. It isn't the most attractive thing to have in front of our pretty cabin, but it works. And I think it would make a great tent for a party in the summer!

The daylight hours are awfully short these days. Our firewood arrived in the dark, and I was grateful that I have been carrying a flashlight in my jacket so we could see to jockey things around to make room for the truck that brought the wood.  We were a bit worried that the wood wasn't quite dry enough, but Rob has a moisture meter, and it seems that it checked out o.k.  We may have to split it a bit more so it will fit in our wood stove and burn a bit more efficiently though.

So we got two items off our "before winter" list (check, check) and then as always - two more added! The wood stove chimney appeared to be blocked at the top so needed to be checked and cleaned, which meant rigging up a ladder system so Rob could get up on the roof. Then we discovered the gasket in the stove also needed replacing. The nearest dealer was an hour away so we had a nice trip together to go pick it up, and stopped for a fabulous coffee and sweet walnut cranberry square at Alice's Village Cafe in Carp. We will have to go back there for lunch some time soon as everything looked delicious, and it's a lovely space with the work of local artists on the walls. When we left we took a couple of new roads back which was fun. Despite the greyness of the day, we drove through some beautiful areas.

In the spirit of trying new things, I also came home from shopping with a pomegranate. Now maybe everyone else in the world has eaten a pomegranate - but I never have! Rob remembers eating them at Christmas as a child. They were on sale for 1$ each at the store, so how could I resist? Having no clue what to do with one, I turned to Youtube. Most of the videos recommended opening them up under water to easily extract the seeds, but I was intrigued by a video that claimed it was the "no water method".   I don't think I can always recommend Youtube.  This very nice, very effusive guy explained you just cut the pomegranate in half, gently work both halves a bit to loosen the seeds, turn the first half upside down in a bowl and then whack it with a spoon until the seeds fall out. Now maybe I was a bit keen and should have listened more carefully to the end of the video when he suggested you wear an apron, but I didn't. And he wasn't wearing one. Come to think of it though, the lighting on his video was rather dim. Anyway, I followed his instructions, and when I whacked it - all the juice spurted out over the counter, the toaster, the walls, the cutting board - and me. And it stains like crazy. Oh well  - it did work, and in no time I had a bowl of shiny pomegranate seeds. And they were delicious! We ate them plain, I added them to a couscous dish with mint and olive oil that we served with pork in an orange juice and cumin sauce (yumm!) and I put them into our smoothies in the morning. What a great amount of enjoyment, and all for $1 !

Last week one of our neighbours from our old neighbourhood showed up with a friend for a visit, and kindly brought along the two ristras we had forgotten and left still hanging on the dome when we moved. (With the permission of the new owner of course!) So in the spirit of Christmas I added a little Christmas cheer and hung them up outside the cabin.  We will try to get a few lights up outside this week, and a few favourite Christmas decorations up in the cabin.  They are all in a box somewhere. (This is our new mantra!) But we are pretty mellow about the whole thing. This is our first time in almost 20 years that we are not running a retail business, so we are just going to relax and enjoy the season.

I still have not managed to get a photo of the snowshoe hares. They have almost entirely changed their coats to white, and when the snow briefly melted I could see them hopping around deep in the forest looking like ghost rabbits.  I see their tracks all around the cabin, but now that the snow has returned it will be harder to spot them in the woods.  Which I guess is Nature's intent, as there does seem to be rather a lot of coyote tracks around! This morning I noticed the tracks on our road, and skirting around the house along the river's edge and through the woods.

Today is "stay at home" day. We had storm warnings last night that promised snow followed by freezing rain. I ventured out on foot this morning to see what the main road is like on a day like today and it wasn't good. Lots of ice and not a lot of signs of traffic.
We are still getting heavy rain and freezing rain, and it will freeze solid tonight if it goes down to minus 16 which is what the forecasters are forecasting!
You might think I took this photo in black and white, but I did not. Not a lot of colour out there this morning. I still thought it was quite lovely.

Well, this has been rather a long posting! I am cozy in the cabin, and have a pot of Blue Corn posole soaking in a pot and plan to cook it up this afternoon. (Rob is perhaps not the only person in this house who holds on to things - I have a 10 lb. box of dried blue corn posole in the fridge!) I haven't made posole in a long time,  so need to go find a recipe and decide whether it should be a Red Chile or Green Chile posole.  (I also have a rather large stash of chiles)  I will try to get Jet out for a gentle play on the icy surface out there, but for the most part will stay indoors today and enjoy the view through the windows. It is a perfect day for it.