She was our "rah- rah team", always cheering us on, and enthusiastic about what we were doing. She loved reading the blog and seeing the photos, especially of the wildlife, (and of course photos of Rob too!), so I always made sure to include lots of both. As soon as a new blog was posted, we would let her know and she read it immediately, and would comment on it at length the next night when we talked to her on the telephone. When the time between blog postings became rather long, she would simply go through some of the older ones again. Rob of course spoke to her on the phone every night and would fill her in on what we were doing. Sometimes I would send her a few photos and updates just to help keep her informed if I didn't have time to post on the blog. But I always saved the best photos for when she read the blog, knowing how much she enjoyed them.
Rob's Mom passed away peacefully on April 18th of this year. At first I was pretty sure I couldn't continue with the blog. But in the last three months, there have been so many times when we've found ourselves saying "Oh Mom would love this photo", or "Mom would love to see what we did today", and so ever so slowly I came back to thinking about continuing with the blog. As much as we are mourning the loss of her in our lives, it's important to somehow honour her zest for life, and adventurous spirit. We will always be grateful for the wonderful times we had with her especially here in the cabin, and grateful for the love she sent to us everyday. It will never be the same, without our kind, sweet, gentle and always positive-thinking Mom here. I miss her constant laughter, her encouragement, her questions, her comments, and more than anything her absolute love for the two of us. She loved this little cabin, the river, the woods and the beautiful surrounding areas too. We feel her presence here every day, in so many ways. This may be the most difficult posting I've ever done. But dear sweet Mum....this one is for you.
The river broke up early this spring, although the thick ice at the edges lingered on. The levels were much lower than last year, and we were able to venture out onto the rocks one fine spring day.
We learned quickly to be careful though, as what appeared to be thick ice and snow in some areas were actually very thin layers stretching out over the water. Still, it was lovely to be out on the flowing river once more!
Blue skies and sunshine brought some of the woodland creatures out for a picnic on the rocks. We felt like the arrival of the migrating birds couldn't be far behind.
But our ideas of spring soon disappeared when April brought heavy snow, and ice storm warnings.
The storms caused a lot of damage to the trees, and resulted in numerous power outages. But down at the new house, the solar panels continued to supply power, so I simply headed there to make myself a hot cup of tea! I was a bit worried about all the snow and ice on the solar panels, but it soon slid off, and the panels were pumping power into the batteries again in no time.
Our firewood consumption was high this winter due to an unusually cold December, and a long cold spring, so we decided to order another tandem of firewood to be delivered. Hopefully THIS tandem load will last a bit longer than the one from two years ago. This new one is made up of good long burning oak, whereas the last one had a lot of punky poplar in it, which doesn't burn well, or for long!
The snow took a long time to melt, especially behind the new house, but by mid-May the last final patch of snow finally disappeared. It felt like the snow would never leave!
Our shepherd Jet, had been super interested in the woods near one of the hills where we walk, and we assumed he was watching some grouse in the underbrush. So I was pretty surprised one day when I was walking him, to see two little heads with pointed ears pop up in the underbrush near us, looking for all the world like two small puppies. I quickly realized they were baby foxes, and hustled Jet out of the area.
Over the next few days though, I had several sightings of them. They seemed to love to hang out on the warm gravel on our hill. I was a bit worried one day when I drove up and all but one scampered off into the brush.
I backed all the way down the steep hill, and drove out an alternate way. I stopped my truck and walked back and the lone fox didn't move at all, and I thought there was something wrong with it. But it finally heard me, stood up, gave an enormous yawn, had a good long stretch, and then wandered off, albeit a bit unsteady and slow. But it soon picked up speed and trotted off. The next day there was one sleeping on another section of road, and it did the same thing!
I realize now that they were pretty small, and therefore fairly young. Within a few days they were bigger, and much more leery, and would hustle off into the woods as soon as they heard us. This little one even bravely barked at us before dashing off into the safety of the underbrush.
And we learned to look carefully, as they were often in the brush and we didn't even know it!
In early May we noticed that we truly had some other new neighbours. The big beautiful barn and old house that had sat empty for years and years, were showing signs of life, and the field that had held nothing but the occasional cattle, was being worked. It had been plowed by tractor in the fall, but we weren't sure why. Now we knew! Old Order Mennonites have been moving into this area the past few years, and are revitalizing a lot of the old farms. And now we have a Mennonite family as our new neighbours. I love seeing them with their teams of horses (and in the photo below, one mule!) working the land.
We are also fortunate to be able to reap the benefits of their hard work when we visit their farms to purchase large quantities of fresh vegetables, fruit and eggs during the spring, summer and fall.
Early in May we had a chance to clean up some of the trees that had been damaged during the April snow and ice storms, so added this pile to our tandem load for future firewood. I see a lot of work ahead of us! It all needs to be chainsawed into lengths, then split, then stacked.
While we were cleaning up the giant pine tree that snapped at the edge of the river during one of the storms, we noticed a tiny little turtle on a rock at the river's edge. It moved back and forth, dipping into the water, then drying off in the sunshine, before we noticed it had wandered off elsewhere.
Work on the new house has been progressing, although a bit slowly at times. However, as I predicted in the last blog posting, the changes that have taken place have been huge.
A couple of years ago we picked up a small selection of cool looking tiles at a clearance outlet. We didn't know at the time exactly what we would do with them, but the price was right, and we knew we'd figure something out! We know now we'll be using them around our bathroom sink area for sure.
Since then we've been looking for something similar to use in the tub area of the same bathroom, and Rob found some on sale at a decent price (and bought lots as we think we can use them in one of the entrance ways now as well!). We lined some up around the tub area just to see what we thought, and think they will work perfectly.
As usual, work on the new house jumps around a lot. We have multiple jobs on the go at any one time! Rob rented a sander and got to work sanding the upstairs floors. Once they were sanded he applied multiple coats of varathane.
Unfortunately, the floor he is standing on came out quite rough, and he is going to have to do it again. The one in the photo above came out beautifully though!
As each coat of varathane was drying, he'd move on to another job like finishing the frames in the downstairs windows.
And continued mudding and sanding the drywall.
And then - yes! On to priming and painting !!
The living room colour came out great, but it took me days to come to that conclusion. The colour changes constantly depending on the light and time of day, and was just such a major change that I kept thinking I'd picked the wrong colour. But slowly I have come to love it. I really prefer strong bright colours, so this is quite different, but it feels like it was a good choice.
Next on the list was the guest bathroom. We laid the floor tiles out on the living room floor to get an idea of the look and spacing.
Rob set up a tile cutting saw outside, and went to work.
It's a tight space to work in, and hard on the knees too! Luckily Rob has knee pads which help.
We put concrete board on the walls of the shower area, and a water proof finish, and cut out an inset for shelves for our shampoo, soaps etc. Then we laid down more of that fabulous floor tile. It looks like weathered wood, and no one can believe it's actually tile.
The photo below is just Rob messing around for one of my PhotoCoach challenge photos that I do each week. I took it after we put the shower stall tiles on the living room floor to see how they looked. We chose two different tiles to give the shower a bit of a more interesting look. Of course they were different thicknesses which made things interesting when it came time to put them up on the wall.
I was amazed to see how much planning has to go into tiling in order for it to look right. I found the process a bit nerve wracking though. I can't imagine having to pull them all off if you get it wrong! The special clips help to get the spacing right, but even then it was easy to get out of alignment. Rob probably didn't appreciate my questions about why we didn't just buy a prefab shower stall at this particular moment!
Some grouting was applied and voila !! Nothing to it - right Rob? They look a little beige in this photo but are actually an off white, with a nice matte finish. We found two textured glass tiles that we used for the inset shelves that should be easy to clean and they look good.
Then it was back to mudding the drywall.
Then sanding, priming, painting (an off white colour and I never choose off white, but we got it right!) and installing the toilet. I loved that the room got brighter and brighter as we finished it. I had worried that it seemed rather dark.
That toilet has been in a box on the porch for at least two years. It's nice to see the porch finally emptying out a bit!
We continued painting; working on the hallway and guest bedroom.
And cleaned up the house a bit (o.k. a lot!) and took a break and enjoyed the company of some friends for lunch. While everyone sees the house as "close to being finished", I know there is still a lot of work to do. But there is no question we've come a long way.
Then it was back to working on the guest bathroom, installing the shower controls, which include a fixed shower head, as well as a hand held shower head. We modified a glass shower door to give us a fixed glass wall on one end, as well as a sliding door that tucks neatly out of the way. It's impossible to get a good photo of this small space with my camera lens so I will try to get one with another camera soon. Rob has tested out the shower (and that linear drain thing!) and it works perfectly. Well - it does now - it took a little adjustment!
We still need to install the sink and finish the sink area, and a few other details, but for now have moved on to other areas of the house. We also ran out of tile to finish a tiny area outside of the shower stall, but will figure that out later too!
Next up was our bathroom. It was amazing to see the bathtub move off of our porch and into the new house. We bought the tub a couple of years ago as well, and hope we can still manage to climb into it when the time comes. It has kind of steep sides! For now, it sits in our bedroom area while we prepare the space to install it. (Along with a lot of other items I might add!) We are big fans of grab bars, so will make sure we install a few where necessary. We've been working out the tile job that's required, as well as figuring out tap installation etc. Lots to think about!
"We" keep changing our minds about the tub placement, but in the end, it is going where we first planned it, or at least where I always envisioned it. I think it's a good choice, but we'll see when it's all said and done!
June arrived and finally so did summer. We suddenly found ourselves dealing with extreme heat and high humidity. The river thankfully dropped in level and flow and we could cool off in the water whenever we needed to. I was thrilled to discover our wild irises had spread out along the edge, and the dragon flies and damsel flies were in full force, hopefully depleting our mosquito and black fly population!
The inside of the new house remains delightfully cool no matter how hot the weather. On the days when the cabin becomes stiflingly hot, the new house always feels like it's air conditioned!
As soon as the June heat wave broke, we took advantage of a cool day to move down some firewood. It's hard to think about firewood in June, but we needed to move down the remaining cords of split dry wood, to make room for the tandem load that needs to be split and stacked. The minute we have some cool weather we need to get at cutting up and splitting that pile so it can start drying for future years. We really need to have a wood shed for our fire wood, but there just isn't time to build one just yet!
Canada Day found us driving up to Killaloe for a fundraising duck race. Local firefighters dump hundreds of rubber duckies off of a bridge and into the creek where they float over the "falls" and eventually over to a finishing line. Each duck is numbered and you buy tickets with those numbers on them, and win a prize if your duck is one of the first three across the line! I used the race as an opportunity for one of my weekly PhotoCoach challenges which was fun.
There is just something hilarious about hundreds of little yellow rubber ducks....
The firefighters have to scoop up all the ducks after the race. It looks like quite the rescue operation!
Later that day we performed our own rescue here at the cabin. Every year phoebes nest on the outside ledge of our screened in porch. One of the baby phoebes jumped out of it's nest and got it's feet stuck in the screen, so Rob went out to save it.
As soon as he freed it from the screen if flapped mightily and landed on his chest. Sorry - but it's a pretty fuzzy photo shot through the screen!
When he tried to remove the baby bird, it flew off and landed at the base of a nearby tree. So Rob scrambled around (in the poison ivy I might add) to pick it up again and get it back in the nest. As soon as he got it near the nest, ALL the babies flew out and away....We can only hope it was time for them to go!
Early in July, we took a few days "off". We managed to split some of the pine and spruce firewood one morning, and got it stacked and drying ready for fall. Then we spent some time hauling some of our dozen boxes of books out of storage and went through them all, splitting them into "keep" piles, "donate" piles, and "recycle" piles. (Which we had already done once when we were in Navan - yikes!) We'd been worried that the ones we had chosen to keep hadn't fared well in storage but for the most part they were clean and dry. But, in the interest of not hanging on to so much stuff, we pared our books down quite a bit further. My stuffed animals didn't fare so well in storage, and I had to get rid of a number of them. I kept the three that were most dear to me, and will see if I can air them out enough to hold onto them. I've had this rabbit since I was maybe three years old, and the bear for maybe 30 years or more!
Some friends have given me some tips on cleaning them, and so far it seems to be working, as they no longer smell quite so musty.
I had a wee birthday during our vacation, (yikes I turned 60 !!) and enjoyed some time swimming in the very beautiful Round Lake, and indulged in some local pecan tarts, some time in the river, and some good food and wine. I love homemade pizza, so made a yummy crust and toppings, and due to the heat, we opted to try cooking it in the BBQ and it worked beautifully.
Rob made me a giant wind chime for my birthday (it's still a work in progress) and surprised me by getting our Kelly Moore painting up on the wall. (It's been rolled up in a tube under the bed for years, and he took the canvas out and stuck some weights in the tube so I wouldn't know he was working on it!)
It's our first piece of art to go up on the wall of the new house and it's fabulous. Of course it will have to be covered up when we get into drywalling the bedroom later this summer! We don't want piles of drywall dust on it!
And it was the first birthday I've had in over 40 years that my sweet mum-in-law was not around to wish me a Happy Birthday. One of many "firsts" I know, but I sure missed her call and hearing her voice.
And so, there, I've done it - posted an update to the blog, making sure to include lots of wildlife photos, photos of Rob, and some detailed updates. Sending it into the ether I guess...with lots of love to my second mum.....xoxooxoxo
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