Friendship and the month that went by too quickly

On a cold and snowy November day, I decided to look back over the last few months, and think about posting a blog.  My last blog posting was at the end of June, and as I went through my journal and photos this week, they reminded me of 28 degree C weather, the joy of buying fresh from the field strawberries and produce, the lushness of our forest in summer, and the pretty wildflowers. 

It was just the “pick me up” I needed on this late fall day that feels more like winter! And so, I sat down to go through notes and photos and write a blog update.

As we edged into July this past summer, we turned our attention to some work at the cabin.  We had friends arriving at the beginning of August, and more friends arriving in October, and had a few items at the cabin that needed taking care of before their arrivals.  The first task on our list was the washing machine.  Rob had a plan to move the taps that turned on the water for the washing machine from under the stairs, to a more convenient location near the washing machine itself.  At the same time he wanted to update the taps to a tidy and more modern quarter-turn style of valve, rather than the old (or dare I say vintage) style we have used all these years. While he was at it, he thought he might also replace some of the water lines.  He pulled out the unit and set to work, while I continued on my path of "spring cleaning" our house, which had somehow stretched into "summer cleaning".  A rolling ladder from our former Chilly Chiles warehouse and store gave me the opportunity to reach some of the higher beams in the house and I had been working slowly to give the house the best vacuuming job that I could manage.  Even with the ladder though, there were some areas I simply couldn't reach!

However, I would say that I really appreciated the stability of that ladder, and it made the entire task much more manageable. We strapped the vacuum securely to the ladder frame, and there were no worries about the vacuum falling off. Or me, for that matter!

It's funny now to look back at that photo though.  During the summer I barely think twice about powering up a vacuum.  Endless sunshine and bright sunny days make for a happy solar powered system and we don't worry about using power.  But I am writing this in November, one of the darkest months of the year, with short daylight hours, and using a vacuum is not often in my cards.  Instead I resort to a Bissel manual sweeper and a dust mop for floors.  Thorough house cleaning is not on my list in late fall or during the winter.

Meanwhile over at the cabin, the jobs had grown in number somewhat.  I expressed the wish for a paint job in the small bedroom, and as always, that demanded some patching and priming first.  Rob had decided to update a few areas with some much needed lights and light switches, and decided that the washing machine closet could also use a coat of paint now that the new taps were installed.  Of course the drywall there needed some patching and priming too.  Luckily, with the washing machine and dryer still sitting in the middle of the kitchen, it was the perfect time to do it!

Two years ago we had repainted much of the cabin, using up leftover paint from here.  Unfortunately, we didn't have any more leftover paint so had to go buy more for these last couple of projects.  While we were at the paint store we talked to the store owner about options for the cabin porch as well.  The floor of the porch hadn't been stained for maybe 25 years (?) and we were considering adding that to our list as well.

Fortunately, we managed to finish painting the small bedroom before a rather lengthy heat wave hit.  Between that, and air quality warnings from the horrific number of wildfires burning, we were happy enough to stay indoors, although I would have preferred to keep some windows open to air out the cabin and the paint odour a bit.  Still, with the windows closed the cabin remained quite cool, and I was able to work from room to room, cleaning, scrubbing and sorting and finding a few more projects for Rob!  

While I cleaned indoors, Rob set to giving the porch a good cleaning, including the screens and floor. Each spring the porch gathers quite a layer of dust and pollen, and although we vacuum it regularly, every now and then it requires a top to bottom scrubbing.  Rob has a small power washer and gave it a go on the screens, and it did a great job! And he didn't even seem to mind the occasional spray back of water given the heat outside.  As soon as the floor dried, and the temperature and humidity dropped enough so as to not cause any issues with our paint/stain drying time he took the time to paint the porch floor.  We were both happy with the new bright colour!

The longer we lingered in the cabin, the more jobs we found for ourselves.  A full length mirror that has been lying propped up against a wall got a fresh coat of paint, and was then installed on a wall of the larger bedroom. The second hand bakers rack we bought last year had a sad looking shelf that Rob cleaned up and painted to match the dining room chairs.  We hung up some art in the small bedroom, and some hooks for clothes. We finally took some time to sort out a few things here and there that we had tucked away over the years, when we couldn't decide whether they were useful or not.  Some items were rehomed, some went to the local second hand stores, and for now, some still remain.  And at that, we declared the cabin done for the year, as we needed to move on to some other outdoor jobs while we could.

I was pleased with the look of the small bedroom, especially as we had finally managed to paint a wall that had gone unpainted for more years than I can remember! 

That wall with the Coyote Cafe poster was host to a large bookshelf, so I'm sure few people ever really noticed it over the years, but after we moved the bookshelf six years ago, I was always reminded that the wall had never been painted, or primed.  Over the (many) years as well, the other walls have been subjected to more than a bit of wear and tear, and a new coat of paint (and a new colour) cleaned it up beautifully. It's a lovely cozy little room now.

Towards the end of July we were seeing less of the fox kits on our hill, but they still showed up from time to time.  Usually, if we spotted them, we would change direction so that they wouldn't get too used to human contact, and to allow them to continue doing whatever they were doing.  (Which more often than not appeared to be playing and messing around!) Despite this, I think they were pretty used to seeing us, although they would dash away eventually once they spotted us.

We were pretty surprised one day though to see one outside of our bedroom window, apparently cleaning itself while lying on our walkway!  

Throughout the summer my trail cam caught images of the family of foxes quite a bit as well, but usually at night when the adults, and eventually the kits would go out hunting.  My trail cam also showed a family of raccoons in the same area, and from time to time we would spot them during the day, resting in the crook of a large oak tree.

I love checking the trail camera as I never know what it may have filmed.  Every now and then I bring the unit home so I can clean it, and recharge the batteries.  After removing it from a tree one day, it wasn't until I arrived home that I realized I had a little tag along visitor.  I put it in a little container and brought it back to the tree, and hoped I hadn't disturbed it too much !

When I tried to do a web search to identify what kind of frog it was, the photo search insisted this was some kind of chocolate bar!  Eventually I was able to find out that this was a Spring Peeper, which is cool as I have never seen one. We certainly hear them in the spring, and it's a glorious sound. Not a peep out of it as I took it back to the tree though.  

Heat waves and tornado warnings continued into late July and beyond.  When the local SPCA put out a call for doggie pools to help keep their pups cool, I realized we still had one at the side of the cabin and offered it up.  Although it may have been useful I suppose for us, as the river was still running too high and too fast for us to venture in for a cool down!  But I figured their need was probably greater, and it was a perfect way to rehome another item from the cabin, so I took it up to their location, along with some of our older towels that I knew they were in need of as well.  

Our friends John and Linda arrived and despite the air quality advisories we managed to go for a few nice walks together, and caught up a bit on our lives over the past couple of years.  It was a fairly short visit, but we are always grateful to spend time with them, share some meals, and have a few good laughs.  We always look forward to the next time we have a chance to get together.

Their visit had really motivated us to get the cabin ready, so now we felt pretty well prepared for our next visit from friends in October.  They would be staying for a month in the cabin, but other than a last minute cleaning and tidy up, and some stocking of the fridge and cupboards, we were ready.  With that, we started to think about what else we needed to work on.  We always think we'll get a lot done in the summer, but we had a lot of hot days with temperatures in the mid 30's, constant air quality warnings, and some terribly dry conditions that were a concern with the number of wildfires growing.  

My little raised bed garden was struggling.  I seemed to have lots of tomatoes, but none of them were turning red.  I read up on it, and from what I could tell it may have been the extreme heat that was the cause.  My tomatillos seemed smaller and less plentiful, and none of my herbs were doing all that well either. On the plus side, the chipmunk had no interest in stealing my tomatoes this year.  I had been side dressing the plants with blood meal on the advice of a local gardener as a means to deter chipmunks.  As well I had been spraying the outside of the planter with vinegar, sprinkled hot pepper powder on the soil, and scattered wood ash around the perimeter to deter the raccoons on the advice of another gardener.  Although my trail cam revealed both raccoons and one of the young foxes checking out the planter at night a couple of times, none of my garden was damaged or harvested, so possibly my efforts worked.

I did however, discover a rather sweet toad taking up occasional residence in one of my herb pots!  I think it seemed to like the cooler damp soil, especially at night.

Even the porcupines looked like the heat was getting to them, dangling their feet down when they slept high up in the branch of a tree during the day.

The heat was slowing us down a bit as well.  We were hoping to do some work towards building a permanent firewood storage shed this year, and were still trying to figure out the exact placement, and how to go about it.  We began with regrading some of the gravel next to the shop, and thinking about various options.  It's not easy to have to think about snow clearing in the middle of August when it's 35 degrees C outside!  But we've learned from experience that it's a pretty big factor in the middle of January, so had to consider where the snow might slide down the shed roof, and how easy it would be to access areas with the tractor and snow blower.

Rob began to move some rocks around the area, in the hopes of building up a stone wall and some defining areas.  He tried to work when it was still shady there in the mornings, but there was no escaping the heat! When he discovered a tractor leak, he had to stop everything and work on fixing that first. 

With friends arriving in October for a month, we started talking about what we could realistically get done in the next few weeks.  For a short while, we switched gears to worrying about our tractor shelter.  After 13 years, the old cover was really showing signs of wear, and it was obviously in need of a new cover. We knew from experience that getting that new cover on would not be an easy task. We began questioning whether the shelter could be in a more functional spot.  If so, we knew we should move the shelter to the new location first, and then  try to wrangle the new cover on.  We picked a new placement for it, but soon realized that the area we had chosen would require some tree removal and some fill to be brought in first. And the new spot would require a different means of charging the tractor battery in the winter.  I think that's when our brains exploded. Every job we tried to think about, required a number of other jobs first!  We decided to risk leaving the shelter the way it is for one more year, and think about everything during the winter when we had more time to research everything. And so, we went back to our original plan of working on the firewood shed.

Despite the heat, that meant moving more rocks and gravel.

We slipped into August, which is usually a very lovely month, but one that reminds us that summer is on the wane.  Already the evenings were slowly getting darker earlier.  We made sure to take time in the evening to sit out at the point near the river and unwind after our day's efforts.  The river had finally dropped to a perfect level for us to be able to go for an occasional dip to cool off.  Some evenings we would put our chairs in the river, and sit and watch the sun slip slowly down, while enjoying the sounds of the river, dragonflies all around us, and the occasional sight of a fish jumping.

With local produce farms in full swing I also tried to take advantage of some of the offerings and made my first refrigerator pickled jalapenos. They came out pretty good, despite my trepidations, and I can't wait to make more next year!  My tomatillos were beginning to reach their potential so I made some tomatillo salsa for the freezer.  Sadly I had to buy cilantro as mine was struggling in the heat.  My tomatoes were finally beginning to ripen, so I made some roasted tomato sauces for the freezer as well.  

We usually plan on making some home made beer once the weather cools down, as it's simply too hot to brew beer in the house in July.  As soon as the weather began to cool a bit, we looked at placing an order from our regular beer making supplier, only to discover they had sold the company and the new owner was not ready to provide the ingredients we needed.  We scrambled around to find a new Canadian supplier, and then waited for their products to arrive.  Rob usually makes a nice dark stout for us to enjoy at Christmas, and we began to think we might not have one made in time this year.  Luckily our order arrived, and Rob took the time to prepare a few new brews.  It takes time to make a batch, and it then requires a couple of weeks for the fermentation, after which it then gets bottled. Depending on the beer, it needs at least a few weeks for it to age before we can try it.  And a good stout sometimes requires more aging, so we knew we needed to get at it!

As soon as we had our gravel graded, some rocks in place where we wanted them, and mapped out a location for the wood shed, Rob set up his portable saw mill and began sawing some of the logs he had saved to use in the build.  

It was slow work though, and he discovered he needed to do some much needed servicing on the saw unit.  As well, as the work progressed, it became obvious that some of the logs we had saved were no longer in the best of shape.  Those were moved to another pile to be cut up into firewood next spring.

Meanwhile I was thinking about art projects to work on in October when our friends arrived.  When a local online auction posted some mannequins up for sale, I put in a few small bids.  I have wanted to paint a mannequin for a long time, ever since I had seen some fabulous ones that an artist I admire had painted.  When I won two of the mannequins, plus a couple of legs ( ! ) we took the time to go pick them up.  We never did manage to paint them in October, but no matter. I will have a chance to work on them this winter.  In the meantime, they just sort of hang around wherever we put them.

We definitely have some fun moving them around and trying to amuse our friends when we do video calls.

But they won't look like this for much longer.  If you do a web search on "painted mannequins", you will see some pretty cool art.  I am hoping mine will work out half as well!  They need to be cleaned up, patched and primed, but I can't wait to start painting them.

All too soon, September arrived.  And we began to feel that we were running out of time to do all the summer projects we still had in mind.  We usually get a lot of our pre-winter tasks done in October, but with friends arriving, we wanted to spend as much time as possible with them. We realized that we should probably do some of the October tasks in September while we could.  Rob continued to saw wood, thinking perhaps our friends would enjoy building a wood shed, 😉 but seriously he was beginning to think that the firewood shed would likely not get built again this year.  He stopped and took the time to service the generator and the tractor and anything else that logically shouldn't be left until November to do.  Some jobs are simply better to do when it's not freezing cold, or snowing outside! 

When high winds knocked down some of my garden, and frost warnings popped up in the weather forecast, I realized I had better speed up some of my harvesting.  The winds also knocked down a couple of trees.  This one is the picture below snapped, and we will pull it out in the spring for firewood. Because it's hung up, it won't deteriorate at all as it's not lying on the ground.  But we are hoping that gravity will bring it down the rest of the way by spring.

The colours in the trees were already turning and suddenly we noticed a change in the evening light.

Corn cobs were appearing in the trees, and along the fence line as various critters were raiding our neighbour's corn field.  Some were being consumed, but no doubt some were being stashed away for winter supplies. Not long after I took this picture, the corn field was harvested, but we still find corn and corn cobs on our walks.

In the meantime, the squirrels were busy.  This one dropped it's stash.  Darn!

I was busy too, stashing away homemade soups, chili, spaghetti sauces, salsas and cookies in our freezer, ready for our friend's arrival.  Hard frost warnings prompted me to strip all the remaining tomatillos and ripe tomatoes from the garden while I could.  

I still had lots of green tomatoes though, and read that they would ripen if I stored them in newspaper in a box.  My neighbour who has a large garden agreed that this method would work, so I tried it.  Sure enough, my green tomatoes slowly ripened.  I would say that some were not as sweet as a sun ripened tomato, but they were still very good.  I was glad that I had pulled out what I could harvest, as the promised frost arrived and not much that was left in the garden survived.  Still, despite a few cold nights, it was an amazingly sunny and quite warm September.  Even the frogs were still happily hanging out in the river.

Before we knew it, the end of September had arrived.  We did a quick clean of the house, and Rob tidied up his workshop in preparation for some woodworking projects. We did a final clean of the cabin, made the beds, left some fun art supplies, and stocked the fridge and cupboards with some necessities.  Our friends Jan and Marina would be tired, we knew, by the time they arrived after long flights, delays and layovers and wouldn't be up for shopping for groceries until the day following their arrival at the earliest.

If I thought the summer had gone by far too quickly,  I was about to be amazed at how quickly October would pass.  We had been talking about this trip for the past two years, every since Jan and Marina had visited us in 2023 for 10 days.  At that time, we had all agreed that 10 days simply wasn't long enough and they promised to come for a longer time next visit.  When we picked them up at the airport this time, we felt like we had a long leisurely month of adventures ahead of us. None of us were quite prepared for how fast the days would go by!

Despite our warnings of cold temperatures, and even the possibility of an October snowfall, the weather was quite beautiful, and it was 26 degrees C when they arrived!  We spent the first day getting vegetables and fruit at a local farm, did some groceries at a nearby town, enjoyed a nice coffee out, and came home for a good dinner and chatted constantly as we caught up on some of our respective news.  My attempts at learning German had not improved my spoken language, but I was pleased that I could understand more German words than I did the last time they visited.  Most of the time we all spoke English, with Jan only needing to translate a bit for Marina and us now and then.

I won't attempt a day by day recording of our time together, but will say that we found time to do a local art studio tour, went on some of our favourite drives on backroads where we admired the changing leaf colours, and spent time in some of the lovely small towns in the area.  We visited rivers and some of the many lakes. 

We shopped at local stores, farms, and craft markets. We ate at a few of our favourite local restaurants (with some repeat visits to some!) and bought sweets at a couple of the best bakeries.  We ate most of our meals though here at home, all of us cooking together, and bringing a bit of our various cultures to the table.  (With thanks to J&M for providing some of the following photos.  I am often hopeless not only at pointing my camera at actual people, but at documenting time with friends. I did however manage to do a bit of both on occasion!)

Marina and I spent time in my studio, where we painted and stamped on canvas and denim patches and paper.  We sewed some of the patches on clothing.  

Rob and Jan vanished into the workshop where they sharpened kitchen knives, made a prototype cigar box guitar, and a cutting board for Marina.  

Marina and I painted the "guitar" for fun, taking turns to add some different layers on.

We went for a nice long hike on some of our favourite trails, and stopped for snacks outside on a glorious sunny day.  

We went for almost daily walks here, as well as on the nearby roads.  The weather was completely amazing, and we were happy to sit out by the river whenever we could. 

We shopped for more groceries, and made more delicious meals.

We took a day and moved down a good amount of firewood, after constructing a temporary shelter for it.  (Yup, another temporary wood shelter again this year after all!) Jan surprised us with rock sculptures that he made while waiting for us to bring down more firewood for him and Rob to stack.

Surprisingly Jan and Marina had met some Canadians during an earlier trip to Switzerland, and it turned out they lived less than an hour away, so they took the time to go visit them one afternoon.  It is indeed a small world! 

We listened to lots of wonderful music as Jan played guitar.  

As the temperatures began to drop in the evenings we would sit by the woodstove, sip homemade beer,  and chat away. Occasionally we would entertain ourselves after dinner with tricky games of Jenga.  We cheered each other on and we laughed - a lot.  

We all watched one of the local online auctions and put in bids, winning some treasures for ourselves. When we learned that the pick up date for the items was after Jan and Marina's departure date, the owners kindly agreed to let us pick them up early, so that we could avoid having to mail them later.  

The month that had stretched out endlessly before us though, all too soon came crashing to an end. We made plans for one more trip to a local town, one more lunch out together, one more walk along the river.  We lamented a few things; no time to use the knowledge from building the prototype guitar to build an actual one.  We hadn't had a chance to paint mannequins or any of the doors I thought we would start on.  I think we all still had some meals we wanted to cook and share.  Rob was hoping to record more of Jan's guitar playing.  There were still road trips to be had. But mostly we just lamented how much we were going to miss each other.  When I look back at my journal of our days spent together, it almost feels like a dream.  Before we knew it though, we were back at the airport, with teary hugs, and bidding "auf wiedersehen" and Rob and I then drove home through heavy rains that matched our somewhat somber mood.  The house truly felt completely empty when we arrived home.  

As I look back though at our time together, I am reminded of how fortunate we are to have such amazing friends, to be able to spend an entire month together and never want it to end, and to hope that we have another opportunity to get together soon.

Rob and I decided we would ease into the beginning of November somewhat, but the weather which had been unusually warm and dry for the past few months, was apparently about to abruptly change. It looked like we had a couple of good weather days followed by endless rain and colder temperatures.  I reluctantly headed over to the cabin and began the process of shutting it down for the winter.  It felt like I had only just prepared it for friends, and it was hard to believe I was washing bedding and linens and packing everything away again so soon.  When I came across a sketch book I had left in the cabin, I was completely enchanted with this page that had been filled in.  And yes, more than a little teary as well.

I hope Jan and Marina can return soon, and fill in many more pages of this book.

When the weather forecast suddenly mentioned snow storms arriving within the week, we realized we needed to get ourselves into high gear.  No more time to mope and miss friends, we had some work ahead of us.  As well, the clocks had changed, and our daylight hours were now even shorter. 

We moved all the rest of the firewood down, and got it stacked away and put tarps up on the entrance side of the shelter.  Pulled out all the whimsical garden items, chimes, plant pots etc., and tucked them away for another year.  Moved all the garden chairs onto the cabin porch for the winter.  Sighed a lot - was it just a week ago we were all sipping coffee by the river?  It was hard to imagine.  

As soon as I finished doing my part at the cabin, Rob drained all the water pipes there, poured in plumbing anti freeze and turned off the heat.  We always put some tarps up around the porch to help keep the snow out so we managed to get those up too.  We brought down our snow shovels and got the snow blower on the tractor.  Swapped out our mats in the car for winter ones.  Of course, I had booked to get our snow tires on, but it would be the day after the forecasted snow storm.  Fortunately, although we did get snow, we missed much of the storm.  Still, we did have to shovel, and plow, and clear the solar panels. It was such a change after such a nice few months that I just kept feeling like I wasn't quite ready for it.  We swapped out raincoats for winter coats, brought out mitts and gloves and toques and winter boots.  Tucked away our sandals and river shoes, and finally admitted to ourselves that it was possibly going to be an early winter.

Usually the first snow fall of the season doesn't linger.  This year it did, and for a time the roads were slick and icy, and more snow fell.  Freezing rain warnings followed.  

As soon as the roads improved, we made sure to pick up a few more winter provisions, took care of some appointments in town, and tried to get into our "winter groove".  Our solar power is hanging in much better with the new batteries, but of course we still need to use a generator on occasion after a few dark and dreary days in a row.  It always takes a while after what seems like endless sunshine, to get back into the mode of monitoring our power.

And so here we are, November almost over, and just a few short weeks away from winter solstice.  In the last few days we have relaxed somewhat, as we feel prepared now for winter. After months of not even thinking about heating the house, we are back into the routine of getting the wood stove on in the afternoon, and keeping firewood and kindling nearby outside.  I have been working on some home made Christmas cards, and looking at recipes for festive meals. We've both been talking about winter projects; me in my studio, Rob in his workshop.   I think we are both looking forward to some creative time, and a chance to think about some projects we'd like to do in the year to come. 

In the meantime, it's been lovely to look back at the last few months, and to have the time to go through my journals and photos again. I may at times wish I had taken more photos, but I always say that drinking in a moment in time is always more important to me than recording it.  Writing this blog gives me a chance to relive some of those special moments again, for which I'm grateful.

If I don't manage to post again before the end of this year, I hope everyone has a lovely Christmas season, and wish you all Peace, Love and Joy for the New Year.