Naked Ladies and Burning Bushes

Jacob, the golden retriever-on-loan and I spent last weekend together at the country estate while Chuckles was away on a hunting trip.  We enjoyed a visit from some friends from Quadra Island who were in town to see a show with their daughter and her husband.  All four made the drive to the country to check out our new place and have a visit.  They also have a small manufacturing business which they relocated from Kelowna to Quadra Island seven years ago.  When I feel overwhelmed by our move, I only have to think of the logistics they had to face and it puts our venture into perspective.

I am enjoying the continuing crop of raspberries that are still producing just enough for a handful for a munch or to put on my cereal in the morning.  I expect that will now be over as we have had some rain, but it has been a sweet treat.

 

Still some raspberries ripening - enough to put on your cereal in the morning!

   

Another of the fall pleasures at the country estate is the low flying flocks of migrating geese that whiz by in formation early mornings and early evenings.  You hear them before you see them, with their cacophony of honking.  I can’t help myself, if I am in the house, I run outside so that I can be underneath them as they fly over.  They are often so low, that I can see their legs tucked up close to their bodies, and their noise is so loud it’s quite thrilling.  If it’s early in the morning when I am still in bed, and they fly directly over the house, I can see them through the skylight above the bed.  This season my choir is singing “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music and one line is “wild geese that fly with the moon on their wing, these are a few of my favorite things”.   I get it.  They’re one of my favorite things, too! 

And of course nothing is more therapeutic to me than being in the garden.  Gardening and choir practice go well together   -    I put in my earbuds and sing, dig, prune, water and weed to my heart’s content!  At the country estate there is some “buffer zone” between me and the neighbors.  In the city, I would suddenly realize I was in the backyard belting out my music, probably driving all the neighbors nuts!

 

So with my earbuds in and Jacob nearby,  I tackled pruning a large, overgrown rosebush and another shrub at the side of the house.  I am not a fan of prickly plants, so I have never really been one for roses, but I also have a hard time "doing-in" a plant,  so the rose bushes around the place have been given a reprieve.  But I swear if I get too many more pokes and scratches, they could be goners!

 

  

Overgrown rosebush at side of house

 



 

Same garden - after



 

  

On Saturday we cleaned up more tree branches and added them to the burn pile which had accumulated since the previous weekend when we had taken down some leaning, rotting trees.  Then it was too foggy to burn, so we covered the pile with a tarp to burn later. 

 

 

Beyond the barn is the tarp covered burn pile, hard to tell but as tall as me!

 

Since burning is only allowed through October, time was of the essence.  Chuckles was going away, so he mixed me up a batch of accelerant, one that would burn slowly and not cause an explosion, and left the burning up to me.  Which I was fine with until my Dad got word and advised me not to do it without Chuckles being there.   That planted the seed of doubt in my mind, and burning barns, forest fires and other worst case scenarios danced around in my head all day Saturday.  Every time I took another load to the fire pile, I stared it down like it was my opponent.  I invited older son and his step daughter Heidi to come for dinner and a bonfire.  In the end, it was absolutely fine, it was a huge roaring blaze that we monitored until bedtime, and in the morning there were just a few smoldering embers left. 

 

Heidi spent Saturday night with Jacob and I and we carved her pumpkin and played gin rummy until late.  She and Jacob slept in Sunday morning, then we took Jacob for a walk before Heidi had to go home.

Heidi designing her pumpkin face

 



 

Heidi and Jacob on our Sunday morning walk

 

 

I am a plant rescuer.  At the garden center, I am the person that buys all the bedraggled, half dead specimens off the clearance table and takes them home, loves them, and brings them back to health.  We have a little azalea that Chuckles found in a pot, abandoned at the park, half brown with most of the leaves missing.  He brought it back to me.  I promised it that it was going to a better place, and took it out to the country estate.   I gave it a nice feed of well composted horse manure when I planted it, and it is positively beaming with health and happiness now, I swear!

 

 My latest rescues are a couple of garden mums that I picked up from the nursery on Sunday.  I am in the process of resurrecting the central driveway garden at the country estate that was full of weeds and cracked and depleted soil when we moved in.  I have added a mountain of the composted horse manure to the soil, and dug it all in.  I now have over 3 dozen daffodil bulbs planted throughout, thanks to the seniors at the hall where choir practices.  In the fall they sell bags of bulbs for $2 each,  and the fewest bulbs per bag I have bought is 12.  One bag this year had about 20 small bulbs in it!  Such a bargain!  The mums are side by side near the big rock, and a I got a few pansies to add a bit of colour.  I will continue to build the garden up as I find and add larger rocks around the perimeter, but at least there is some colour in it now, and in spring it will be alive with daffodils.

 

Driveway Garden with Plants

 

 

One of Chuckles buddies added a small headless plastic cross-legged girl ornament beside my naked lady statue in the driveway garden.  He put it there as a joke, but I’m leaving it.  Perhaps the two “ladies” will attract more as time goes by.

 

Headless Ornament added as a joke

 

My garden statue

 

This coming weekend is the earnest start to the barn renovation, which is more Chuckles department than mine, I am just the cheerleader and kitchen staff for that endeavor.  If the weather is good, I hope to do more work in the garden, if it rains there is more painting to be done inside.  Needless to say, there will be something to keep me busy.  

 

One-Dog-At-A-Time

Our one-dog-at-a-time doggy daycare is pretty busy these days.

Last week a golden retriever named Kooler practically fell into our laps.

He was being dog-sat by an acquaintance of ours who is from a business down the street, and she brought him into our shop knowing we have a soft spot for dogs.  Chuckles walks every day at lunch anyway, so he began going over to their shop and picking Kooler up at lunch time, taking him on a walk, then bringing him back to our shop to visit while we had lunch.  Then he would walk him back after we had our tanks topped up with doggy love. 

 

Kooler doing froggie yoga

 

Kooler

Then the dog sitter asked if we would like to have Kooler for the weekend.  Hell yeah!  So Kooler and all his belongings were picked up last Friday night and we took him out to the country estate for a weekend of fun and frolick country style.  Hoping that all went well and there were no incidents that required veterinary attention.  After all, we don't even know who owns this dog!



Saturday was really a day of cleaning up from Chuckles hunting trip and the house full of company on Thanksgiving weekend.  I also baked a couple of apple pies with apples picked from the other apple tree, which conveniently ripens about a month behind the tree that is more out in the open.  So while I was indoors doing my thing, Kooler and Chuckles were busy outside, winterizing and covering the trailer and putting things back where they belonged.  I went out for a couple of hours and picked up branches that had come down over the last few weeks, from wind and weather.  Kooler just couldn't decide which stick was the best, and if I left my wheelbarrow unattended for a couple of minutes, he would practically empty it!

 

My wheelbarrow from which the sticks kept getting stolen

 

 

Spot the dog amongst the leaves

At last, early in the evening, he  laid down to sleep, after being busy all day.  For 15 minutes.   We had friends over for dinner, and when they arrived Kooler, Mr. Personality, was back in business!

Sunday we spent the day taking down some trees that were leaning precariously toward our house.  Kooler had to stay indoors while the trees were actually being cut down, where he stood at the French doors and whined and cried at seeing Chuckles out there without him.  Once the trees were on the ground though, both Kooler and I went out to help with the removal.  No little wheelbarrow for this job!  We hitched the trailer to the Sidekick and in no time had it filled to the brim. 

 Endless stick play

 

 

A load of branches

 



Kooler has gone back now, but Jacob is with me for the weekend, while his family is away.  He is sleeping beside my desk as I write this, but earlier he was laying out back, with his stick at the ready, in case a walk was imminent!  Our employee took him for a walk and ball play at the park at lunch, so he is getting plenty of fun and attention.  We are heading to the country estate tonight.

Jacob, ready with his stick

 

 

Jacob, wondering if I have a minute to play ball



We will have a huge bonfire, if the fog holds off, as we were unable to burn the trees last weekend with the dense fog that persisted.  I don't hold out much hope for this weekend either really as this week the fog has slithered into the harbour each evening enveloping the low lying areas.  We will see.

There is more painting to do, too.  When will it end?  I may tackle the hallway in between burning piles and doggy walks.  Or maybe start hanging some of our pictures, which are still in stacks leaned up around the living room.

Or maybe I will pull out my guitar and play, it hasn't been touched since all this moving business started.



 

A Look Back on Thanksgiving

So much happening that it leaves me no time to blog!

 

 

I have a couple of things to share here from last week when we got back from Mexico.  Wait, back up you say?  OK.  I spent a week in Nuevo Vallarta with my sister and our parents, returning home on Friday Oct 11th just in time for the Thanksgiving weekend.

You may laugh at this, I know I did.  But I actually wrote myself a note to remind myself that we live in Langley now and left it on the seat of my car, parked near the airport.  We were arriving late, I knew I would be tired and possibly stressed, and I was afraid of going to North Van on auto-pilot before realizing that I should have gone to Langley!

We had our Thanksgiving Dinner on Saturday night because young son and his girlfriend had a wedding to attend on the Sunday.  So Saturday night eleven of us gathered around the dining table in the new house to give thanks, including Chuckles who rolled in from his hunting trip just a couple of hours before the dinner was ready.   As well as my kids and their partners, Julie's daughter and Mom and Dad, we invited my boys step-sister Emily and her husband Ranj (Ranjit). 

My Dad has spent the past 10 years working on his memoirs, and in the past couple of years, I have helped him by typing up the text from voice recordings he  made, and that helped to move things along.  He sorted through the archive of family pictures and inserted relevant photographs as well.  Just prior to our Mexico trip, Dad picked up the printed version of his memoirs, a huge milestone in his life!  The Thanksgiving weekend was his opportunity to hand over autographed copies to me and each of my sons. Not only do the memoirs make very interesting reading, as Dad has had a wide range of life experiences, and he is an excellent writer as well, but they are a reference document for future generations of our family to refer to.  I know I learned a lot of our family history through the transcription I did, and I look forward to sitting down and reading the entire document from cover to cover.  That may entail another trip to Mexico, which is the only place I have the luxury of reading for hours on end!

 

 

Front and Inside Back Covers of Dad's Memoirs

Dad was raised in India, and went to Bishop Cotton school in a town called Simla.  Ranjit, Emily's husband, is a very personable young guy, and his Indian heritage and Dad's history from India have given them a common bond.  Ranj was very excited to try to get his grandfather and my Dad together for a lunch on the Monday of the Thanksgiving weekend.  Unfortunately that didn't work out as Ranj's grandfather was leaving for India the next day and needed time to pack.  But what was quite amazing was that Ranj's Grandmother also went to Bishop Cotton school and she and my father had met each other in the 1980's when they both attended a school reunion there!  So there are plans afoot for them to get together in the spring.  Such a coincidence!

I also got the sweetest note from the people who bought our city house.  It hung on my fridge for all to read and enjoy during the Thanksgiving weekend, and now it is on the corkboard near by desk.  I had sent them a change of address card and wrote them a little note saying I hoped they loved the house as much as we had and to call us if they had any questions about anything.  In reply, I got their letter, complete with photos and a bit about them.  They just got married two weeks before taking over the house.  They love the space and will be putting in a suite.  He's a carpenter and can do all the work himself.  They have a baby daughter and plan to have more children. 

I have no doubt that the house is in good hands with a family that will grow in it and love it too.  And I am a bit surprised at how much it means to me to know this!  I haven't had any pangs of missing the house, but I did love living there.

 

Letter from new homeowners

 

 



 

Last Post Before Vacation!

I'm a bit behind with my blogging, I know!  Who knew there would be pressure in the blogging world, apparently there is no escaping it!!

The weekend visit with both out sets of parents was a big success.  They came into the city mid afternoon, picked up keys to the country estate and headed off there to get dinner organized. 

When we hit the highway at 5pm traffic was pretty much at a standstill due to an earlier accident and rainy weather causing more havoc.  It took us 2+ hours to get from the city to the country estate, where the parents were holding dinner until we arrived.  We need not have worried about them, as they had the wine flowing liberally and were having a great visit as they waited for us!  Shortly after our arrival we sat down to a sumptuous dinner of roasted pork loins and lots of garden fresh veggies from Chuck's parents place in Pemberton.  Followed by apple pie and ice cream. 

 

 

Parents Visiting

Saturday morning, Mom and Dad unpacked my good china and got the dining room sorted out for me which Chuckles parents went for a walk.  Afterwards  we piled into Chuckles parents mini-van and I  took them for a country tour.  For my parents it was a trip down memory-lane, including a drive by our farm where I grew up.  Dad insisted we turn the car around and pull off the road out front of the old place so he could have a good look.  It has changed a lot, with many trees removed now, and a new house built in what was our side pasture.  The old house still stands, but it looks pretty forlorn now.

We toured past the massive horse properties that have sprung up everywhere, and we stopped for a shopping break at the Co-op.  The Co-op was mostly a feed mill/store with a small general store attached when I was girl, but it has been expanded into a large grocery/department store with a massive parking lot.  I went to the office with the intention of taking over my family's old co-op membership number, but that was less-straightforward than I thought it would be, so I just signed up for a new number.  However, I did learn that my families old number was still active, so my Dad got in touch with them and found out that there's more than $200 in dividends payable to him, so he has embarked on the paperwork trail that will eventually lead to getting these paid out.  (They said they "might" waive the usual 6 month waiting period to claim old dividends, knowing that he is 88 years old!!)

We went back home and had lunch on the deck, enjoying the sunshine.  After lunch Chuckles parents went off to Harrison for an overnight stay, my Mom and Dad went for some quiet time, and I cooked up the evening meal as Saturday was Chuckles birthday, so we had a family dinner which included my oldest son and his partner.  Before dinner, Jason got a ride-on lawnmower lesson so he mowed the grass, then we all played bocci ball around the yard for an hour before we lost the sun. 

 

The birthday boy giving Jason instructions on the mower



We had a huge curry feast for dinner, at the request of the birthday boy, topped off with birthday cake.  After dinner we had a big bonfire out in the back pasture, burning off a lot of the branches and trees we have trimmed since we bought the country estate.   All in all a fun day for everyone.

Sunday is typically soup making day for me.  I made a big pot of vegetable soup and Chuck's parents arrived back at the house just at lunchtime.  They had picked up corn on the cob and some sausage, so we had another huge meal, it's a wonder I am not as big as a house with all the food we seem to eat!   After lunch Chuckles parents left for home.  Jason came over for coffee and so did an old girlfriend of mine who I knew Mom and Dad would be delighted to see.  So we had a relaxing afternoon visiting before it was time to drive back into the city to take Mom and Dad to the ferry.

We are finding living in our workspace to be quite comfortable and convenient.  We have been able to partition off a large space as our living area, and with kitchen and bathroom facilities right here, we have everything we need!  We have been going up to the rec center for our swims regularly and we are walking distance to shops, the beach, parks and everything.  Heck, this is so comfortable, we might just put the country estate up for sale!  (Kidding)

Last weekend I painted the foyer at the country estate, leaving only the hallway and laundry room as areas still to be painted imminently.

 

Foyer before

 

Foyer almost finished

 I was tallying up the paint we have used this summer between getting the city house ready to sell and getting the country estate decorated the way we want it, and here is the list as far as I can recall:

City House:
garage = 4 gallons
exterior - 8 gallons
interior - 4 gallons ( of which 2 gallons were left for use at country estate)
fence stain - 1 gallon
Country estate:
ceiling paint - 4 gallons
Primer - 9 gallons
Wall Colours - 17 gallons
so far: 47 gallons - yikes!

I estimate that it takes about 2 hours to apply a gallon, so that is approaching 100 hours of painting!  Cripes, anyone need any painting done, I truly can say I have experience!

In between all of the painting I have managed to fill 3 above ground planters with composted soil and have planted garlic and lettuce.  The lettuce bed has a corrugated plastic sheet overtop of it, so it acts like a greenhouse, and I have little lettuces sprouting now.  I am not sure how they will fare as the temperature gets colder, and they will have to survive without watering for two weeks as I am going on vacation with my family next week.  I hope they do ok.

This week has been filled with the last minutes preparations for our vacation.  I think I am ready!  Bags are packed, nails are polished and my tip money is in my purse.  All inclusive, here I come.