April flies by...

Wow, time flies when you're busy!

Have not had a lot of time to sit down and blog, I have been busy doing stuff around the house.

I built my garden frames, hauled a whole lot of horse manure and filled the frames up. That was two days of back-breaking labour over Easter. I had to get it done in two days because a snowstorm was forecast and I wasn't looking forward to hauling wet manure.



I did a bit of planting, some indoor transplants and peas, greens, onions and garlic outdoors. Three of the eight garden frames are mostly done.

I had the spruce trees cut down. That was a bit traumatic, I miss the trees. I have to keep reminding myself of the benefits of their absence, but still, I miss them. A lot. I am hoping that as everything else greens up I will get over it, and I will be grateful for the sunshine in the winter. But in the meantime I try not to look at where they used to be. My neighbours think it's great that they're gone.


The black dot at the top of one of the trees on the left (below) is a crow. Wouldn't you know it, a pair of crows started building a nest in the trees the week before they were felled. I hope they didn't lay any eggs.


Two left (the crows' nest is about 10 ft down from the top of the tree on the right)...


...and all gone (this pic conveys very well how bleak it looks without them).


I started digging up the grass overgrowing the slate pathway to the front door. More back-breaking labour, and I am maybe half done. I think it will look good when it is done but it sure is hard. The slate path in the back yard is in a little better shape, but part of it will need digging up too.

All the grass sod that I am digging up I am transplanting under the pine trees on the north side of the house. I don't really expect it to survive there, but one can hope.

The boys that cut down the spruce trees turned the branches into mulch. They took most of it away but I kept a pile that I have used to mulch around the garden frames. There is about 30-35 wheel barrow loads that I kept, I used around 25 barrow loads around the garden frames and am stockpiling the rest. There was close to two cord of firewood when they were done, but I let them haul it away because I am reluctant to burn softwood in my woodstove. In any case, I still have more than two cord of hardwood firewood left over from the last two winters.


The fellow who owns the field behind my back yard mowed it the other day for the first time; after he was done I raided his pile of clippings to use as mulch on the garden. I figure that an April mowing is not going to have much in the way of grass or weed seeds in it. Some of his clippings from last year are well on their way to being compost, I took some of that as well.

Hapi and I have explored some new walking places:

- the gravel pit on the dykes in New Minas

- the Gaspereau River west of White Rock

- the dykes between Wolfville and Port Williams

- a trail through the woods up Gaspereau mountain to the new Wolfville reservoir (the old one is in town, just down the way from my house).

Hapi loves the Gaspereau River, I am pretty fond of it too. I don't know how far the trail goes, after an hour I turn back. I suspect that it goes a lot further and maybe one day I'll pack a lunch and see just how far. On the return walk Hapi crisscrosses the river because it is shallow enough for her to wade across. By the time we get back to the road where we started, she's on an island in the middle of the river at a point where it is too deep to wade to shore.

The first time she stood in the middle of the river waiting for me to rescue her; when that didn't happen she returned to the island and proceeded to hunt for critters. I guess she figured she'd just have to make the best of it. I walked up river to the back end of the island and called her to a point where she could wade across. Twice now she's done that, you'd think she'd learn.




Hapi also loves the muddy ditches out on the dykes; she goes down into them to hunt for critters and comes out absolutely covered in black stinky mud. She even buries her snout in the mud. All her white fur turns black. It's a good thing she doesn't come indoors is all I can say.

Today we went out on the dykes and she didn't get quite so muddy. Then we went up to the Acadia woods and she romped in the brook to shed what little mud she had picked up.


Here's a picture I took of some posts out on the salt grass. You can just make them out, they stand about two feet above the mud (you may have to click on the pic to see a larger version).


There used to be a lot more of them all along the dyke, they were for drying hay. Back in the day farmers harvested the salt grass out on the tidal marsh beyond the dyke, they put it up on the posts to dry and I guess they fed it to livestock. I don't think they've done that in at least 40 years, probably longer. I remember seeing the posts when I first arrived here in the early '70s, but they weren't being used then. Some people around here still use the salt grass as mulch in their gardens.

We go walking in the Acadia woods several times a week. We check on the fish in the pond at the south end. They've been there for several years and all four of them made it through this past winter. Hapi caught a glimpse of them last fall and has been keen to look for them ever since. But since she can't wade into this pond the fish are safe.

Some time this spring some students at the university started building a structure in the woods under a fallen tree. Every weekend they do a bit of work on it, so it is fun to go down on Monday to see what they have added.



We had one last April snow storm on Easter Sunday, but it was pretty much gone by Monday night.

(my lettuce in the snow)

Since then it has been quite dry and warm, people are actually looking forward to a good week of rain that is supposed to start today. I've had to water my seeds outdoors.

Tomorrow we are having a meeting to discuss the annual spring kayak-camping trip. I am not sure if I will go or not. We shall see.

A very busy morning

Busy morning today. Got up early to go to the sawmill, I had called them a couple of weeks ago about getting lumber for new garden frames and was told that the guys are in the woods all day and if I want to talk to them I have to come early. I hate early. So today, two weeks later, I finally drag myself out there at 8am. Took Hapi with me so she wouldn't howl while I was gone, but had to put her in the front of the truck so there'd be room for the lumber in the back. And I couldn't let her out once we got to the sawmill due to the big black sawmill dog and the mud. Even if she managed not to get into a fight with the sawmill dog she would still have tracked mud into the truck cab. Mud in the back is one thing, mud in the front quite another.

They cut up some boards for me and loaded them into the truck. While that was happening the sawmill owner senior enquired as to my marital status, he opined that it was good for a single woman to have a Big Dog. I wondered if the big black sawmill dog was a statement about his own marital status or what.

I was home by 8.30am and Hapi never got out of the truck until then, I don't think she was impressed. After unloading the boards into the shed I put her back in the truck, this time in the back, and headed off to New Minas for errands and the Kentville Ravine for her walk.

The first stop was to pick up duck eggs for Easter Egg painting. Duck eggs are very good for this purpose because they are much smoother than chicken eggs. White chicken eggs are hard to come by these days, the ones in the grocery stores are all stamped and people who sell farm eggs these days only sell brown eggs.

The duck egg lady also sells dog food, she came out to give Hapi treats. Hapi busted the screen on one of the truck cap windows last year so she can poke her head out, I haven't bothered to repair it. So, the duck egg lady hands Hapi a dog treat and Hapi takes it delicately in her mouth and pulls her head in and deposits the treat on the floor and sticks her head out again for more. In this way she soon had a pile of almost a dozen dog treats before the duck lady stopped handing them out.

Next stop was Sobey's, where I hoped to use a raincheque to purchase my favourite chocolate bar but they still don't have them in yet. Then on to Cleve's to exchange a defective pair of hiking shoes for new ones, and Staples to get instructions for a screen kit I bought there a couple of weeks ago. The kit comes from Quebec and the installation instructions, four pages of them, are only in French. I can sort of read them, but I figured with four pages I should probably try to get the English instructions because somehow a four-page instruction set sounds complicated to me.

The Customer Service lady is amazed at the lack of English instructions. They have one more kit still on the shelf and it only has French instructions too. Customer Service lady calls someone from out back who is also amazed, but she goes on the internet and finds English instructions on the manufacturer's website. She prints off a copy for me. It is one page long, the actual instructions taking up less than half a page. We are all amazed. This kit is easier to install in English than in French?

After that my errands are done, so we head to the ravine. I let Hapi out and another truck pulls up too. Hapi and I head to the trail down into the ravine and I look back to see if I recognize the people in the other truck. It appears to be a couple without a dog, a third person is running to catch up with them. We head into the ravine and at the bottom of the hill I give Hapi one of her treats. She buries it by the brook.

Shortly we meet a lady with a young Nova Scotia Duck Toller, the duck toller is keen to play but Hapi does her usual growly aloof thing and walks away. The duck toller's owner asks if my dog dislikes puppies and I say No, she actually likes to play with young dogs but it takes her a long time to warm up. Hardly the words were out of my mouth and Hapi makes a liar of me, she turns and immediately starts chasing the young toller.

I used to have a duck toller so I am familiar with the breed, for those of you who are not they kind of look like a small golden retriever but are a little more hyper. Mine had white markings on his feet, face, chest and tail tip, but this one is all red.

The couple I had seen earlier catch up and I realize that the third person I thought I saw with them was actually their dog, a big black Great Dane. The Great Dane joins Hapi and the toller in play, but now the little toller is kind of freaked out at being chased by two very large dogs. He immediately lies down belly up. The two big dogs sniff him and back away. They stand there waiting, and eventually the toller gets up and runs off, the two big dogs in pursuit once again. They repeat this routine a couple of times and then the toller is more at ease and they just chase each other all around in circles.

Eventually we part company and I follow the folks with the Great Dane to the end of the ravine and then up through a junk yard and loop back down into the ravine on the other side. Hapi and the Great Dane are content just to explore and sniff things, although Hapi manages to chase a couple of squirrels. By the time we return to our trucks the two dogs are quite muddy.

While walking we were chatting about this that and t'other thing, and something they told me is that the coyotes around here were actually introduced by the provincial government. Apparently they introduced them to control the rabbits! That sounds beyond stupid. Don't know how one would check it out though.

I was going to stop at the hardware store to pick up hardware for the garden frames but by the time I was halfway home I decided I had done enough and it could wait for another day. Hapi and I got home again shortly after noon and that was a busy enough day for me!

Bread and fences

Didn't sleep too well last night, no doubt the change in the weather. Drop in barometric pressure, low pressure passing through don't you know. I think the other term for it is depression. Anyway, not a lot of sleep.

Lying there awake and wishing I wasn't, thinking the kind of thoughts you end up thinking at times like that. What passed through my mind was an incident that happened a very long time ago, and some of the stuff that happened as a result of that incident. It occurred to me that my whole life was about that one incident. Not a pleasant thought.

I thought about how it affected other people, and how that affected me, the ripples kept moving out and out and it was getting very unpleasant. I think though that the thing that got to me the most was that it was a damn stupid thing to have your whole life be about. I hate when that happens. Can I have a do-over?


It started raining this morning. We had a week of hot humid weather and the rain seemed like a relief. The garden sure needed it. And the greyness of it all suited my mood. Last night the hardware store called to tell me my order was in so I was going to go pick it up, but I didn't want to do it in the rain. Checked the radar on the internet and it looked like the rain was going to end in the afternoon, I hoped it would end before the hardware store closed.

I made bread in the meantime. I waited all week for today to make bread, I sure didn't want to be running the oven in the heat.

Bread has become an obsession lately. I read My Bread by Jim Lahey and that got me started. Not that I haven't made bread before, I have. In fact I really started when I was pregnant with my first kid, so that would be over 40 years ago. [you know you're old when you're kid celebrates his fortieth!] But Jim Lahey's book turned me on to 'artisanal' bread.

Lahey's breadmaking method is virtually foolproof. I've made more mistakes with it and still ended up with great bread. From there I read a couple more books on breadmaking, including Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day. As the result of a comment I made on her blog, A little red hen directed me to a TED talk that Reinhart did on breadmaking, in which he talked about a technique he uses to bring out the flavour of whole grain flours in bread and today I thought I'd try it. I already have a sourdough starter I made a couple of months ago based on his recipe, and his technique is essentially to start two doughs, one with the starter and one without. After letting them set for however long you mix them together, form a loaf and let it rise. Then I follow Jim Lahey's method for baking the loaf in a Dutch oven. I've been meaning to try Reinhart's baking method, but I like the Lahey method so much that so far I haven't tried any other.


Anyway, the bread turned out great, I had some for supper. Split pea soup (with free-range locally cured ham), homebaked bread and a salad of fresh local greens and locally made feta. Oh yes and the rain stopped before the hardware store closed so I whipped down to pick up my order.

In preparation for the impending arrival of up to three giant dogs I am building a fence. Most of it is wooden but part of it is going to be metal fence (at the hardware store they call it corn crib fence) because the area it has to go through is just too difficult to install the wooden fence in. The hardware order was the corn crib fence, a hundred feet of it. If all goes well, we will install it on Monday.



The twenty-something son of a friend is helping me with the work that requires big young muscles (pounding spikes and T-rail posts into the ground). He's also painting his mother's house, so he likes to spend the best part of the day doing that, which is fine by me because I am happy to spend only a few hours a day on this project. It is going much faster than I expected though, I thought all this spike and post pounding was going to take much longer than it has.



This fence will have one major drawback, not being able to walk off the property anywhere I want. I am putting three gates in it but that still doesn't seem like enough. The dogs better appreciate what I do for them.



The photo at the top of this post is of the flowering dogwood in front of my house.

Lumber? Check.

Yesterday I attempted to get a bunch of things on my to-do list off. Filed my income tax, paid some bills, made some phone calls seeking information. Like, where can I get a kitchen compost bin for free/cheap? Where can I get topsoil cheap? When is the local sawmill open and what do they charge for the lumber I want? Can I borrow a gardening book from a neighbour today? Unlike many, I want to get on the flyer list, not off, and for the second time I phoned in a request to get on. I guess that is so unusual that they didn't believe me the first time.

Largely the info calls were unsuccessful, although after a fourth try I did get someone at the sawmill who told me to just drop by and pick up the lumber I wanted. I forgot to ask if they took credit cards (most likely they do but I just wanted to make sure) so I thought I'd drop by the bank for some cash in case they didn't. And since the post office was next door to the bank, I'd check my mail while I was at it. Here, we don't get door-to-door delivery, but have mailboxes at the post office.

Anyway, I was successful getting cash at the bank, but there was no mail for me. And when I got to the sawmill, the owner's wife told me "the boys" were in the woods and due back any time so I could wait if I wanted. After a few minutes of chatting and looking at various dusty knick-knacks around the office (handmade by customers) I said I was going down the road for tea at a friend's and could she call me when the boys showed up.

When I arrived at my friend's place she called a neighbour who whisked over and we all sat down to tea and biscuits with my friend's fine china given to her by her husband's grandmother. After a half hour or so of chatter about this that and t'other thing, I got the call from the sawmill lady, the boys were back and whenever I was finished at tea I could come on by.

Another half hour of chat and tea and I drove back to the sawmill. The owner met me on the driveway in and directed me to follow him and his giant black dog down a very muddy road behind the mill, across a creek and up the hill into a field. He pointed to a muddy wet pile of 2'x8's under a blackberry bush and told me I could take whatever I needed from that. The planks were all about 7' long, perfect for my needs, except I wanted some of them cut in half. He told me to pick out what I wanted and take the planks needing cutting to "the young feller" at the mill and he'd cut them up for me.

I wasn't sure but I gathered that he was giving me the planks, they were scrap to him, but I thought asking his young feller to cut them up was probably pushing the limits of free. Anyway, I picked out twelve planks and drove back to the mill and asked the not-so-young feller to cut four of them in half for me, which he did.

I then drove back to the sawmill office to offer payment for the job. The giant black dog bounded out from the sawmill and stood in the road in front of me, I couldn't pass him and he showed no inclination to move. Finally he spotted his master walking toward the office and slowly turned to follow him, allowing me to do the same.

When I went into the office the sawmill owner charged me $2.00 "nuisance fee". I only had $1.75 so he took that. I want to build four garden bed frames and these planks are enough to do that, $1.75 plus gas is a not-bad price.

I have an abundant source of free horse manure, some of which I have already shovelled into garbage bins awaiting the frames. I will lay down some of the cardboard from my moving boxes, put the frames on top and the manure inside. I will also need straw and topsoil, I don't expect to get a deal on the topsoil so that will be the expensive item. But I am hoping that I will only need to get topsoil once, the manure should be rotted enough by next year to not need any more store-bought topsoil. I will not use all of the garden frames this year, some of them I am starting for use next year.

On our trip down The Valley when Josh and Kim and Eva were here I noticed a small shop that sold old wooden windows; I was thinking I'd go back and pick up a few for use as cold frames, maybe my garden frames could do double duty.

I have also joined the Acadia Community Farm to get a small allotment out on the dykes and hopefully some experience and advice from fellow gardeners. The Farm has a small field divided in half, one half for personal allotments and one half for a community garden producing food for the local food bank and the university dining hall (the field is on university land). Every member is required to put in time in the community garden in addition to work on their own allotment garden. I look forward to the allotment as a great learning experience and a decent-sized garden space ready-made. In the meantime I can start a few things at home in one of the garden frames and have the rest of the frames developing for next year.

Josh and I were looking at the playset in the back yard while he was here and he suggested turning it into a greenhouse. It faces the wrong way for a greenhouse, but it could work. I am debating whether I really need a playset for grandchildren who live thousands of kilometres away, or would I be better served with a greenhouse. I'm leaning toward greenhouse.

It's A-frame shaped, so a few planks and some heavy-duty plastic thrown over the whole thing will turn it into a decent greenhouse I think. Maybe some strawbales around the base. The straw will help insulate and will generate heat as it rots, or so the theory goes.

And that will be one less plot of back yard that doesn't need mowing. My real goal in all this is to greatly reduce the amount of lawn mowing I need to do.

Hard labour

I heard an interesting thing on the radio the other day, it was on a CBC show called Spark, which is about high tech stuff. This CEO of a high tech company was talking about renovations they recently did to the building his company is in, only instead of hiring people to do the work, they did it themselves. So this CEO was out there doing carpentry and roofing and whatever else needed to be done. He said it was an enlightening experience, not to mention very enjoyable.

The CEO said that in high tech work, you're working with intangibles, a kind of virtual world that involves a lot of problem solving and creative "lateral thinking". But the building trades involve working with tangibles, real world stuff. They also involve a lot of problem-solving, but you have to think logically, tasks need to be sequenced in the correct chronological order to accomplish the work. And the end result is a real product, something you can see and touch, and has real weight.

This CEO said it was very satisfying work and he felt it brought something new and fresh to his regular work. He said he was probably the world's slowest roofer because of his extreme attention to detail, he would line up each shingle absolutely precisely to leave no gaps, and in the course of the work he examined every shingle in close-up detail.

I was listening to this and nodding my head in agreement, there is something very satisfying in working with one's hands and real materials, creating a finished product you can feel proud of at the end. And the actual process of doing the work is satisfying too. There's a certain assumption that trades that involve physical labour don't require brainwork but that is absolutely false, there is a constant problem-solving process going on.

Several years ago I lived in a leaky condo in a complex that was undergoing rehabilitation; my ground-level patio ended up being one of the lunchbreak sites for some of the workers on this project. I was literally living in the middle of a construction site. All day I would hear these guys chattering away while they worked or took breaks, and some of the conversation was quite interesting. They would talk about personal matters, political events and about the work itself. They discussed each step of the work process, all the little issues that came up along the way, and proposed and argued solutions. It was clear that this work was not a simple matter, there were always things that needed to be worked through mentally before they could be worked on physically. I found their discussions quite fascinating.

My own experience with building projects is the same, there is a constant problem-solving process going on, and constant little satisfactions in figuring out and implementing the solutions. There is a further satisfaction in using one's body to do work, it just feels good. At the end you're physically tired, but it is a good feeling.

I hear on the news that there is a growing lack of tradespeople, there are fewer and fewer plumbers, electricians and carpenters, fewer and fewer young people being encouraged to go into these kinds of careers. It seems that our culture glorifies "brainwork" and the kind of work that requires a university degree, at the expense of the trades.

When I was living in that construction site there was a bit of work that had to be done inside my condo, a drywaller was fixing some of the holes made by the work being done outside. He was in his mid-40s and talking about retiring. He said this would be his last project, he had bought a little place in the interior of BC and intended to retire there. At age 45.

He said that he used to have several apprentices working with him at any one time, but now he hardly ever had apprentices; young people were flocking to the computer careers and simply were not interested in learning drywalling anymore.

Where you earn so much money you get to retire at 45.

Spar varnish, firewood and curtains

The kayak is in the "shop" (the Garden House) for repairs, I am putting another coat of spar varnish on the hull.

Most people don't put spar varnish on a wooden kayak hull at all, it serves no useful purpose. The point of the spar varnish is to protect the epoxy from UV damage, and a hull rarely sees the sun for UV damage to occur. However, I am used to transporting my kayak on my roof rack upside down, and so the hull does indeed see quite a bit of sun. Hence the spar varnish.


The downside of spar varnish on a wooden kayak hull is that it is easily scratched by hauling the kayak over rocks (or sliding it up onto a truck roof rack), and then it starts to peel and look like a bad sunburn. The epoxy itself is quite resistant to scratching, the spar varnish isn't. Anyway, I am sanding and putting two more coats of spar varnish on to get rid of the bad sunburn. I am using the same spar varnish I used last year, but it formed a thick skin on top that I had to break with a screw driver and a knife. I think there will be some spar varnish left over when I've finished the kayak, so I might just put the remainder on the outhouse seat. There is no point trying to keep it another year.

I also rearranged the contents of the porch to make way for some firewood. It looks very neat and tidy now, but once I get some firewood in there it will be dark and messy again.

I will not be putting up a curtain in the outhouse I decided. Several people have mentioned the lack of privacy which doesn't really bother me, but the loss of even a fraction of the view afforded by the window would.

This outhouse is over a kilometer into the woods from the nearest public road, and sitting on private property. If someone is peeping in the window I am more concerned about what the heck they are doing back in those woods than I am about what they may or may not be able to see.

Jokingly I suggested to one of my neighbours that a shotgun in the outhouse might be a more useful idea than a curtain. She agreed. Not that I am considering it. But I would consider it long before the curtain.

I suspect though that this outhouse will end up with a curtain whether I want it or not, it does sit on someone else's property and they might prefer the curtain over the shotgun, I don't know.

The outhouse

The outhouse is as good as done, for this year. It needs to be painted inside, but I think I will leave that for now, I am just tired of it. Seems like the finish work is interminable, every time I think I am done there is one more thing that needs to be done to be really done, so to speak.

And on the fifth day She rested

Totally exhausted today, and taking a break from building.

Yesterday Mike wanted to put a last push on the outhouse because he was going away for the long weekend. He wanted to cut the last pieces of plywood (he's leery of loaning his saw, would rather do the cutting himself) and show me how to do the roofing. He arrived at 10am and we worked until 12.30pm before he felt he'd done enough. Then he went home to pack for his trip.

After Mike left I was so tired I just wanted to sit down and cry. Except I didn't even have the energy to do that. I spent a couple of hours reading and eating a sandwich for lunch. But I figured I needed to work on the roofing so that I would not forget what Mike had showed me.

The roof is 40 sq ft and I have some free roofing shingles of various kinds to cover it. Fortunately the pitch of the roof is low enough that I don't mind standing on it; if it were much steeper I would have serious reservations about working up there. I am in awe of roofers who routinely work on much steeper inclines.


I did a few rows of shingles, then wondered how the last row was supposed to be laid, Mike had been a bit vague about that. Fortunately he had not left yet so I was able to go to his house and ask him that question. With a couple of short breaks for tea and for escaping the masses of mosquitoes that began to show up as the sun lowered in the sky, I managed to complete the job by 6pm.


I had planted some lettuce seeds in a planter box over a month ago, they had sprouted but never really grew well so I wanted to transplant them into the garden. Not really wanting to do any work at that point but being bound to get them into the ground in the evening rather than the morning, I did do it. It only took a few minutes anyway.

So that was it for Friday! The outhouse is functionally ready to go, it just needs a bit of prettying up. A door latch, some stain, some corner boards, and maybe some battens to give it the board and batten look. Wisewebwoman suggested shelves, a good idea and I know just where I'll put them, but maybe a bit later. Not sure whether I'll stain the wood this weekend or not, depends on whether I find something to use as battens. Peter and Nancy are also going away so I will be house-sitting again, I will take a look through Peter's workshop basement (as he suggested) to see what he has by way of batten material.

For supper I scrounged in my cooler for leftovers and heated up some rice and tomato sauce and fried up my last egg and potatoes. Heavy on the starch but food is food is food. Went to bed early, was woken up in the middle of the night by the full moon shining in the window. I went back to sleep and woke up again this morning aching all over.

Mike's not here! Yippee! Won't be working today!

Breakdown

The outhouse is progressing, it seems slow but it probably isn't really.

Yesterday Mike went to Canning to buy all the stuff we needed to finish it, but he didn't get everything. He could get plywood for the roof but not for the walls because a local farmer had bought up all the 3/8" plywood earlier in the morning for something he was building. They had a toilet seat but it was rather expensive; Mike figured I could get a cheaper one another time.

He picked up about a pound of nails and they charged $85 for that! Must have been a typo, they probably meant $0.85, but Mike'll have to go back to get them to fix it.

So yesterday we got the roof on and all the wall studs up, and we hung the door. It looks quite handsome.


I stapled tarpaper onto the roof.


Today I planned to buy the plywood for the walls and the rest of the stuff we needed, the toilet seat, a thumb latch for the door, stain for the plywood, and also some groceries. I need coffee! Mike had to go down to the Valley too, we ended up leaving at the same time. But Mike turned off on the road to Canning and I continued on to Wolfville.

Driving down the Mountain, I smelled antifreeze. Then I saw a light on the dash behind my pen, I moved the pen and the light said "CHECK GAGES". I looked at all the dials, wondering what I was supposed to be looking for. Then I saw the Temperature gauge up in the red zone. I pulled off the road immediately. Lifted the hood and sure enough there was steam or smoke puffing out. Whups.

I usually carry a phone book in the truck so I got that out to look for the number of the garage that fixed my truck the other day. A truck passing in the other direction stopped and the driver asked if I needed a phone. I said, No thanks, waving my cell phone at him. He drove off. But when I turned it on it immediately told me that my battery was low and needed to be charged right away. Double whups.

I tried calling anyway. When the garage answered I spoke quickly trying to tell them who I was, where I was, what the problem was and that my cell phone was about to die. Then the woman who answered put me on hold! And of course my cell phone died.

I walked down the road looking for a house with a car in front of it. I found one a short distance away, in fact the car owner was puttering in his driveway. When I asked if I could use his phone he led me into his house and his wife directed me to the phone. I called the garage, got their voice mail and told them the address and phone number of this house. The woman at the garage called back in a few minutes and said that Albert was on his way. So I went outside to wait for him.

It turned out that the fellow and his wife whose phone I used were from the Harbour. In fact he grew up there. When he told me where he used to live, I knew who he was, I had heard of him. We talked a bit about the Harbour and Wenega. He was friends with Mike but hadn't seen him in a while, he asked after Mike.

Albert showed up a few minutes later and quickly found that radiator hose clamp had come loose, thus emptying the rad and causing the engine to overheat. He was able to re-install the clamp and refill the rad with antifreeze, and then suggested that I follow him back to the garage where he could double check the clamp and also the antifreeze and water ratio in rad. This we did, and after he had satisfied himself that everything was as it should be, he offered me a card entitling me to a free oil change in compensation for the aggravation.

I continued on to Wolfville and picked up all the things I needed, but I got back home much later than I had planned. Plus the whole event took its toll on my physical, emotional and mental stamina, I felt exhausted and nearly brain-dead.

Nevertheless Mike and I tackled the outhouse again. Mike and Ruth are planning to go away on the weekend so Mike wanted to get far enough along that I could continue without him, or his Skilsaw. I think I would have preferred to go somewhere and stare at a wall for an hour or two, but never mind we ploughed ahead.

I rather suspect Mike was in a similar state of mind, it seemed like we made all kinds of mistakes and barely managed to avoid snapping at each other. The mosquitoes just swarmed, the outhouse is in a damp shady area and we were hot and sweaty.

At one point, after having miscut a sheet of plywood and discovering that it was not only the wrong size but the wrong shape, and then debating what to do about that, Mike said there were two choices: slap the damn thing up and ignore the fact that it was the wrong size and shape, or go cut another sheet of plywood correctly. I opted for the former (slap it up). Mike said nothing and we slapped it up. I am beyond caring.

Then Peter phoned to say that he had found in his workshop basement a bunch of clapboard I could use on the walls of the outhouse. I told him I had just bought the plywood for that. Oh well. He had a few more suggestions, and they were all useful and kind, but my mental and emotional exhaustion was such that I could not really comprehend what was being suggested. I just thanked him.

Mike finally left around 6pm. He still has to get me started on the roofing, we think we will do that tomorrow. I met Valerie on the road back into the woods on my way back from the Valley, she was at the pond with her dog Phoebe. She motioned for me to stop because she was worried Phoebe might bound up from the pond and into my path. She said she had missed me on the morning dog walks this week and hoped I would be out tomorrow. I said I would, but now it looks like I won't be able to.

It's amazing how a relatively minor incident can completely overwhelm you for the rest of the day. There was no real harm done, the incident only lasted an hour, but it wiped me out for the rest of the day.

My throne

Here's what Mike and I have been working on today:

My new outhouse!

It's not completed obviously, needs a few walls, a door and a roof, but hey! The essentials are there! A seat! A hole!

And best of all, a fabulous window! This is the view from the throne:

We used up all the wood I bought yesterday and some that Mike had lying around as well. Tonight Mike will pick up the door and the roofing material. Tomorrow my truck goes in for repairs and we buy the rest of the wood we need for the walls and roof. And I think I'll get a new toilet seat; the seat in the old outhouse appears to be too thoroughly attached to remove and use on this piece of work.

All day long working on this little structure I was getting more and more excited about it; I can't wait to use it! Bet nobody reading this can imagine getting excited about using an outhouse, eh?

I love the view. Already I am picking out branches and possibly whole trees to "remove" to improve the view. The outhouse is situated a few feet from the edge of the vault, so what you are looking at is the view down into the vault. With a few trees removed you will be able to see the brook in the vault while seated on the throne. I can easily imagine lingering over the activity that once was done as quickly as possible. It is going to be so cool.

Busy day

I bought some building supplies for an outhouse, and took my truck to a garage to get its problem diagnosed. Burnt out heater core. Antifreeze being sprayed onto the inside surface of all the truck cab windows, windshield in particular. $300. Coincidentally, the building supply store also estimated $300 for all the building materials I wanted for the outhouse. I didn't buy it all, just enough to get started. Yesterday Peter helped me draw up a plan for the outhouse, I had tried earlier to do it but somehow it seemed too complicated (there are special requirements for this particular outhouse). Peter has a gift for simplifying things. After a few minutes of sketching, I had a plan, a materials list and a cost estimate. Plus donations of a door and roofing materials.

I also went and looked at a three acre building lot with "deeded water access" on a lake. The location is kind of interesting, it was a very pretty drive to get there and the lake itself was very pretty. The real estate agent was a very nice lady who lived nearby. It was a fun trip but I have not made up my mind. It has its pros and cons, as usual, although a friend said You just have to decide, the pros and cons don't really matter. Which is true I think in this case. But easier said than done!

Had dinner at Mike and Ruth's and we talked among other things about a book I am reading called The Strange Empire of Louis Riel. Reading it is like watching a bad car crash happen in front of you, you know it ends badly and getting to see the details of exactly how and why it ends badly is not pleasant but hard to turn away from. I can't read too much of it at a time.