Snow Day

I think the weather network has made us all into weenies. We are getting another snow day today. Our last snow day was... yesterday, except it was a non-event with all of 2 cm falling in a 12 hour period. The one before that was also a non-event but still they keep putting up that RED SCREEN OF DEATH! on the weather network. Today we are meant to get 45 cm, which in weather network math conversion works out to be probably 4-5cms.
Still I find myself planning my day around the RED SCREEN OF DEATH! Yesterday I did the errands early to avoid Armageddon Shopping in New Mindless and I always have a pot of water on the counter for tea in case we lose power . I find myself thinking, 'Oh, we might lose power, better
1.have a shower
2. do the dishes
3. bring in extra wood
4. check my email

I know, the last one doesn't make much sense.
One wonders what our increasing weenie population would do if faced by a really extreme event like the floods or cyclone in Australia.
It's just snow, find a good book and wait 12 hours.

My Morning Routine

This morning, as usual, after my 30 minute sleep in and my first cup of coffee, I wandered out to the berry patch to gather some fresh gooseberries for my yogurt and muslix breakfast.

Then after dawdling around some more, I finally realized (as usual) that I had about 10 minutes before I needed to go to work and proceeded to rush around (as usual) getting dressed, making lunch, finding keys and shoes and sun screen and remembering that I should water the greenhouse and turn on the drip line in the berry patch.

Yup. That's pretty much my morning routine.

Except this morning was anything but routine. When I finally went to hook up the drip line (now 5 minutes late leaving for work, as usual) I noticed there was something wrong with the pool. It was only an inch deep.

It had collapsed sometime between 9'0clock last night and 7:35 this morning. The weird thing is, I can't tell you if it was like that at 6:30 when I went to pick gooseberries or if it happened this morning in that 65 minutes. At any rate I had just enough time to tell the pool boy the news before I had to rush off to work, unhappy in the knowledge that for the first time in weeks, I would not be swimming tonight after a long hot stinky day in the sun.
We suspected this might happen but we were hoping it wouldn't. Once we set up the pool and had it filled we realized what we thought was a level piece of ground was only sort of level. It was in fact about 4 inches out which translated over an 18 foot diameter, 4 feet deep is quite a bit of water pushing on one side of the pool just waiting for an excuse to tip. Of course, once the pool is full of 20,000 litres of water there isn't much you can do about that. Now that the pool is no longer full of 20,000 L of water we decided that this was an opportunity to fix the underlying problem.
Pool Boy went to work and ordered a load of top soil to level out the pad. We were hoping it would be delivered today but it hasn't arrived. He did prepare for it by using small stakes you see in the picture to find out what level is. Hopefully, we can get the topsoil tomorrow and begin refilling the pool by tomorrow night.
Unfortunately, we invited friends for a Brunch/Pool party on Sunday morning. I don't think there will be much chance of it being filled by then.

How to Heat a Pool

Not content with merely having a pool, almost as soon as it was obvious that it was going to fill up with water, the pool boy set about inventing a solar heater for it. He has wanted to play with passive solar for a while, but I won't let him do crazy things like this inside the house with the hot water heater. I know, I know, I'm such a kill joy.
His theory has always been, that a black hose filled with water will heat up in the sun, and if you could use a circulator pump to take cool water out of the pool and put the warm hose water into the pool, it would help heat up the pool. His first version was 200 feet of 1/2 inch poly pipe coiled onto a piece of plywood pointing at the sun. When the circulator pump was turned on, it added warm water to the pool for about 90 seconds and then the water coming out of the hose was pool temperature again. The pump pumped too fast. So about every 1/2 hour, you could add a few gallons of warm water for a few seconds. Promising but not perfect.
Then he remembered that we had lots of copper and aluminum finned base board radiators kicking around from when we renovated the house and replaced the baseboard with in-floor radiant. So he soldered them all together, spray painted them black and mounted them on another piece of plywood. The extra pipe added more water to the heating loop which adds extra heat. The aluminum fins collect more solar and transfer it to the copper pipe, and the copper pipe heats up more than the poly pipe. A lot more. The water coming out of the return hose is too hot to hold your hand under, and the water is warm for a lot longer, about ten minutes in fact. The cool water from the pool continues to steal heat from the hot copper pipe until it is the same temperature as the water, so it is not just the extra volume of pipe that adds heated water, but several minutes of heat transfer after the initial water has gone through the loop.
The next design stage saw the two pieces of plywood attached together and mounted on a pivoting bolt so the solar collector can be swivelled to always face the sun. It all works really well on sunny days. We have had the pool water up to 26 degrees Celsius on sunny warm days. On overcast days though the temperature is only 22 degrees Celsius, which is what is would probably be without a solar heater. On breezy days the aluminum fins actually act as a cooling device, and the wind will steal heat away from the pipe as the water goes through.
He has talked about enclosing the whole system under a clear sheet of plastic or glass to protect it from wind. I don't dare suggest that the pump operation could be put on a timer or that the swivel bolt be hooked up to a motorized cart. Perhaps that will be next year's pool adventure.
I'm told that some people use their pools to swim in.

How to Steal A Pool

Long before dumpster diving was fashionable, and consignment stores were chic, foraging was a way of life in Nova Scotia. We are an economically depressed people, and for generations we have traditionally relied on re-cycling and used items, DIY projects, and the barter system to get stuff which otherwise would be beyond our reach.
When big garbage day rolls around, you can pick up some pretty cool stuff, and it's not like stealing because those people were just going to throw it out anyway. In fact people deliberately put out stuff early to give other people a chance to pick through it. This spring we put out a broken gas whipper snipper and it didn't last a day before someone came along and decided they could use it or fix it or whatever and took it away. As long as it is obvious that the item is no longer wanted by the previous owner, it is fair game. This is how we came to steal a pool.
It was just sitting there.
No one was using it.
Honest.
Last Monday we decided to go get it. It is one of those easy set up** above ground vinyl ones from Cambodian Tire. It was mostly empty as it had been sitting there on the ground in the neighbour's yard since last summer. It sat there all winter too, empty and forlorn. The neighbour's moved out last February and no one lives in the house. The house, in real estate terms is a century old fixer upper with character (read filthy condemned dump.) The lot is now being used as a place to store materials for the water main construction coming through to Kingsport. Dump trucks and loaders trundle by endlessly. You can understand why we removed the pool from the overgrown back yard. It was a rescue mission.
It had about 4 inches of water in it from the rain storms the previous week so we knew it held water. With much effort, and without waiting to don some more appropriate clothing, we hauled on the sides grunting and slipping on the algae until it emptied, getting soaked and extremely dirty in the process. It's pretty big, so I squished home to get the pickup while the other one searched for the rest of the bits in the long grass. It was at this point that it occurred to me that this was the sort of story my parents used to tell about their pre-children days.
We hauled it into the truck, along with the plastic ground sheet beneath it. The ground sheet looked and smelled like it used to cover a pile of manure, so now we were really dirty. Once at home, we hosed down the plastic sheet (and ourselves) and set about seeing if the the slimy bits would come off the pool. They did.
I must tell you that I have never really wanted a pool. Last year when our friends Andrew and Christine got a pool the other one asked me if I wanted one, and my rely was "No, I want friends with a pool, the same way I want friends with a cottage by the ocean and friends with a sail boat, and friends with and apartment in Manhattan and a town house in London. That way you get the benefits without the hassles."
One Tuesday we set it in place and started filling it up to clean it. That was when I remembered what I thought about pools and hassles.
On Wednesday we filled it.
On Thursday we were still filling it and starting to wonder about the water volume in our well.
It was looking good so we decided to buy a filter pump at The Tire. That's when the math stopped making sense. A new pool just like ours cost $299 and includes a pump, and a ladder. After paying for a new pump and ladder (which we couldn't find in the neighbour's yard) and buying the necessary filters and chemicals, we ended up forking out about $200. So much for the free pool.
On Friday we were still cautiously filling it and we started to filter the water and scrub the pool. The pool boy invented a DIY pool vacuum from a Central VAC unit he scavenged from Big Garbage last fall. Here he is demonstrating the invention.
On Saturday we filtered and scrubbed.
On Sunday we filtered and scrubbed.
On Monday we filtered and scrubbed.
Today the water is clear and the pool is clean, and it was 15 degrees and rain so we had no inclination to go for a dip.

We didn't want Willow to feel left out, so we set her up a pool too.

** Easy, yeah right.

Proof

Spring officially arrived on the weekend. It is the first time I can remember that my spring bulbs were up and blooming before spring. Usually my bulbs are late because they are in the shade, but they are so early this year that there isn't any shade yet.
The snowdrops were blooming last weekend when we were cutting down trees.
The crocuses bloomed Wednesday. We saw a red winged blackbird on our walk yesterday and these birds, were hanging around this morning. Not being a birder, I have to guess they are robins. Living in the country has turned me into nature girl. Sort of.
Weird.

Snowblower - R.I.P.

We got a real blizzard today. Not just the typical over-reported panic inducing few flurries that we usually get, but a cold, blustery snow storm that hit fast and hard. At 6:30am it was calm. There had been a light snowfall overnight and the trees looked pretty. By 7:15 the wind had picked up to 60km/h, snow was falling and being driven into drifts a foot deep. We couldn't see to the end of the drive. But we are hardy Canadian folk, and the other one went off to work, crossing three exposed dykes in white out conditions while I took the truck to get the MVI as planned.
It is a strange human phenomenon that if you are faced with treacherous driving, you automatically turn on the radio to listen to the road report/school closure announcements just to make sure it really is as bad as it seems. It was.
It pretty much kept up all day, and when the other one got home from work, he couldn't get the car up the drive because there was a 3 foot high snowdrift running down the middle of it. Dutifully he started up the snowblower. The snowblower is old, and cranky. It stalls repeatedly and needs gentle coaxing with the throttle to keep it running. Anytime I have tried to use it I make it half way down the drive, it stalls and I end up lugging it back uphill to the garage, or just leaving it there to rot until the other one gets home.
There is a division of labour in this house that is drawn along gender lines and snowblowing is definitely on his side of that line.
He did manage to remove most of the drift impeding the car before the machine conked out. At first he thought it was gunk in the fuel line. Once that was removed he discovered a different problem; the drive wasn't driving. The wheels would go round, but they didn't have enough umph to propel the machine forward. He took it all apart and found that squirrels had made a nest inside it. He also found that the bits that drive it* were so worn they were unrepairable. We knew this day would come, but like the grasshoppers we are, we hoped it wouldn't be during the one true blizzard of winter. Tomorrow we need to call the snowplow guy and hope he can fit us into his schedule before Monday.

*I don't pretend to know what they all are, I just nodded and smiled while he talked: it's better that way.

I've Got the Power

Well, actually I don't.
For the second time, our electrician cancelled our power upgrade, and for the second time the power company came anyway. Instead of new power, they straightened the pole at the end of the drive. I'm a little concerned that it was only the leaning pole protecting my mailbox from the snowplow. I'll have to wait and see on that.
We are in a thaw right now, it was +12 here yesterday, which is ideal for digging a trench to the garage for the new cable to power a bigger kiln. By the time we actually get the power upgrade (rescheduled again for next Wednesday, 3 times the charm do you think?) I'm sure it will be -10 again and several feet of snow.
We better get it soon, the pots are piling up.

Nature Girl Takes a Walk

We got a bit of new fallen snow on Wednesday, so I took the camera when Willow and I went for our afternoon walk on Thursday to document what fresh tracks we could see. We saw mouse tracks.
And more mouse tracks.
And Willow tracks.
Not to be confused with coyote tracks. We saw lots of those. These side by side tracks were the first sign that we had more than one though. There have been a couple media reports about coyote attacks recently, so we carry a large stick on our walks and I never let Willow get too far away. I'm not sure if this is for my protection or hers.
We also saw pheasant tracks.
And a pretty nice view.

We're Jammin'

This weekend I found myself with the unusual circumstance of not having anything to do. No social commitments, no house reno planned, no plans already made at all. And with the tail end of a tropical storm bearing down on us, I knew I wouldn't be gardening or going for a spin on the bike.
I may have mentioned that strawberry season is my favourite time of year. My love of strawberries is easily surpassed by how much the Other One adores blackberries.
With the O.O. locked in his room until his school work is done, I decided to reward his efforts by making him some blackberry jam. Off I went this morning to my not so secret spot down by the railroad tracks, just as the rain began to fall. It has been three years since I was last there. Last year and the year before, we were in Newfoundland. (AKA no berries to be found land.)
The berries were still there but they were smaller than I remembered, and pretty picked over already in most spots. Since I was last there, a proper walking trail has been put in beside the tracks, and I think more people walk there now. CN used to be pretty unhappy when people would use the train tracks as a trail, so they gave people a place to walk, just about a year before the last train stopped running. It took me nearly three hours to pick a scant five pints. It rained lightly, but I got soaked through, wading deep into the thickets looking for bigger berries. Finally I figured I had enough for a batch.
The bad thing about blackberries, aside from the thorns and the wasps, is that you have to sieve out the seeds and so you need to pick a lot more of them than say, strawberries. (Mmmmm, strawberries.) Happily, the O.O. likes jam more than jelly, (or at least so he tells me) and I don't have to get rid of all the seeds, which would be too tedious. When I was a teenager with braces, my Aunt Erica use to make me blackberry jelly. Now I know that there is just nothing I can do to make it up to her.
The jam making took most of the afternoon. Usually I double or quadruple a batch to save time. The directions on the pectin packaging warn against this, but I like to live on the edge. Except this year, none of my strawberry jams set up properly. I was blaming watery berries from all the early rain we got, but to be on the safe side I decided to follow directions this time. I forgot to put in the pectin in the first batch before I started to bottle it. Then I had to reboil the jam and re wash and sterilize the jars so I could add it. This slowed the process down a bit.
Then I had the brilliant idea to try and save the seeds I had sieved out so I could plant them and have my own berry patch. The O.O. was really excited by this idea and so we began. We washed and we washed and we washed and we washed. And lots of pulpy gunk came off the seeds, but at the end of 20 minutes, they were still pretty pulpy. I was concerned that they would go moldy before they germinated, so we tried a different tactic. We smooshed them out onto newspaper to dry them. My theory is that the pulp will brush off easier if it is dry. Once the seed is clean, we can stratify it in the fridge and sow it in a cold frame to germinate in spring. All in all, I had about 4 cups of pulp, which probably translates into thousands of seeds, so even if the germination rate is really low, I should get a few plants growing in the spring to plant out. It's a start.

A Play 's the Thing

What thing, though, I am not exactly sure. Last weekend we went over to the other side, to visit the parental units and see a play at the Ship's Co. This year was the 25th Anniversary of Ship's Co, and as the other one and I met there (everybody go awwwwwe) we should have attended all the events ( or at least some of the events) during the season, but we didn't. We do remember the 10th anniversary though; I think we worked it in fact.
Guilt finally caught up with me and we did arrange to see the second mainstage production aptly named Ferry Tales. It was commissioned to celebrate this year's anniversary, and was a collection of stories around and about the Minas Basin as told by passengers aboard the MV Kipawo when she was still a ferry travelling between Kingsport, Parrsboro and Wolfville and long before she was a theatre dry docked in Parrsboro. Most of the stories I had heard before, growing up on the Minas Basin. How Glooscap made the Five Islands. The story of a Bishop from Greenwich who hopped across the ice cakes one winter to ask his Parrsboro girl to marry him. The ghost story about the cave at Black Rock where you can still hear the woman abandoned by pirates, crying for help as the tide comes in and drowns her. (everybody go oooooh!)
It was fun, but a little disjointed, and I wonder if a tourist would be able to follow the narrative as it was just loosely strung together with a little music and comedy. The acting was very good. The set design worked well, although, there was a time when the MV Kipawo could have, (and would have) been used to play herself. Alas she is reduced to being a lobby for a black box stage. The costumes were confusing, and seemed to say 70's Britain more than 1930's Nova Scotia. They had that distinct low budget Frenchy's feel. Not the best offering from Ship's Company, let's hope their other mainstage productions were more interesting.

What Else I Did on my Summer Vacation

I spent last weekend on the South Shore showing off yet another bit of beautiful coastal Nova Scotia to my friend who has the misfortune not to live here. We visited the LaHave Frenchies where we both scored new to us treasures.
Then we drove down the LaHave River and on to Lunenburg; which was crazy busy due to the Folk Fest happening that weekend. Neither of us being fond of anything associated with acoustic guitars we ate a picnic lunch overlooking the harbour and moved on to Mahone Bay where a liquid afternoon spend in the Crown and Anchor prepared us for nice supper at the Cheesecake Cafe.
Sunday we went to Chester hoping to meet a millionaire who wanted to sweep us off our feet. Alas it was not to be, but we did ogle some nice houses and sailboats before driving to Bayswater Beach, where the sand was too hot for sitting and the water too cold for swimming. I got a sunburn on my feet because who can ever remember to put sunscreen there?
Cleveland Beach was another stop, where the water was warmer. Lastly, of course Peggy's Cove was a must before ending in Halifax for her to start the last leg of the trip with another friend.
Just to prove it, here are the pics. (Lori)
Hanging baskets are so declasse. Lunenburg decorates their light poles with seafood instead.










Mahone Bay's Three Churches. If you want a better shot, buy a postcard. That iconic picture doesn't exist unless you go tromping through someone's backyard.




And Peggy's Cove as it should be. No Tourists. No Car Park.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

Summer has finally arrived. Both meteorologically with the heat, and metaphorically in that I've been having some fun. I count a successful summer by the number of times I have to dig around in the camping equipment box. Because summer fun cannot be had without needing something out of that box. Bug spray, beach booties, picnic supplies. So far I've been in there three times, and Peter once. There have been summers (the last one for example) where I didn't need to go in there at all. Score one for Nova Scotia.
I fully give credit to this being the summer of visitors. A friend is visiting from Vancouver right now and so we are doing all the summer fun things that I never do unless trying to convince a CFA that this really is a good place to live. Like visiting the sandy beach only 2 minutes down the road, or going for ice cream at a place that has a great view of 4 counties. Like walking the dykes, throwing a back yard neighbourhood barbecue or hiking to Cape Split.
Yes. that's right. Hiking. Me. I've been known to hike before. But the trek to Cape Split was a new one for me. I'm from the other side of the Minas Channel, so Cape Split was always a place that you looked at while sipping a beer at a friends cottage in Diligent Harbour. Where I come from no one would be crazy enough to want to walk there. It is completely inaccessible. Except here, where people seem to think it is a right of passage to take life in limb and wander off into the woods on a badly marked and treacherous "Not a trail" just for the reward of getting really close to those spires.
We were lead to believe that it wasn't really a hike so much as a walk. We were also lead to believe that it was a 3 hour tour. Maybe for someone with the legs of a giraffe, but it took us two hours to walk in, two hours to drink a bottle of wine to recuperate and two hours to walk out. When I say walk I mean climb over and under trees, scramble over rocky paths, hop over the muck holes and inevitably slip slide into them when you lost your footing.
Once we got there I had the strange experience of seeing something completely familiar from photos yet knowing I had never been there. It was like going to Stonehenge. And experienced hiker that I am, I remembered the cork screw but forgot the camera. You'll just have to take my word for it.

How Much Wood Could A Woodchuck Chuck?

We ordered fire wood the other day. This is a new experience for us. We installed the wood stove only 6 months before we left for NL, and we had lots of carpentry scraps of softwood to burn in the few fires we made. When we got home, there were some softwood ends left by our tenants that we burned, but that ran out about 2 weeks ago. As winter is not really over yet, we thought it prudent to order some in case the power went off. It arrived last Friday. The power went off Monday.
This is about four cords. We have no idea how much we will actually burn, but we hope this will be a 2 year supply, so that we can always have a year in reserve drying out.
I'm not sure about woodchucks, but I know that this pile took us about an hour to chuck. Friday was a sunny day and the afternoon temps were above freezing. The ground wasn't frozen at all beneath the snow we cleared for the pile, and the higher temperatures made it softer still. The delivery truck got stuck in the mud backing up with the second load. He had to dump the load too close to the driveway and get our truck to haul him out. It was a comedy of errors, his truck was almost axle deep in mud, ours had no traction on the still hard packed ice of the driveway. Finally though, with much revving and swearing, it lurched free.
While the driver was off getting the third load, we had to chuck the second closer to the first to make room for the rest. Then we did it again with the third load so that the fourth wouldn't be on the driveway. We will wait until spring to pile it up properly.

Pretty Nice

I've been surfing the blogosphere recently. You can really get lost in time and space that way. Many of the blogs I follow are about renovating or local Nova Scotia or both. And many have very pretty pictures on them. I'm so accustomed to how pretty it is that I forget to notice most days. Sometimes I do though, like at sunrise last month after a snowfall.


And one very frosty morning.