The Joys of Winter - Seriously

Winter finally came. After rain and wind for the autumn straight through Christmas, January finally started looking and feeling like winter. I never used to like winter but I have discovered the joy of the season in the past few years.
1. No working. As a horticulturist snow and ice = time off.
2. New wardrobe. Long wool coats with matching or contrasting accessories, short jackets, a variety of sweaters, boots of every colour and height. By the time warm weather comes around I have forgotten what my summer wardrobe looks like and it is all new again too.
3. Shoe shoeing. I stay on top of the snow, the dog sinks giving her an extra workout without taxing my energy.
4. Storm days. I don't really need the excuse to stay home but I'll take an excuse anyway. This pine in our neighbours field cracked in a wind storm before Christmas, it got hung up on another pine, and they both came down Friday, our most recent windy, snowy day.
5. Sunny days. The sun on snow makes the house bright.
6. Curling. It's really just an excuse for different clothes, see item 2. But it also gives me some exercise and gets me out of the house except when item 4 gives me the excuse to stay home.
7. Books. Sadly the other three seasons keep me too busy to read for pleasure much, and I no longer can use public transit to go to work, so winter is reading time. I've been catching up, it's heavenly.
8. Birthday! It was last week, I got good loot and the sweetie made me gingerbread cake with whipped cream.
9. Pottery. I've been experimenting with form and technique again, and while that is producing another batch of mishmash without any coherence (again) I don't care, I'm having fun.
10. Garden Reading. Mostly magazines and websites and seed catalogues allowing me to plan and dream what I could do next year without the hassle of actually remembering how much work it all is.

Chapter and Prose

Lots to talk about, so longish post. Here goes with titles so those of you skiving at work can skim.

Pottery

Last weekend my friend Natalie came over for a pottery session. Natalie is a pinch potter that I met in Newfoundland at the Craft Council Studio. She is spending the next year going back to school to get an M.Ed, and so she is going to get her clay fix with me. The bonus to having her here is that she motivates me to do things too. So while she continued working on a pinch pot that she started the week before, I actually made some butter dishes and got the studio a little more organized. Here is a lovely little pinch pot she made in a mere 6 or 8 hours. And I thought coiling was slow.


Studio Upgrade

My tiny studio is feeling a little small lately. The first week Nat came, we potted outside on the patio until it got dark, but this week it got dark just that little earlier. With Natalie being here, and my friend Susann occasionally too, and Colleen across the street waiting to fire some things I was getting short on shelf space. So carpenter man built me some cubby holes into a space that will eventually be a window when the studio is eventually a sun porch. If the spaces seem small understand that each shelf is removable to make a taller space as needed, and each shelf is just the right size to double as a bat on my wheel. Clever.

Bye Bye Binky

We have decided that we are not motorcycle tinkerers. Both our motorcycles are 30 years old and need constant tinkering to run well (or at all) I like riding a bike, not repairing one, and between gardening and swimming and PhD ing they just doesn't get the tinkering time they really need. Therefore we have listed both our motorcycles on KIJIJI to sell this fall with the plan that we will buy one newer more reliable and less problematic (hopefully) motorcycle to share between us. It is sad to see Binky go, he was a good first bike, I think a person becomes attached to these things like their first car or teddy bear. Peter is not so find of the Cherry Red Virago, but it has always been a problem child.

R-U-N-N-O-F-T

While I am left alone to reply to motorcycle inquiries, Study Boy has flown to Ottawa for a Canadian Association of University Teachers Conference until Friday. In my head I pictured getting lots of stuff done while he was away, but tonight is my first day without him and I am realizing just how much stuff he does that I now have to do by myself. Like walking the dog, feeding the dog, shocking the pool, making dinner and watering the greenhouse. So much for getting other stuff done, it is now 23 minutes past my bedtime and I still have to put gas in my bike for tomorrow and water the greenhouse.

Speaking of Water

The long wait is nearly over, last week we signed up to get the new municipal water service coming through our community. We still haven't booked a contractor to dig the hole and lay the pipe to the house, but we are at least started. We have until December to hook up, but hopefully we can get to it sooner than that. Knowing that we dug a trench last February though, I'm not holding my breath or anything. The county has organized a loan to people wishing to sign up because the cost of installing the line and service is $6000 for each homeowner, but this means you will get an $850 bill every year for the next 10 years. We have great water but we are at the mercy of power outages so we decided to do it now rather than later when the cost would be even more after December. I met one man who said his water was good too, but all his neighbours' wells had gone bad from seawater infiltration and he figured that his will eventually go too. Two years ago they tested all wells and found that 25% were unacceptable because of seawater or farm contamination. Water security is a big issue, so I think we are being prudent in spending this kind of cash.

Robbery in the Park

Sad news. Yesterday while I was working in Waterfront Park I was robbed. Truly. I left the park to get a rake from my truck, I was gone only three minutes but when I came back my tool belt was gone. Admittedly, I left it on the grass, because it didn't occur to me that anyone would want to take it. My tool belt has very sentimental value to me, my Sweetie made it for me in 1995 for my birthday in Vancouver when I was still a sound technician. Over the years it was adapted to be a gardener's tool belt. Off came the flashlight and pliers holders and on went the pruners and digging knife. Most of the tools were issued at work, but the belt and the original gak bag were mine. So was the Gerber multi tool, another Sweetie birthday present, from about 1998 I think. I looked everywhere for it, including the garbage cans and the mud flat bottom of the harbour but it is gone. The Mounties don't expect it to turn up, but I spent a half hour today with a nice constable who took my formal statement for the file.

Home for the Holiday

Last weekend we went to Parrsboro to visit the folks. This is a picture of Cape Split from the other side of the bay. It was my mother's birthday; she still continues to amaze by being two years younger than her youngest daughter. I'm not saying that the province declared a holiday on Monday in her honour, but it is called Natal Day so you figure it out.
The weekend ending July and beginning August created sobering thoughts. It is now or never for all those tasks that we said we would do this summer. Even though summer officially ends on the Autumnal equinox, everyone really knows it ends on Labour Day. EEEK! Only 4 more weeks.
Even the weather has changed to remind us that it will not always be warm. And this morning at 6am it was actually still dark because the rain clouds were blocking out my sun.
Shorter days, cooler temperatures, time to start cramming.
The must do's are wood, water, clay and tar. That is to say: order wood for winter, install water to the house, make pots for fall sales and shingle the roof of the garage.
The wanna do's are visit friends and see some theatre before it is all gone.
The would be good to do's are finish clapboarding the house and finally plant the vineyard.
Why am I still writing?

Happy Birthday Peter

It is a beautiful sunny day, and it is my sweeties birthday. Which we both forgot until we were up a few hours and he looked at the date on the computer.
So, as tradition dictates, I am making an Angel Food cake. I don't much like Angel Food cake, and I used to think it was because it came out of a box, so one year I tried making it from scratch just to see if it was better. It was exactly the same, so now I just make it out of the box. It takes 5 minutes, and that is only because I always have to wash the dust out of the bundt pan and the mixer bowl.
You know how the directions say immediately invert the pan on the neck of a bottle to cool? My bundt pan has too narrow a neck to do this, there is no bottle narrow enough to fit. Every year I forget this until I take the cake out of the oven, and then I have to hunt around for various objects in my kitchen that might work. This year it was the knob on the butter dish that worked.

Peter got three tonnes of sand for his birthday. Not terribly romantic, but it will help to bury the power cable that runs to the garage when we get the power upgrade. Which, yet again was postponed until next Wednesday. That makes the fifth time it has been postponed by our electrician, if anyone is counting. If anyone ever wonders why it takes us so long to renovate the house, this would be one example of a delay that is not our fault.
The delay has not been all bad. The temperature has warmed up to freezing, which will make digging easier. Sometimes we are very lucky.

Like last weekend for example, we went and got a new snow blower. Notice I didn't say buy. We stole it out of my father's shed as he can't use it anymore so he decided this year to get the local plow operator to clear his drive instead. Our last snow blower died during the last snowstorm, and we were lucky enough to get the new one the day before the next snowfall. Lucky. Thanks Dad.

More Birthday Loot

I was so excited about the Muppets and the gingerbread that I forgot I bought myself a present last November. Today at lunch I poured my first cup of tea into this mug by Ghita Levin. It looks like a soft slab constructed pot, but it has no seam. She told me she used dowels of increasing diameters to roll a donut of clay from the inside. The glaze and clay texture makes me think of fish scale leather. Which is nicer than it sounds. The mug has finger and thumb divots that make it very comfortable to hold.

Happy Birthday to Me

My sweetie is making me a cake as I type. Gingerbread. MMMMMM
With whipped cream. MMMMMMM

When anyone asks I tell them I'm 39, the same age as my mother. I've been using that line for a few years now.

I saw a T-shirt last weekend that said:

Looks 30
Acts 20
Feels Like 60
I must be 40

For my younger friends who reach that milestone this year, I'll be sending that along presently.

And, I got this. Anyone of a certain age in Canada should recognize the Muppet Frog Prince, which Jim Henson produced for the CBC in the early 70's (or maybe late 60's). It is tough to find because they haven't re-issued it since the early 90's. This pre-loved copy came from my friend Susann, who always knows what I really want.