Happy New Year 2012 - Remember to Have Fun

Yes, I know. It's been ages.
Why?
Something's gotta give.
Can't do everything.
In June, the sweetie said to me one day...."All we ever do is yard work or work on the house. I want to have fun"
Now, I was surprised at this because I love the yard work, (some of us would call that gardening.)
And I love my house, as unfinished as it is and crazy as that may seem. But I understood what he meant. We used to go hiking, camping, drinking, adventuring, exploring, whatever, and we don't do that anymore because:
1. We spend any extra money we have on the house stuff.
2. We have too many projects on the go. It can be overwelming.

It was getting him down. He's already a little stressed because of this phD project. He wanted some leisure time.
So for the past 6 months or so we have been working at having fun.
I abandoned the garden and the blog (two things which suck up a lot of time) to do other things. Fun things for both of us.
Boy, was it expensive.
In July we bought a new truck. It's blue, and still doesn't have a name. That wasn't so much fun as necessary. Casper was 11 years old and starting to really fall apart. We sold him to friends who didn't have a truck at all, and sometimes we still visit.
In August we drove the new truck to Montreal and bought a new bike. The green one to match my red one. Now we are twins.The plan of spending time riding together was foiled by the crappy summer weather we had and also that the green bike (which still doesn't have a name) was in the shop being fixed for a month. We bought it used, and it had some unknown problems which are now fixed and we are eagerly waiting for spring. Vroom.

In August we also bought kayaks. We were having so much fun with those that we forgot to take pictures. We put the kayaks on the truck and went to various lake and beaches all over, getting wet and exhausted and pretending we are 20ish rather than 40ish.

In September we built a new garden for a friend (yup, that's yard work but I managed to squeeze it in anyway). We used the new truck for that too, you can just see it in the distant background. September we decided I needed a new larger pottery studio and began renovating the upstairs of the garage. Including putting on a new roof. Thanks to our friends Peter and Gabrielle for helping with that. This is the new studio space under construction. It looks better now. The electricity is in, the lighting and the insulation and vapour barrier are in. There is a wood stove for the heater, along with a couple electric baseboards to keep it from freezing at night. We still need to put down the vinyl floor and plumb a sink before I move in. Oh, and a couple windows would be nice. It will be rudimentary, without drywall and will still be a storage space for much of our renovation and summer activities, but it is a much larger space that the sun porch I am currently in.
In October we renovated a craft fair booth we bought from a friend and went to a craft fair in November. Exhausting but fun.Over Christmas we collapsed from all the fun.

In the Boxing Day sales we bought me a new computer to replace the 8 year old antique I had been using. (for using - read swearing at and getting frustrated when it would hang up or crash)
The new one is much faster and easier to surf with, so perhaps blogging won't be such a time consuming task and I will do it a bit more in 2012.
Happy New Year to all, and remember to have fun.

The upside of crappy weather

What follows two days of rain? Monday.

It has been a bit of the summer that never was so far, although it is still early days yet I keep telling myself. The last two weeks have been getting better, except for the weekends which have been rainy and cold.
The upside: I can ride my motorcycle to work during the week and relax in the pool after a long sticky day.
I'm not getting a sunburn at work.
The cool nights are wonderful for sleeping.
Have I convinced you yet? I have almost convinced myself.
This week has been sunny and warming up and the forecast for Canada Day weekend is for more of that. Ironically the garden needs water. I'm hoping for rain.
The downside: Weekend chores in the garden get left undone and laundry goes in the dryer. The second coat of paint on a garden chair is still waiting, and plants that should have been planted a month ago are not. Like these.These are the results of the sweet potato experiment I wrote about last winter here. These are only a few, I had great success with getting the sweet potatoes to overwinter in storage and then got them to grow slips which then root in water for planting. I also tried just planting the sweet potatoes, and that was slower because there wasn't much heat in the greenhouse in spring, but once they started, they really got going.
The other half I took to work and they were not as successful but are starting to come on now.

Other things to do when it rains:
I did complete a sewing project that has been sitting there since April.Friends gave us this teak chair sans cushion in February, and I finally finished the cushions. I had hoped to also cover the cushions of another teak chair we inherited but I ran out of fabric and now can't find it anymore. Bummer.

I started some pottery that a friend has commissioned me to make. And I finally glaze fired a kiln of stuff that has been sitting around since I went back to work. Most of it came out OK. Maybe pictures later.

Team Ed Ride

The 50 km bike ride I did for charity was last weekend on Sunday. I would have blogged about it earlier but I had to wait until my fingers stopped hurting. This is us before the start, "While we are all still smiling" I think was the quote.
It wasn't so bad really. I had a couple things going in my favour.
Everyone else was ill, with colds or asthma or whatever and that meant that I could keep up with all the regular cyclists most of the time. Yay for viruses!
Also, I have a great bike. I will admit to stressing about my bike before the ride. My bike is so old that when Peter went to buy new tires for it, the guy in the shop told him that Cannondale hadn't made a bike with 24" rims for 20 years. My bike is an antique. And I went looking for a new bike last year and realized that there are a lot of new and improved features to modern bikes, like shock absorbers and more gears and big rims that make mine look like a Model T Ford. Happily, my group were not the up to date, hard core set I was expecting, and I am so grateful for that.
I will admit to being a little intimidated when I learned they were part of a cycling club that did this ride every Thursday evening.
We were 6 in our group and that is a good number. We cycled mostly together, or in twos chatting as the scenery went by. It gave us all a chance to learn more about each other, and I will say that those other five people were an interesting and diverse bunch. This was such a good experience.
I want to add that the best part of getting my bike on the road again is how you feel so much more connected to the scenery. I could smell the lilacs (and the chicken barns) and hear the birds and feel the road surface. When I was practising before hand, I would cycle past people and they would wave, or say hello, or nod. Other cyclist would call out too. I have driven the route we took many times, but doing it on a bicycle made it a completely different experience.

As we passed the end of our driveway, Peter and our friend Lynn were cheering us on with the Dog as Official Team Ed Dog (note the sign around her neck.) I had forgotten to mention the Cheering section to anyone else, so most of the group were wondering who those people were and how they knew we were coming.
On the way back, we stopped in for a photo op and chance to pee.
We had variable weather. It was cool in the morning, and looked very dark and foreboding as we were on our way to the start point at Clock Park in Wolfville. By the time we were at Star's Point it was clear and sunny, we all stripped off our extra clothes in Kingsport and except for the stiff wind sideways on the Port Williams dyke coming back the ride we had excellent riding weather.
The last leg of the ride across the Port Williams dyke up to Greenwich Corner and then the home stretch from Greenwich to Wolfville was the most grueling part of the ride. Besides wind and hills, I could feel my energy waning, and there were a few fleeting thoughts of just stopping and sticking out my thumb to a passing car. Beer kept me going but in my darkest thoughts, I remembered that the Port Pub was closer than Paddy's. I was trailing behind, if I stopped would anyone notice? When we rolled in to Wolfville at 12:10 we all headed for the pub, for the reward of a fry up breakfast and beer.
Between Toronto and Nova Scotia we raised around $5700 for the Princess Margaret Research Foundation. Thanks for all your support.

Rainy May, It May Rain

Happy Victoria Day weekend. Three weeks have flown by. Most of the days this month were rainy. It got everyone down and the morning radio hosts were complaining that mushrooms were growing in their hair. Work was frustrating as we completed as much inside work as we could and then after two weeks we finally had to brave the wet and do some outside things anyway.
Peter has been very busy doing everything but the PhD research this month. He had an interesting day of sewer maintenance on May 3.He constructed a wood shed. It looks remarkable like a green house I know, but plastic is cheaper than almost anything else and the solar gain will dry out the wood.All three motorcycles run. This is ironic because usually we are so busy in spring that the motorcycles get pushed back and we aren't riding them until June or July. This year they are ready to go, as soon as the sun comes out. If it ever comes out.

We were unsuccessful in selling the older bikes last fall, but we relisted them on the KIJIJI site and he sold Binky last Friday. Bye Bye Binky, I will miss you. Still looking for a buyer for the Virago though.

He also sold a friend's lawn mower for her this weekend.

The weather finally cleared a little last week and we set up the pool Thursday night after our first day of sun in two weeks. Because there has been so much rain and because we no longer use the well as our main source of water, we just turned the pump on and started filling the pool on Thursday evening. We figured there is as much water in the well as there ever would be so we didn't need to worry about running it dry. Saturday Peter shocked it with chlorine and the water went orange. We weren't sure if it was brown algae or rust. After some internet research it is apparently rust. Since we have only been using the well for making tea and for the greenhouse water (and not much there because of the rain) and maybe because there is so much ground water right now that leaching is occuring, there is a lot of iron built up and when he added the chlorine shock it reacted to the iron. My research says the most effective thing is to filter it with cotton socks and batting. So we did that today and it is amazing how well it works. The water is only red tea colour now.
He also set up the solar heater and made some modifications. The temperature of the heater water Sunday afternoon when the sun finally came out was 35 degrees C while the air temperature was only 15. Wow.

Saturday I went to a fundraiser Plant Sale with my neighbour and laid out a space to make a new garden bed for all the sun plants I am unable to resist. The veg garden is growing well, and now that we squirrel proofed the greenhouse the seedlings are coming along OK too.
My bicycling is getting better. Sunday I biked to Kingsport and back from here. Kingsport is 2 kms and the first bit is all up hill and against the wind. I had to rest at the beach for 10 minutes before I could turn around. When I got home I had to rest on the couch for 20 minutes before I could move. That was only 4 kms but it nearly killed me.
This morning I went the other direction to Canning for bread, and it was mostly downhill on the way so I did an extra loop around the village before I headed back. The ride up hill wasn't as bad as I thought and I was surprised that I didn't need to rest when I got home. I may be able to go out again this afternoon for a second run. I need all the training I can get I think.

Team Ed Charity Ride

Every year there is a charity bike ride to raise money for brain cancer research at the Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation in Toronto. Team Ed, is a group of people who ride in memory of Ed Poty who died of brain cancer 9 years ago. I didn't know Ed, but I know his wife, my friend Sharon, and she does a ride here in Nova Scotia because she no longer lives in Toronto.
For the past two years, I have participated in the Team Ed Ride by showing up at the end of the ride and eating a greasy breakfast at the pub. I was good with that, but this year Sharon challenged me to do more. Now, as my normal two wheeled conveyance has an 850 cc motor to make it go, I thought this sounded so retro that I had to try it.
Today I put new tires on my bicycle because the ride is in two weeks and I need to get out and practice beforehand so I don't puke. I needed new tires because I haven't ridden my bike for 8 years and when I tried to inflate them last year they exploded. After I put on the new tires, I took it for a spin down the road to Kingsport to see if I could still remember how. It really is like riding a bike. Unfortunately I got as far as the winery (about 800 metres) and decided that was enough for the day. (I'm thinking now that may die. but it is too late to back out because I have registered and have a fund raising page and everything!)
In Nova Scotia, we are cycling from Wolfville to Kingsport and back on Sunday June 5. We are taking the scenic Wellington Dyke route and it will be about 50kms all told. Go to the website and search for my name under participants to sponsor me. If I live, I promise the blog post will be worth it.

http://pmhf3.akaraisin.com/Common/Event/Home.aspx?seid=4111&mid=8

What did you do this weekend?

Not so much house reno as house maintenance. After digging up the drive to install the water line, it got very mucky and rutted in the spring thaw. We first tried to use field stones in the ruts to firm it up and hoped that they would act like cobblestones, but that was a disaster. We talked about getting a man with a digger to grade it and fix up the ditch that ran along side. We talked about doing it by (gasp) hand. We even looked into renting a machine and driving it ourselves. We were waffling about the work and the price of all these options. On Saturday though, our neighbours had a digging machine in their yard to look for the septic tank which they suspected needed pumping. They had spent several hours looking for it with shovels and long poles without success and had decided to get in a professional. We took advantage of that event to ask the guy if he would do some things for us. In about an hour with no physical or organizational effort on our part required at all, it was all done.
He dug the ditch.
He graded the drive. He pulled out several tree stumps that still had massively long roots attached.
He levelled a spot for the new wood shed.
Peter was so happy he couldn't stop grinning.
It cost a $100.
Then, we considered that our septic system hadn't been pumped for several years so we decided to find our tank, and unlike the neighbours, we mostly knew where to look because it was new when we bought the house 8 years ago. I took pictured so we would remember where to look next time, because you only do this every few years. We are not sure if it needs to be pumped or not, but we will call and try to piggy back onto our neighbour's house call now that it is all dug up.
I started back to work this week, and except one particularly gruelling day I didn't feel as bad as expected. I did get a sunburn on Thursday because the weather went from cold and rainy to hot and muggy in about 3 minutes and apparently it was sunny for at least some of the time.These are a couple of gratuitous pottery photos from the last glaze kiln. I just unloaded a bisque this week and I've been working on making plaster molds for some new ideas. The plaster is a nightmare though and I've had several mishaps with it setting too quickly or oozing out of the forms and going everywhere.

The best laid plans...and a look back in history

I had this plan to gently ease into gardening this year. I would go out for an hour or so and rake a bit here, tidy a bit there...
It started out OK. I pruned all the fruit trees in February.
I pruned all the shrubs in March.
Last weekend was sunny and warmish. I spent hours raking and weeding and edging and top dressing. Two days in a row. I can't move more than my fingers to type.
My small goal was to uncover the shade garden and check on the perennials there.
From there I branched out to raking up some branches in the drive and the lawn. But this is how my thought process became my undoing.
"But why rake branches until all the tree pruning is done?"
So I did that.
"And if I'm uncovering the rhubarb, shouldn't I just top dress it with fertilizer? But before I top dress, shouldn't I weed out the crab grass? But if I'm weeding crabgrass, shouldn't I give the bed a hard edge to stop the grass from re-invading the rhubarb? Since I have the edger out, shouldn't I do the same to the asparagus bed? And it has crabgrass too...."

Today I took it easy and simply loaded up the truck with branches to take to the compost site and I bought a new burn barrel. Our old burn barrel is rather rusted out and I have been meaning to replace it for two years, so one more item off the List with a capital L.
Why do we need a burn barrel? We don't much. When we were first here and doing a lot of house destruction, we burned a lot of the short and scrappy lumber we were removing from the house. This picture from 2005 illustrates how much we are talking about. This is one of my favourite pictures from that time. I went to visit a friend in Scotland, and when I came home, this is what my house looked like. The upstairs is missing, the diagonal line on the left of the picture is the upstairs bedroom wall, the lighter coloured square is where the dining room used to be.
This picture is about a month later with the shell of the new construction almost complete. We actually reclaimed a lot of the lumber you see piled here, either we saved the wood to be reused or we chopped it into short lengths and used it to heat the workshop.
We were doing so much that it would have been prohibitive to pay for dumping the mixed construction waste at the transfer station, and it is so far away that it took a lot of time to get there and back with a load on our little truck. When we started the destruction we had a dumpster for the initial debris and it was 100's of dollars. ouch.
Then I began to use the burn barrel to burn all the branches from spring clean up, but now I can take it for free to the compost site in town which is much closer than the county site.
We still have a lot of paper which I have been trying to burn in the wood stove all winter, but that creates a lot of ash that needs to be removed frequently. The paper is old bills, taxes from 1994 to 2000, files and files of stuff we don't need to hang on to any longer, boxes and boxes full. I have a shredder, but the volume would take ages to shred, just as the burning in the wood stove was taking ages, hence the new burn barrel.