The To-Do list

The spring chore list is gradually getting whittled away but its not getting any smaller because new chores keep getting added to the bottom of the page. Like this one.

The first load of next winters wood arrived today, yes the first load, theres more to come. This is my right hand man's chore. I once had a wet heavy chunk of maple land on my ankle, followed by a trip to the emergency room, followed by my hero announcing he would do all the wood piling henceforth, bless him.

Today the first of the potatoes went in, we should be having our first taste of tender new taters by late july. The cloth is covering rows of turnip and radish to protect the leaves from the voracious flea beetles. They also love broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower which they chew to resemble lace so they all need protection until they get bigger and tougher. I found this fine net type material cheap at a Fabricville sale last fall.

All the leafy stuff is in now, chard, spinach, onions, 5 kinds of lettuce, onions, and the garlic is up 6 inches.

In the corner of the photo is my other right hand man, Big Red. My Troy Bilt tiller I bought new in 1978, the only piece of machinery I have ever truly loved. He has some new parts mind you, (my favorite ever Christmas gift from Mr Hero was new tractor tires for Big Red)

We are off to the farm auction today in Sussex to scout out some laying hens and look at something besides a chore list.

Ready for happy hens

Spring is galloping along here with crocus and coltsfoot appearing as patches of cheer, tulips getting ready to bloom, and the grass slowly turning green, much to the horses delight.

The portable chicken house is finished at last. It's made with no bottom in it, a 5'x8' footprint, so the happy chickens (which I dont have yet) can scratch about and eat grass and worms, bugs and clover. Two people can move it to a fresh patch without too much back work.

This end opens up for feed and water.

The other end opens up for egg gathering in the 3 nest box areas.

This door has a translucent window so the hens wont be traumatised if the foxes are trying to peek in at them. It lifts up so I can get at the trap door that can be bolted shut once they have gone up to the roost in the evening.

It's been a fun project using mostly recycled bits and pieces . In fact the only thing I bought new was the chicken wire. Saint John has a Re-Store, a wonderful warehouse where donated leftover building supplies are sold really cheap, as a fund raiser for Habitat for Humanity. They were a real treasure trove of lumber and hardware for my Habitat for Hens.

Maple syrup time

Our neighbor Jean Marc makes the BEST maple syrup and every spring we look forward to the party at his sugar shack. 50 t0 60 people turn up bringing pot luck goodies and enjoy a great feed with copious amounts of sweet syrup,.... eggs poached in maple syrup, ham baked in maple syrup, maple baked beans....mmmmmm.

When the sap has boiled to just the right consistancy, some is ladled onto a bed of snow where it hardens into the most delectable toffee.

It can be rolled up around a popsicle stick for a disolve in your mouth treat, or even better, dribbled on ice cream.

On the home front, I have been working on a movable chicken house for perhaps 4 birds. There will be no bottom in the structure so the happy hens can scratch and eat grass and clover, bugs and worms. This is one of those projects that evolves to use up scraps and leftover wood and plywood from other projects and is sort of made up as one goes along.

I seem to be going from one job to another, spring is such a busy time here. The raspberries and blackberries have been getting a thorough pruning and there's another construction job going on at our summertime shop at the local wharf.

The "carpenters" who built the place 5 years ago neglected to use pressure treated lumber so we tore out the rotting plywood floor last week and this week the black moldy rotten joists are coming out. What did they think would happen to wood sitting in wet gravel??

Rising Tide, St Martins

I've finished this acrylic painting of a pair of our harbor's lobster boats amid a rising tide of concerns about the whole east coast lobster industry. Prices for the catch are so depressed with the recession that many fishers feel it's hardly worth the cost of the diesel fuel to go out. According to the news hundreds of boat helpers wont be called up for the coming season, in order to cut costs. Processers still have huge inventories of frozen lobster from last season so a worthwhile price for the fishermen doesnt seem likely.

On a brighter note, this should be the week we say goodbye to the lingering snow patches, with lots of rain and mild temperatures in the forecast. My sunny studio windows are crowded with seeds I planted today. They'll move to the greenhouse when the nights arent so cold.

Seeds look so insignificant but by midsummer , how amazing to get SOOOO much good food out of almost nothing.
Getting on with seasonal chores, the plastic door and roof covering are back on the greenhouse. I go in and with the sun shining I can pretend it's summer.

The winter storms played havoc with the birdhouses, now they're safely screwed into place awaiting tenants. Song sparrows are everywhere today, what is sweeter than their springtime melodies?

Privileged

The best thing that happened today was that I was outside when a flock of 52 Canada Geese flew overhead on their migration north. Before I could see them I heard them calling "spring's here, spring's here!" before they flew over the hill into sight. We are very lucky to be directly in their flight path as they head up the Bay of Fundy. There's something so wild and timeless and predictable about the return of the geese, I feel the same excitement each year as they pass over heralding the seasons change, and the same sadness each fall as they fly over the house hurrying south before the snows. It always amazes me how such heavy birds can stay aloft for so long , for so many miles.

In contrast I watched a bald eagle in Saint John today, effortlessly circling the sky with nary a wing flap, masterfully riding the air currents. A beautiful sighting in an ugly city. A blessed day indeed.

SPRING !

The sap is dripping steadily from our little clump of maples so spring for me is officially here. These are the only maples on the whole 8 acres and they are not that old so in order not to stress them too much I only tap every other year. What a pleasant sound, the rhythmic plink plink into the buckets. Tomorrow I'll gather in the sap and it will simmer slowly on the wood stove with each days' accumulation added, till at seasons end in a couple of weeks or so, there will be a couple of small bottles of dark amber syrup for our crepes and pancakes. We dont get much with only 4 taps and a boil down ratio of 40 to 1, but its a welcome taste of spring to chase the winter blahs.

I look forward to mud season, the snow is melting ever so slowly and puttering chores are beginning to present themselves...turning over the sun warmed soil in the greenhouse, still too cold at night to seed anything yet...

messing about in the pond...

I duct taped a colander to a broomstick handle and spent a happy hour scooping algae and old leaves off the pond bottom, must get some snails to eat the algae..

Theres still 2-3 feet of snow in the raspberries and blackberries so pruning them will have to wait another couple of weeks. I feel like Im coming out of hibernation like the bears.

Looking for outdoor things to do while the inside work piles up.

An odds and ends week

This has been a week of finishing up lingering projects. The painting of Avery and Stormy posted weeks ago has been bugging me ever since, and an "Aha!" moment occurred when I realised the yellowy green grass colors didnt tie in at all to the background so I applied a thin wash of greeny blue and now it seems to be more agreeable with the spruce trees. Stormys muzzle needed some lenghtening , a tweak here and there...and now its finally done...I think.


I always found crossing off finished items from the to do list to be very satisfying. This week the bathroom grout has been sealed, caulking done, carpet-to-tile wood threshold made, and the income tax papers dropped off. But the biggest procrastination of all...my citizenship papers are ready to mail.

Here we are, a happy little band of immigrants in 1957, happy that we weren't seasick and throwing up for the first time in 11 days...
as we approached Newfoundland, first stop on our way to a new life in Nova Scotia. What is it with the Brits and their obligatory neckties? We're on an immigrant ship for heavens sake.
So Ive been a landed immigrant for 52 years and it was a great shock after 9/11 to find out I would now have to have a $50. plastic card to prove it! Enormous amounts of paperwork later...(what record of landing??) I got my card only to find out they would charge me another $50 or more every 5 years to renew it. The final straw was driving over the Maine border this February to be told, you have a British passport so you have to pay $6.00. I was about to hit the roof with righteous indignation when wise hubby shushed me , muttering in my ear about the folly of arguing with american border guards. So feeling thoroughly discriminated against, this week I downloaded the citizenship papers for the final insult, $200.00 after being a contributing Canadian taxpayer all my adult life!! Well, at least I'll be able to vote legally, (somebody should have told me that years ago I guess) and being over 55 I dont have to write the test. Yay !

Finished the bathroom reno...

At last! I was beginning to think this little room was to be my life's work...sometimes a project just keeps evolving and consuming time as new ideas present themselves (usually in the middle of the night) Jimmy caught me multitasking here, having my first morning cuppa, eating my breakfast apple, stirring the paint, and about to second coat the the bathroom mirror frame.

I had some lovely tile colors that reminded me of the sea and sand and the foam that floats about where they meet, so after some hammering and jigsaw puzzle work, (a LOT of jigsaw puzzle work) a free form sort of flow emerged...

The focal point , the boat tile, was a piece of wall art that I soaked in the bathtub to loosen and get rid of the glued on masonite backing. My original idea was to set it into the floor but as this is the B&B bathroom and some of our guests are heavyweights, it seemed a safer proposition to stick it vertically on the tub.
Warning to the un-initiated: Do not attempt a tiling project without a really good set of knee pads, especially if you are past 55 ! This took more than a week of knee work.

This is the bathroom mirror reflecting the shower curtain opposite. Some leftover bits of tile represent breaking waves around the electrical plates, more tile and shells on the mirror base to remind guests of the lovely beach nearby that awaits their discovery. Tomorrow the pedestal sink goes in, and the toilet, and I can at last say "finished".

I really should be painting but...

A week ago I had an idea I'd do a simple little renovation in the bathroom, some tile perhaps, and get rid of the tired old wallpaper border. Hah! I should have known better, in an old house no reno is ever simple or straighforward and you have to work your way thru a, b, and c before you can get at d which is all you really wanted to do in the first place. The floor felt a little spongy in places so after the toilet and sink came out I pulled up the cushionfloor to have a look.

Yuck! Water that escaped the shower curtain had rotted down through 3 layers of wood. Nasty moldy mess.

I was muttering some uncomplimentary things about the person who had put down the decomposing plywood under the cushionfloor with nails instead of screws, til I remembered that was me 11 years ago.

But the worst rot was in the next layer down, a 2 foot square of half inch plywood around the toilet. Thats what a decade of dripping from the (insulated) toilet tank's summer condensation will do.

There's a wonderful gadget that can fix that problem, we have it in our rental cottage and there's no tank sweating there. A special valve and a pipe connection that lets a tiny bit of hot water into the cold water pipe to the toilet tank, so the water arrives in the tank at room temperature. Voila! No sweat.

Finally the holes filled in, and a new layer of plywood all over, screwed down this time.

Next a switch to some painting, with a little ballet in the shower. Trying to coordinate some colors.

Making a start on the tile design. Hopefully tomorrow this will all start coming together...

Please ! No more snow!

Here is our 11th snowstorm of the season as seen this morning through the dining room window. Are we sick of snow yet? The clothesline that I reach up to is 8 inches from the surface of the snow! We are counting our blessings that we didnt have to be anywhere today. The snow is heavy and wet and it drifted deeply onto our various roofs, but not the almost flat one, (go figure!)

So now after shoveling off the roofs we can see even less out the windows.

No worry about sliding off the roof with so much cushiony white down below.

Every backhoe in the province must be working today, theres way too much for the usual half ton-with-a-plow.

I am SO looking forward to the rain and thawing temperatures forcast for Friday, meanwhile I hope the horses stay near the barn because the fences have disappeared.

Back from paradise

We've been away for a week of nature therapy, something to preserve our sanity during a stormy and very cold winter. By mid Febuary I am so starved for greenery and flowers I think I could walk south. It was our anniversary trip to Puerto Rico, staying in a quiet spot in the foothills of the rain forest mountains, but just a quick drive to the warm listerine-blue Carribean.

I loved just stepping out of the cottage door into lush vegetation with the freshest sweetest grapefruit, oranges, bananas, papayas, and gorgeous flowers everywhere.
(http://www.coquishideaway.com/)



In the evenings, sitting on the balcony we were serenaded by a chorus of tiny singing coquis frogs, chirping birds, a host of chirruping insects, but no biting ones, no mosquitos, hens muttering, goats calling, a rooster challenging....like the day is so full of life it doesnt want to shut down.

The rain forest mountains rose to magnificent heights just behind us, I can close my eyes and still see the rich rich greens of the tropical vegetation and soaring trees, some a thousand years old. Hibiscus grew wild through the forests as well as a much larger version of the impatiens we are familiar with.





The damp earthy scent of the forest and its hidden secrets to discover and explore drew us back day after day. We sought out the little known trails and found wild places like a natural garden of Eden, a new adventure every day.



You can feel like you're the only people on a peaceful earth in such a place.

for the rest of the week's photos :

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1850418&l=ad292&id=593930754