June 22 -- time for some outside work

This is the great outdoors, right ? -- so it's time to be outdoors.

I've got some cleanup to do. Most of my sawing has taken place under the deck just outside of the sliding doors from the basement. That has allowed me to work in the rain with a tarp overhead and kept most of the dust and scrap outsid -- not quite true because I've been moving all the sizeable pieces of plywood and DRIcore inside so that they stay aclimatized in case these are scraps that I actually use. Of course all of my hand tools are also scattered around the basement.

So ... this is where the ATC comes in handy -- bring it down to the basement door and load up all the scraps and pick up all the little bits and pieces on the ground and haul all this up to my burn pile. I'll wait for a rainy no-wind day to burn. The next step is to put away all the tools and vacuum the basement ... ah, much better. I'll be taking the tools out again but it gives me a momentary respite from the mess -- besides, I'm about to start some tile work and will create a new type of mess.

Back outside the ATC also comes in handy to pick up some other garbage -- when I had done the work on the garden water pump the old water tank and other trash were left by the shed so I picked up that stuff and filled the ATC trailer. I need to take this stuff to the dump.

Next it's time to take over where Sandy left off mowing the lawn and get the weed eater going -- so the next couple of hours I did areas of the driveway, around the shoreline and slope areas that are inaccessible to the lawn mower. I still cannot do much of the slope right behind the cottage, however, because the lupins are still flowering and have not yet gone to seed -- I made that mistake one year and cut the lupins before they had dropped their seeds and the following year there were not many lupins. The other side, however, is mostly lupin-free -- so I started with the weed eater and smelled ... berries ? Yes, parts of that slope are covered with wild strawberries ! -- they are tiny, mostly 1/4 inch or less in size, but packed with flavour (these are Canadian berries so this is Canadian spelling). I got out a dish and picked about 1/2 cup so that Sandy could have them for breakfast.

Time for the barn -- I want to get the Bayliner (boat) out soon, so I did some cleanup there. I had piled some unused cedar 2x4's and other cedar scrap in front of that boat so it needed to be moved. There are two dressers from my Dad's apartment that still don't have a home that I needed to get out of the way. Bins -- still full of "stuff" moved from the garage in Radnor and other stuff from the old cottage -- I did some cleanup and assembled more trash for the dump.

Jason had installed the tongue jack that I brought up from Florida on his boat trailer so it made it easy to move his boat ahead 3-4 feet and then I moved my boat to the doorway. With the ATC I then pulled it forward out of the barn and put the "muffs" on the engine and started it up to run it for a while. I also put some "watersorb" into the gas tank etc. and then pushed the boat back into the barn.

It's ready to go and I'll probably launch it on Saturday -- let the summer begin. Jason had my old electric winch repaired (the motor had died) and I'll probably install that in place of the 12 volt winch in the boathouse so that I'm ready to pull the boat in -- I generally like to leave the canvas top off the boat since it's a pain to put on and launch the boat from the boathouse and pull it back in on a daily basis.

Also -- I have two Battery Minders, and placed both my boat battery and Jason's on charge. After sitting all winter they need charging and de-sulphating.

Sandy got back home from Sudbury ... yes Sudbury again ... with tiles for the darkroom (my practice area) and thinset mortar. She also picked up the requisite trowel and a few other things and took back the rug that she had brought home for my den -- she had picked out a suitable carpet and they were supposed to bind it 7x10 ... but guess what, they bound it 7x12. Perhaps they thought that they were doing us a favour ? No -- just someone not reading instructions.

She puttered in the garden for a while and then came in so that we'd be ready for company -- Denis and Rayleen (I think that is the correct spelling) from the cottage directly across the lake were coming for drinks and snacks at 5pm. They stayed for about 2 hours -- by the time they left we had had enough cheese and pate that we did not need dinner.

Denis is planning on retiring this year. He is a heavy equipment operator and I believe that they live in the Kitchener area; Rayleen works for the Real Estate Board updating MLS listings. We talked about real estate in this area ... their cottage was originally a hunt camp with a 99 year lease, but eventually the province offered the land for sale.

When my mom and dad had purchased our lot it was $600 -- 45 years ago ? -- there were conditions attached by the province to keep speculators away -- you had to build a habitable cottage within two years. Back then we had water access only, no telephone or power. When Denis & Rayleen were able to buy their lot (I don't know when that was) it cost them something like $26,000 -- and now the lots on our side of the lake are probably worth 200-300,000 (based on some recent sales) -- with road, power and telephone. Of course these are all imaginary numbers because we have no intent of ever selling.

Denis has telephone -- at one point Bell offered a special of $1,000 for installation vs the 4-5,000 that it would normally cost (these are charges for anyone who was not installed in the original laying of submarine cable), but no power or road access. Denis recently inquired regarding power installation (they use a generator) -- $37,000 ... I guess that they'll continue using a generator for a while ! Last year he brought in a new generator by land -- there is an old logging road that he can travel on with an ATC.

After Denis and Rayleen left, I started a fire -- the first that we have had in weeks -- it wasn't really that cool inside but a fire is pleasant and I caught up on some magazine reading. There was no sign of Jason and Lorraine -- I had thought that they were coming up this weekend, but have not talked to them to confirm. I know that Jason had a big project at a clinic that he was taking on the last couple of weeks, so perhaps that has dragged on. Or perhaps I got the dates wrong -- whatever.

So much for Friday ... I went to bed at my usual time, 9pm or so, and got up at 4:30. Somehow I have to shift this to 10pm and 5:30, and then maybe 11pm and 6:30 ? -- but I find that after a day working, with quiet time after dinner my eyelids grow very heavy reading or watching TV -- and it's too late to start working again. Coffee after supper helps ... but then again, there's nothing wrong with this schedule, come to think of it ! I've always enjoyed the early mornings and will continue to do so !