But It's Not All Bad!

Leading up to becoming Atlantis Of The North, we had ourselves some pleasant and productive weekends.

The Festival Of The Maples takes place in Perth on the last weekend of April and, you may recall from past posts about this event, is our target date for opening our place up, so we look forward to it a great deal. Christine went without me last year, but we both went this year.

Unfortunately, I left my phone in the car, like a dippy dummy, so I didn't get any pictures of the event itself. But we did fare rather well.

Maple cotton candy might be the best $5 I've ever spent. Christine looks for that particular bottle of maple syrup at right because it's organic (and extra yummy).

We spent the most time at a booth for All About The Soup. They don't trumpet it, but their entire line is vegetarian so it was nice for us to not have to cherry pick.

We've had, and loved, the Trinidad Corn (as a soup) and the African Peanut (over rice) but will likely work our way down the menu. I may donate my portion of the Beet Chiller to my mum, because I know she loves her beets, and I luv my mum. :-)

A few weeks prior to all that, my dad and I worked on the living room floor.  I won't display much of that now, because I would rather wait for the baseboards and quarter round to be installed, but it's looking pretty class, I think.

Looking forward to the finished product.

Meanwhile, I'm taking a different approach to the kitchen floor. I'd already removed some of those tiles but now I pull one up every visit. By the time the season is over, I should have the whole thing pretty well stripped and ready for replacement.

We haven't fully completely settled on a new tile yet but it probably won't get done until about this time next year anyway. We'll come up with something.

Soggy Start

Even those of you who don't live in (or near) Ottawa have likely heard that there's been a significant amount of flooding in the city this year.

I am pleased to report that we are not affected. It's been a miserable spring, to be sure, but if I didn't see images of the floods on the news and social media, I wouldn't know it was going on.

At the cottage, however...

We've been there for four straight weekends now, I believe. I believe it was two weeks ago that I made a very simple pasta supper and we ate outside under a setting sun with the temperature in the high teens/early 20s. We couldn't decide whether to eat inside or outside but Christine prophetically pointed out that it might quite a while until we got a chance again.

Last year, the water level was low throughout. So far this year, we were pleased with how high it was. But when we arrived this past Friday, we quickly saw that it had taken it up another notch.

All right, well, the old shed spot is...a little damp, but whatever. We actually had it worse one year when the shed was still up. I guess it happens.

But then it continued to rain. And water continued to flow into the lake. So the next day...

Ugh...So the stones from the first picture are now submerged and we moved the fire bowl because it seemed unlikely that it would be put into use (though I would be willing to accept that challenge).

We headed out to Perth for a part of the day. We needed to stop over at the animal hospital there for some pills for Ladybug (antibiotics, no big deal, we just forgot them at home), picked up some wood for baseboards at Home Hardware, a few groceries, doggy beds (which are essentially large chew toys for George) and a wicked good pair of slippers at Giant Tiger for me. We had a rainy evening inside by the fire and by Sunday morning...

Those of you who are there more regularly, take a look at top right of that shot. You can barely tell there's land past the fire pit. Unreal.

But...Aside from gardens, there is really no damage that comes to mind.  Some folks around the 'hood are going to visit some time soon and realize that their cottage spent a solid couple of weeks with water right up to the back door or Sun Room.

There's also nothing we can do but wait it out. It's pretty wild to think that right around the time Chantal and Joseph visited last year, I could stand on dry land at the bottom of the lake. Safe assumption that I won't be doing that this year.

Check out that rain forecast thought (third line from the bottom) for nearby Sharbot Lake.

Well...It is what it is. If we need to start gathering animals in pairs, at least we've got dogs covered (more or less).

One Hour Closer To Cottage Season!

But man it's cold. It's so damn cold.

Last winter, I managed two overnight visits to Crow Lake. Just one this year and even that one was testing the boundaries of good sense.

There was a job I wanted to complete though. During an earlier winter visit (only for a couple of hours) Christine and I began removing some of the living room tiles in order to replace them with something awesome.

When I'd messed with those tiles during our last weekend there, they came up easily. That created an incorrect perception that the job would be fast and easy.

The reality was that I just happened to choose easy ones to try to lift. Turns out the central part of the other tiles and the floor were stuck together tighter than Sigfried and Roy. So only the edges of the tiles would come up and break off. You ended up with this situation for virtually every tile around the fireplace.

Come on, man...

This was unexpected because for the most part, the dining room floor had come up fairly easily last year. At times I could pop those off in bunches of four or six.

But not in the living room, baby! There I was pleased if I could snap off a six-inch chunk. It was baby steps the whole way.

And so an excuse for a winter trip emerged. Christine equipped me with all sorts of scrapers and hammers and what-not and off I went. It was a battle but I threw on some classic blues and (literally) chipped away at it.

No flooring is already an improvement on the atrocity that was previously laid down. I could live with it for a while except that it remains sticky in many places. When we've dropped by and there has been exposed flooring, we've been a little concerned that we're going to find a mouse that got stuck and died there. Or a chipmunk. Or a moose. Can you imagine arriving to that?

Ideally, I'd like to have the new floor done before opening up but weather seems to be dictating otherwise. If it's an opening weekend job, so be it.

In the meantime, I'm going to make up for lost time a bit with a few pictures from our summer vacation that haven't made it on here yet.

Truthfully, I wish I could post a boat load of pictures from when Chantal and Joseph visited in September but it was only upon their departure that we realized that not a single one of us took a single picture. It's been months and I still don't understand how that happened.

It was a great visit, too, even though it was hot as hell throughout most of it. Outdoor fires, port, cigars, a little time spent in the water...But not a single picture. Baffling.

Instead, I'll throw down a few shots from our (Christine and me) visit to the Scheurmann Winery in Westport in late summer. We had stopped there before but there was no activity in the place. It felt like we were trespassing.  We assumed that maybe they just hadn't fully opened for business yet so we took off.

They were clearly open this time around so we stopped in and were greeted by this dood and his timely cock-a-doodle-do.

Fun stop. I recall that Chris wasn't blown away by the Pinot Noir but I enjoyed my sparkling cider just fine. But I would stop in just for the rooster.