Bored and Batten

Sunny morning on Serendipity. Sunny and very chilly, but with no sign of frost.

A has-been maple leaf, bleached of its former flaming glory, drifting down a rivulet and heading out to sea.

And a tree frog soaking up the sun while pretending to be a cedar log.

Today's major project consisted of planing 75 pine battens and then trimming both edges. While that may not seem like an awful lot, it does amount to 225 stoops, lifts, and bends. Some of us are feeling it. Also kind of boring.

Vernal

Vernal pool on lakeside of Serendipity.

Tyson's babbling brook

West windy. Quite a bit of roaring and tossing up on the higher bluff.  Down here, whirling fans of of ripples splaying across the bay. Lots of chickadees moving through cedars, spruce, and balsams along the shore.

Chilly, but with the cloud cover slowly thinning, and an occasional flash of sunshine. As we went to the Lower Deck to watch this interesting weather we got spattered with rain.

The wood stove has been idling along all day, well damped down and eating only tidbits—so I'm thinking a fast hot fire sometime soon might be good, in order to burn out the creosote. 

Finished deconstructing the boardwalk and now on to building its replacement.

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"Looking out into the lush and varied place is an unending is an unending pleasure, a relief from the tension of work, and a chance to observe the seasonal growth and transformation of plants. The garden and its surroundings are almost constantly busy with birds, so I keep binoculars on the sill and use them mostly to watch the common ones rather than to identify the transients or rarities. During the warm months, their music streams through the open window. A free, living show, nonstop, every day."

     —Richard Nelson

Great Day For Ducks

And also for moss—small flowerless plants  that usually grow in dense green clumps or mats, in damp or shady locations. The individual plants are usually composed of simple, one-cell thick leaves, covering a thin stem that supports them but does not conduct water and nutrients.

And, below, the very well tended and highly productive raspberry patch maintained by the old-timer in Mindemoya who gave us our irises. The proprietor is old and odd (who isn't) but he knows how to garden, and he gets gallons of fruit from this little patch.

Our primary project today (long after breakfast and well before naps) was restructuring the former (washed-away) boardwalk. After much experimentation we developed a way to remove the cedar planks from their underlying cedar logs. It involved a sledge hammer and considerable heavy lifting, but it worked. {The planks are, for the most part, perfectly good and should be reused.) BUT, try pulling a rusted spiral nail out of a saturated cedar log.

Miserable Weather

Spruce on nurse log.

Hanging slug. Apparently slugs have some spider capabilities, and can extrude, and hang from silk. I'm not sure of the advantage.

Bathroom, painted a highly-refined pale aqua. Now ready for trim.

Chilly, gray, and damp. Half a log on the fire almost all day, although the demand on the woodshed so far is imperceptible. Moderately strong north wind sending in enough of a surf to knock mergansers off the rocks. On our morning walk I watched a beaver act like a merganser. I first saw him him up as he was coming around the PineBox rock-pile. I watched as he continued north, a few yards out past the dropoff, until he disappeared  beyond Tyson’s. He would come up, briefly, then dive for a good while, and he was moving fast, faster than I could walk over over the rocky beach. Do beavers dive for fish?

After walks, Sue finished cleaning the Windrider while I made an omelet. And then, in honor of the weather, we painted the upstairs bathroom.

Miserable weather, yes, but somehow just right for early May on the Island.

Rain Day

Former boardwalk, which was washed away last fall by high water and big waves. It spent the winter roped alongside the high water mark, and now it is being repurposed, although we don't as yet know quite how. What we do know, it that in its original form it was way too heavy for any six of us.

Here is where the boardwalk used to be, balanced on the various rocks leading out to the exposed reef. We don't think it is possible to reposition it and get it up high enough to resist the surf, in our new higher-water regime. From the reef out was (and may be again) the pier.

Chilly, gray, and damp. A small fire in the stove felt good.

Lovely rain all day, sometimes quite heavy. The swales are surfeited and the rivulets running. Now the green fire will truly ignite. Oddly, Pax seems to have adapted somewhat, and has not freaked out. Perhaps, someday, he will join me in my love of rain.

Fine Friday

Going green.

Mother Nature's sand art.

Over to Gore Bay for various errands. Nice long chat with Paul Purvis. Nice short chat with Norm (a man of few words), and nice (very long) chat Lee Hayden. Lee, the Gore Bay harbor master is an interesting guy—elected chair of Gordon-Barrie Township, Gore Bay harbor master every summer, maple sugar man in the early spring (having a large sugar bush and his own brand), part time meat-cutter for Max Burt, and former member of the Manitoulin Area Stewardship Council (like me). Actually, Lee was trained as a meat-cutter and was the guy who taught Max.

Did I forget to mention that on the way to Gore Bay we stopped at the Burt Farm and stocked up on a variety of locally grown sausages, chops, bacon, steak, pigs ears, and dog bones?

The day's accomplishments include Sue scrubbing and pressure washing the Windrider, and me planting cucumbers, onions, radishes, peas, and chard. Now for some rain.

Shorts and T-shirts

Summery. Hot in the sun and away from the Lake.  

Greening up fast.

New trellis.

Garden work in the morning while it was still cool and not too sunny. Rooted out all the invading clover (trying to get every bit of root) and the mullein, cinquefoil, etc. Then tuned the lovely, friable soil over, to greater than the depth of a spade, except that it was hot work on account of roots. A forest surrounds this garden, and the forest wants this garden. So, every season, the forest sends its tendrils into the rich, moist, sunny place—where the roots proliferate and prosper. I always have to chop deep around the perimeter, this time finding many roots sneaking in (and almost across the entire circular space) some the diameter of a Conestoga cigar. Every garden presents unique challenges.

Now, we need rain!

Mindemoya Mum's

Mindemoya Mum's

Mindemoya Mum's

You gotta love software. Today, posting my blog took forever. But then, apparently, it got posted three or four times, so I suppose it was worth it..

Another beautiful, windless, totally sunny day. To Mindemoya for breakfast at Mum's and then  errands. This evening down to the lower deck for calm and quiet, only to find calm and quiet destroyed by half a dozen gulls having noisy issues. But, when the sandhill cranes chimed in that was okay. And, eventually, calm was restored. Of most interest was the small flock of water birds, quite, a way out in the bay, who were making the what I thought were interesting sounds— a fairly high pitched "woof; woof, woof, woof—sounding very much like a pack of puppies. I would like to know what these birds are.

Also, speaking of sound, we have heard several outlier tree frogs tuning up ( but, of course as yet no deafening chorus). AND, just this evening the "mweep" bird—the flycatcher— indicated that back. Welcome home, little bird.

While on the lower deck we watched a large ice floe flow slowly through the channel, glistening in the sunlight as it inched somewhere. Just think, a north wind might have brought it here.