Our home in Canada
Fall at the lake By Abe Ross
At this time of year I envy the bears. All they have to do is find lots of berries and eat and eat until they are stuffed. Then they find a nice cave and sleep until spring. We, on-the-other-hand, have to make more complicated preparations for the winter. Sort of like the infamous grasshopper which played and enjoyed all summer long and then begged for assistance from the ants who had worked in preparation for the winter. (Don’t remember if they took pity on the grasshopper or not). Well, I don’t envy the ants because I did enjoy playing all summer but now it is time to pay the piper. To use a couple of metaphors.
The summer days were long and sunny and dry. The lake is lower than we have ever seen it. Normally, the water level covers the brown stones on the shore on the “beach.” It has been so dry that the forest fire danger was very high and all outdoor fires were banned. There was a moderately large forest fire about 14 km from here; took the firefighters three to four days to get it under control. We were lucky that there was a lake between the fire and us. However, it did provide the impetus for us to think about what we would need to take with us if we had to leave the house on short notice. We started to pull some things together. What would you grab? I’ve decided that besides my wallet I would grab all my electronics, laptop, tablet, semi-smart phone. (Semi-smartphone, that’s another topic). No phone reception here without booster antenna so no point to having a cell package which includes data. If there’s no data, why bother with the apps? We do have wi-fi so the tablet has all the apps.
Anyway, where was I. What are we doing for preparation. Well I wanted to put new doors on one of the sheds, the one we named the “boat shed.” Don’t ask me why we call it that; we have never put boats in there.. When we bought the house, close to sixteen years ago, the opening to the boat shed was three sheets of overlapping plywood with a lock and chain running through them to keep it secure. I modified the door so that it could be kept closed without putting on the lock and chain. However, it was still a nuisance to open and close it as you had to lift the whole sheet of plywood out. The door does have to be wide enough to take the freezer out when it bites the bullet. So, long story short (too late, I know) I took out the old panel, put in a new door (and doorway, of course, and then refaced the other sections so that the plywood exterior, which looked cheap and unfinished IMHO is now faced with tongue and groove.
Had a goodly bit of help painting it. First our six year old grandson helped. We suited him up in an oversized t-shirt so that he was completely covered and then gave him a paint brush. He painted low while I painted high.
We did a good job. Unfortunately the colour didn’t match the old paint on the connected shed. The colour might politely have been described as “baby pooh brown.” So, when our grand daughters visited and wanted to try the paint sprayer, they painted the shed again with a new colour which matched the connected shed much better.
We have now finished painting all of the decks which our eldest granddaughter and our son scraped while sitting in the sun, well slathered with suntan lotion of course.
The dock is out, the canoes and kayaks are put away, the paddles are drying in the sun
And that’s about it for my first blog.