Oh Deer!

Today I took a walk in the back of our property. Had been going back there kinda doing my own nature inventory. Spring was amazing for ephemeral wild flowers. I have about 20 different types of spring flowers which I photographed over the past few weeks, but hadn't been back there in awhile. First the black-flies were crazy and now it's the deer-flies, but I put on my bug-proof ensemble and in I went.



Not a flower in-sight. The forest floor is crispy with dried up leaves except for a couple of low lying areas. Plenty of different kinds of ferns, but that's it for interesting foliage. I wasn't too quiet, tromping around whistling and cracking branches, as the neighbor recently told me he had seen a small bear back there. All of a sudden, a deer jumped in front of me and froze. OK - we both froze. I slowly took my camera out of my pocket and she scuffed the ground a couple of times, snorted and then whistled a short loud squeal. HOLY CRAP!!! I figured now would not be a good time to try to get my camera on and set and focused. She flinched first and with a giant leap was gone in the direction from which she came. I changed my course of direction and figured that was enough exploring for this afternoon. I was happy I didn't have the hunting dog with me, who was home nursing her wound.



Anyway, of all the wild flowers I've photographed, I thought I would share this one. These are very rare white lady slippers, which I was shown just down the road from here.

Green Acres is the Place to Be

It's just not here!! Cripe, we wonder if it will ever rain. Seed and sod are down, but since then we have had record heat and no rain to speak of. And we ran the well dry on our first night of watering 'cus we are city slickers who weren't familiar with wells - but now we are. All is back to normal in the water department. We won't do that again. If any grass grows, it will have to be on Mother Natures terms. It's more of a mixture of hay and clover we sowed anyway and the sod was just along the top of the rock wall for immediate erosion prevention. Once established, it will have to fend for itself, as lawn watering is a waste of a precious resource.

The Fix is In

Last summer, due to all of the rain, we had significant erosion where the septic tanks were installed. We stuffed the crevices with bags of chopped straw and decided to deal with it this spring. So after having called landscaping companies and had mini-seisures at their rates, we called back our excavation company that did the site work. They repaired the area by building a retaining wall, then re-arranged our rocks out front but first installing geotextile to prevent erosion, built us a small ramp behind the garage to allow the little tractor access for yard maintenance, trenched and buried big-O for the downspouts, covered the fill with topsoil and lastly gave us steps up to the front entrance. That will do for now thank you very much. We quickly layed sod along the rock and seeded everywhere else, and we are now the only people hoping for rain this long weekend.
Once the sod and seed have taken, we will trim off the landscape fabric left exposed. Rock garden anyone...

Open House

On Sunday last, we participated in the Ontario Straw Bale Building Coalition Open House. It`s a once a year things where home-owners open their homes to interested and curious town-folk.

Andre was away for the weekend, but Deirdre came up from Peterborough and together we greeted over 30 neighbors and new friends. And none of them noticed that our home is not completely finished, so yeah! for us.

That was Sunday. The place looked restful.

This was what it looked like on Tuesday.

Bale Garden

I read on the web that it is possible to do some raised bed gardening using conditioned straw-bales as the media. So back to the farmer I went for 6 more bales. Basically, using Urea at gradually reducing potencies, one can speed the decomposition process, so that come planting time, the bales are sufficiently rotted to allow them to be planted into.
These are my bales being prepped. I have fastened soaker hoses to them to make the watering process simpler. Hopefully in a few weeks time I can report plant growth. Looking to grow tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, an assortment of herbs, and squash or melon. And I hope to be more successful than I was with our syrup making. Don`t ask.

Back into building mode

One last item that was outstanding before our occupancy permit inspection was a hand-rail and a back to the bench on the front deck. We likely could have passed without them, but the insurance company was particular about their absence, so that was item one.

Then Andre and I tackled the garage, yet again. Most of the boxes have now been emptied except for my shop tool related stuff. No use getting that out and about until I actually have shop space. We built a series of shelves to store the miscellaneous stuff on and while I was building those, Andre was busy installing insulation, vapour barrier and sheathing on the wall of the garage the shelving units would be fastened to.

After that, we built a small platform for the screened gazebo to get out of the bugs. We experienced black-fly season for the first time ever. Holy smoke! Not that we have a lot of time for sitting around now, but we have our afternoon cocktail out there everyday.

We're back!

Not that we went anywhere, just been living the life of leisure. We've been keeping busy cleaning up dead-fall and construction related scrub piles that we did nothing about last summer. We have made countless trips to the dump with the little trailer loaded up with sticks and logs and branches.
Still no painting to report on though.