The Perfect Summer Day At Last

We enjoyed a lovely weekend.

On Friday night Attila suggested we go to the lake shore (Lake Ontario) to watch the Full Harvest Moon rise. So we drove down to the lake and found a nice spot in a park, setting up our folding chairs on a platform overlooking the water. The moonrise was spectacular! It came up over the horizon a bright orange, it seemed so very large. We stayed for an hour or so, chatting and watching the moon ascend the sky, its light reflected across the water. We missed the eclipse though. We were the only ones at the park, no one else seemed to have the same idea. Attila and I had a wonderful time, a great Friday night out.

Harvest Full Moon, Lake Ontario, September 16, 2016. Below the moon the trees are in silhouette along the shoreline.

Saturday was humid, cloudy, and raining, we we decided not to go camping, and to stay home. Our morning was spent shopping, it was a bit of a spree. We had received a $100 gift credit card when we purchased our dishwasher, it arrived in the mail last week. It was burning a hole in our pockets! We stocked up on lots of lovely things.

It is harvest season in Ontario, our spree focused on buying fresh vegetables. We purchased a ten pound bag of onions, a ten pound bag of carrots, and a twenty pound bag of potatoes. I find the carrots go black awfully fast, it must be the variety they grow, it doesn’t store well. I decided to roast the whole ten pounds of carrots, which I did, they were delicious. I cooled and packaged them, two meals worth in a bag, and put them into the chest freezer. I am considering trying to make individual serving Cream of Carrot soup this winter for my lunch, using thawed roasted carrots, 1% milk, and an appropriate herb, which I haven’t figured out yet.

Attila has almost finished the garden shed! It is full of construction materials and not ready for use yet, but by next week he should have it cleaned out and ready to organize. Thank goodness! One step left to go, ensuring it stays dry!

This morning we arose to a foggy, humid world. The weather report predicted sunny warm weather at the Rideau Camp, so we packed our cooler, filled our water bottles, loaded up some of the wood scraps we still need to burn, and were on the road shortly after 9 a.m. The weather just got better and better all day. It was the nicest day we have had all summer, a perfect summer day, and we were very grateful to be at the camp to enjoy it.

Attila brought brush and set it near the camp fire pit, it was the dead wood we had cleared from under the hydro lines. There was a lot of it, it took me all day to burn it. I enjoyed breaking the dead wood into small pieces to burn it, sitting in the shade far from the heat of the fire, venturing near it only to add fuel. One of the things I love about my all day camp fires is cooking meals over the open fire. Today’s lunch was grilled cheese sandwiches, with sweet onion slices cooked in the sandwich. They were so good!

There was the most wonderful breeze that blew across the camp all day long, it was so refreshing. I love the Rideau Camp because there are few people sounds there, and I can hear the wind as it sings a duet with the trees, it is such a musical sound, it reaches into me like a lullaby.

Attila was very busy. After some discussion this summer, we decided that two of the trees at the edge of the camp would be removed, stumps and all. Their removal will allow easier maneuvering when we have Iris the trailer with us. Today was removal day. Attila used a winch, chain, maul, and the sweat of his brow to remove those trees; quite literally the trees were removed by the sweat of Attila’s brow, he was soaked to the skin by the time the job was done.

We decided to construct a French Drain to guide water away from our new garden shed. We need gravel to do this. We also need gravel to level the low areas at the camp, which make pulling the trailer very tricky. The decision was made to order two loads of gravel from a local business near the Rideau Camp. In preparation for that delivery, Attila pounded stakes in the two areas that we decided we wanted the gravel loads dumped. I tied orange tape to each stake so that they could be easily located by the delivery person. Then we needed to put a sign at the entrance to the property, to identify it for the delivery person. We don’t have a 911 number, because it is a vacant lot. A piece of plywood with the street number painted on it was nailed to a stake, and the stake was driven into the ground under the pine tree at our entrance, making it very easy to find our property. Attila will order the gravel this week.

After the gravel is delivered, we will make several trips to the Rideau Camp during the week, after Attila gets home from work, to bring back loads of gravel to construct the French Drain. That will be the last step for the garden shed project.

Worldly Distractions

Weather

21°C
Date: 9:00 PM EDT Sunday 18 September 2016
Condition: Mostly Cloudy
Pressure: 101.5 kPa
Tendency: rising
Visibility: 24 km
Temperature: 21.1°C
Dewpoint: 19.1°C
Humidity: 88%
Wind: S 12 km/h
Humidex: 28

Quote

“It is not fair to ask of others what you are unwilling to do yourself.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
1884 – 1962

That is how our mother raised us!