Journey To The Center  

The past few weeks have been fairly uneventful. After the hectic effort to add new perennials and several rhododendrons to the garden, the next rush was getting vegetables seeds and plants in place. Frequent rains complicated the process, but also helped to keep the transplants well-watered until they settled in. With the garden somewhat set for the season, I switched gears and began clearing trails through the property. I work on that most days – usually for 4 to 6 hours – using various saws, weed-trimmers and lopping shears. My usual modus operandi is to go out in the cool of the morning and work hard until the afternoon sun makes me so hot and weary that I come stumbling back to the house to rest before returning to drag all of the tools home after briefly admiring that day’s handiwork. Sometime soon, I’ll put up a post with some photos and and perhaps even a grand video tour of the property.

After resting up after each morning’s trail building foray, I turn my attention to gardening, clean-up, maintenance, cooking, and laundry. About once a week, I do a supply run to Annapolis Royal for groceries. On the same outing, I also make a side trip to fill about twenty 1-gallon plastic jugs with water from a spring that, rather conveniently, emerges from a hillside next to a quiet country road. Spring water is used for drinking, cooking and washing up. Rain water is used for laundry and watering the garden. As mentioned in the past, clothes are washed in a tub using a canoe paddle. Most cooking is done in an electric frying pan – everything from simple fare for the dogs and me, to more elaborate offerings for visitors – of which we have not had too many thus far.

Saturday mornings, I make an effort to go to the Annapolis Royal farmers’ market to splurge a few dollars on fresh baked bread or pastries, jam, early vegetables, and sometimes a piece by a local artisan. I will try to post a few photos of these items sometime soon.

By night, I turn on the moth lamp for awhile. Thus far, it has been a very quiet spring with only 2 or 3 memorable evenings. On one of those nights, I had both a Hyalophora cecropia and an Actias luna come to the light (see photos above – click on images to see larger views).

As I work around the property by day, I watch for flora and fauna that I might otherwise miss if too preoccupied. As mentioned not long ago, I am participating in the Maritimes Butterfly Atlassing project, so usually bring my camera and a butterfly net along to hang on a branch near whatever spot I am working. From time to time, I toss down my saw and grab for a net or the camera to “capture” a specimen for my records. I don’t collect insect specimens, so most are released after being photographed, unless I have been asked to collect for someone else doing research.

One of my nicest discoveries in recent days was the tallest Jack-in-the-Pulpit plant that I have ever seen. It measured slightly more than 100 cm tall – about 40 inches. The above photo shows the plant next to a measuring tape which I walked back to the house to get as I just had to make a record of such an astounding find. It was growing with some less robust neighbours, in a boggy seep which was revealed in the course of my trail-building activities. For those unfamiliar with the Jack-in-the-Pulpit plant, here is a fuzzy shot of the spathe, the shape of which gives the plant its name.

The most recent discovery has been the identity of the vandals who have been knocking things off the kitchen counter and table when I am outdoors or busy in some other part of the house. The intruders have been revealed to be Red Squirrels, of which there are many in this area. They have become so bold that the will enter the kitchen to grab food even when I am in the room. They are quite unafraid of the dogs to the point that, yesterday, One circled Sabrina while she lay sleeping on the kitchen floor. It sniffed at her toes and stopped to look at her face from mere inches away. Sage will rush up as they sit on the window sill, but is unsure of what action, if any, to take. They soon realized that they are in little danger from her and began exploring further into the house. Last night, I finally had enough after one ran in and out of my bedroom, so blocked off the kitchen windows with rabbit cage wire. This morning, they are glaring into the kitchen but have yet to try to get past the mesh. With any luck, they will give up and go elsewhere to search for food.

More photos and updates sometime soon.

Today, I was going to post a few photos and an update on happenings here at the house. Instead, I’ll hold the photos for a few days, and post these instead, as they actually do relate to what is going on here.

By day, I have been working on the woodlot and trail project. Weather permitting, I get up early and take saws, weed cutter, extension lopping shears, and other tools, and head into the bush for the day. This property is about 2 acres, with an irregular shoreline that runs for several hundred feet. The vegetation and woodlot are very dense and likely have not seen much maintenance over the years – probably not for several decades. Unfortunately, in this region, the wild cherry trees are, for the most part, badly diseased. There are many of different sizes on this property, and most should really be taken down as they are quite unstable. I have been sawing down the ones that I feel comfortable with, and marking the larger ones to have taken down by an arborist later this summer.

This past week, I bought a new weed cutter machine. I also bought a changeable brush cutter head. The weed cutter saw plenty of action on Thursday and Friday as I used it to hack a trail through very dense blackberry canes. It did an awesome job, and that was just with the weed cutter head. In fact, the machine is so aggressive and effective, that I have decided to return the unused
brush cutter head as I know it’s even more aggressive and fearsome, as it somewhat resembles a Ninja’s shuriken weapon on the end of a pole. Maybe that’s not such a good thing to be using.

Anyhow, in the midst of this week’s activity, I’ve dropped by at my closest neighbours’ place a couple of times. They have ceased to be surprised by much of what goes on over at my place, but they do ask how it is that I know how to use all of these different saws and machines, or how to fix this or that. The simplest answer is probably that my Dad always encouraged me to try just about everything. He involved me in his construction and repair projects from the time I was kneehigh to a grasshopper. As I grew older, he showed me how to use various tools. By the time I was 18, I was working beside him repairing automotive radiators when he started up that business after retiring from the corporate world in Montreal in the early 1970s. He taught me to solder with torches, and use all kinds of other tools. When we built our house and barn, he taught me most of what I know about plumbing and electricity.

As a teenager, he taught me how to drive a car, start and run boat motors at our cottage, and operate a farm tractor and loader. I learned how to use all kinds of power saws, chain saws, etc…, and to be unafraid to use them, but always respect them. Now that he is gone, along with my husband, Don – both of them taken away from me at an early age by terminal cancers – I am left having to do everything on my own. Life would have been more of a struggle for me – and definitely would have allowed fewer options and opportunities – if I had not learned so much of what I know from my Dad. He did well to have shared so much of his knowledge with me.

The other thing he taught me is that the words, “I can’t do that” don’t belong in my vocabulary. I can’t recall even one instance of him saying he couldn’t do one thing or another. He expected the same from me, and never looked back to check and see if I wasn’t doing what he had just shown me. He just knew that once I was shown, I would manage to do that thing one way or another.

When he was diagnosed with kidney cancer, I came home to help him navigate through the world of hospitals and chemo. It was the natural place for me to be. During that few months, I also learned to build the grain sparging mills that he was manufacturing, so that he could pursue cancer treatment without havng to worry about his business. In the end, I was also his primary caregiver so that he could stay out of the hospital in his final days. It was very difficult for me as he was my Dad, and also among my very closest friends. Sometimes I wonder why he left – the man who could fix anything and put everything right – couldn’t fix himself and left it up to me to take charge. When a short few years later, Don was also diagnosed with terminal cancer and I had to do an even harder thing in caring for my husband and best friend, I think I found the answer. My Dad’s death prepared me for an even more difficult challenge. I often think of how, if not for caring for my father first, I might not have been as able a caregiver for Don.

Now that I am alone, I sometimes wonder if there is anything to be learned from all that has occurred. I will be the first to admit that, many times as I look back at the whole thing, I wonder whether there was any point to what we all went through. In truth, in retrospect, how things ended still seems nasty, ruthless and stupid. However, as I carry on alone, there is one redeeming thought that prevails. It is that, perhaps my ability to keep going in the face of all of this outrage, can show some other person who is facing their darkest hour, that it is possible to survive and carry on. If so, then that is the gift from my father – that I can pass along.