A sodden July lurching to its end

I hope no one is sensitive about the cooking and eating of lobsters. There is something a bit disconcerting about lobbing them into boiling water and watching them do their last thrash. But how else do you get a mouthful of that delicious tissue?

Meanwhile across the lake Mic Mac people have assembled and camp on the hillside of Chapel Island to celebrate Ste Anne's feast, to worship Jesus's GRANDMA. And why not? Aren't those grandmas behind all this life? What would we have done without them?

Paul and Linda have come and gone, bringing with them more furniture and news from our Montreal base. Even in the heavy rains which soak their first days we are delighted to celebrate and remember how lucky we are to have such good friends.

Paul proves to be an excellent construction worker. Henry, his dad, built two homes and Paul is very efficient and accurate. Together we finish preparing the garage for siding: saves me at least a day's work.

July dragging to an end. In three weeks we'll be back in Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto for a couple of weeks...

After the feast

And then we consign their shells to the great lake lapping at our door and wonder at our appetites.

Too late!

At least they are arranged in a tasteful setting. Note the candle holder.

Paul cooks lobster

Paul meets a crustacean friend who does speak Cantonese.  Hold on a minute, Paul, you're not supposed to smile before you massacre our poor cousins. How sensitive is that for a psychiatrist?

Arthur, custodian of Lobsters R Us, in deep conversation with our visiting fellow from Baie d'Urfé, Dr Paul Chan.

 

Arthur is explaining the lives of Lobsters and wondering if Dr Paul has time for a psychiatric consultation while he's up here in Cape Breton.

Linda didn't come all this way to be upstaged by her industrious husband who is about to lose his tool belt

Linda would just like to know when it is her turn with the hammer. Or would it be 6 o'clock somewhere in the world and time for a cocktail?

Dr Paul Chan smiles up a ladder.

 

Imported from Hong Kong, Dr Paul Chan displays considerable skill acquired from his ambitious father, Henry, who built at least two garages. Dr Paul doesn't realize that his tool belt weighs more than he does and will soon fall to his ankles.

For the amateur housebuilder, some advice: only work with men who have 5-7 years of university to their credit. They love to hammer nails and don't consider it work at all. This is not considered exploitation by the various UN agencies which work with the Cape Breton Ministry of Labor.

Sandy and Richard Campbell have just rescued their sister, Deborah, from her enchanted garden.

Ho ho. The Dunn-Campbells are starting to appear. This is looking very ominous. There will be elaborate preparations, byzantine plan-making and houses full to cracking. It is even more likely now that Sandy runs Ottawa and Richard is in charge of education in Alberta.  And Janet is in charge of the construction industry in Nova Scotia.

A day of great amazement and success

It is Tuesday and Monday was exhausting. Yesterday, Monday, in a blare of sunlight, I struggled through the morning with a pile of rotting planks left from the original clearing of this land in 2010. I sorted out a whole bunch of 1" by 6" to dry in the sunbake. Hopefully the fungus won't like the sunlight. I hope it doesn't grow on me. Not yet.

Then the afternoon I was cutting out strips of tar-paper and peeling them off my head as I tried to hang them. How come all these construction activities feel like daycare? Luckily we are a ten-ladder family (I am not joking: I have counted them. I think I have a ladder and electric tool fetish...). I am using 3 ladders to clamber up and down as I staple up stinking asphalt paper.

For a break from the stink of tar, we decide to cut our way along the boundary line with the Husquavarna trimmer, finally emerging triumphant at the road down to the Marina. For 20 minutes I was putting out like I was playing against the All Blacks and then I could barely stay awake in the evening, watching Greenberg, a rather soppy West Coast movie about failed 40-year olds. Of course we fail. Everybody fails somehow. Forty is a good age to fail. Any age is fine for failure.

But not today, Tuesday. One of those glorious days when you feel that you are advancing, things are being resolved. Maybe we will live forever.

To start with, Deborah is up early working in the garden which is the parallel project to my fight with asphalt. Then I finish papering the front wall of the garage. Please see the blog photo for proof. Then it's off to Port Hawkesbury to get the super-non-vibrating-oscillating-Bosch sander, among other things.

Stop by the PO box and there is a package for Deborah -- her Maramekko material has arrived AND an official report on our water from Sydney hospital which informs us that we have zero coliform and e-coli! The water is drinkable! Quick: have a slug before a bird shits in it. It's clean, it's tasteless and it's drinkable. Suddenly the place feels possible. I love U/V light.

Good start. Then pick up fish from the itinerant fishmonger: halibut for when Linda and Paul arrive from Baie d'Urfé this Thursday and salmon for tonight. Jump ahead to this bed where I'm writing up these notes and the salmon was of a texture as fine as I remember for that magnificent fish. I would live here for the fish alone.

On to the Eastern Planning Commission where I pay 40$ for an extension to our building permit, then to Central Supplies where I pick up our new wonder sander to help with the preparation of the ceiling. Manage to get everything on the list. Never happens.

Then on to the beer shop -- oh, did I tell you that I bottled 25 litres of India Pale Ale on Sunday? I have 50 Grolsch bottles full of India Pale Ale. As satisfying as installing the first 6 by 6 screened window in the porch although I was nearly defeated in that act of heroism by a can of foam which threatened to destroy all my careful calculations.

Deborah has done the food shop in SuperStore (we all need super-hero shirts) and it's back to St Peters where our car gets some new oil and a filter and a couple of spot-welds to re-attach the muffler system. George Boudreau, the garage owner, is so simply effective and modest in his pricing.

Then on to the Greenhouse nursery which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. We buy another acer, a magnolia and some white raspberries to plant along the side of the garage... The place seems a bit deflated as it prepares for closing down this weekend. Like Fall is in the wings.

We get back just in time to spend a couple of hours with Barry Bouchard, a neighbour who will install our chimney and certify its safety... He talks like a Cape Bretoner, makes a list of what we need, nurses one Best Bitter beer from Propeller (does he really not like it?) and I feel like we are moving ahead: we'll soon be able to light a stove.

Now that's a day in the sun. Clean water and wood fire.

Close-up of art wall and strange drain dug in the future raspberry patch

 

Garage from the side with ancient Cape Breton Abstract chalk drawings on the wall

 

Getting the garage ready for siding July 2013

 

The garage waiting for siding. The drainage being re-routed.

 

The Master Builder arrives to re-direct the drainage. That's his excavator on the left.

 

That's our chalet behind all those dead trees. Well-hidden.

 

Janet, the ship's boy, unropes the sailboat before a becalmed trip to McNab's Cove

 

July 18 and how a day passes on the Cape

Things rush on. It's already mid-July and it's 34 degrees in Montreal and I'm glad we're not there. Besides you can't make fires in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue.

When you get a 'burn permit' here it lasts two weeks so you burn every superfluous wooden scrap for two weeks solid. Last night (Wednesday, that is, to show you that I don't lose track of time completely) we had a huge burn in front of the garage. Lots of roots because the Master Builder had showed up after lunch on Monday, pulling me out of a rather pleasant nap, to dig up the driveway and re-direct our main drains by pipe away from the garden and the septic tanks. Two hours later the 40 feet of pipe is buried and of course now there are new roots and scraps of wood to burn...

And, by the way, when the MB rolls into town on his backhoe, everything stops and we work on his project. He's very busy this year getting his Lake plane back up in the air so his time is very precious.  We're on his list but not very high: the plane's the thing. So when he's ready to do something we down tools elsewhere and get it done.

In the meantime I have been working (fiddling about really) at finishing around a couple of windows and then getting the garage walls ready for siding which the MB has already cut with his sawmill -- we only have to take off a slice of each board to allow us to lay them one on another. I'll be learning how to apply boards horizontally.

And of course I have to build our daily bonfire...

So yesterday, after the passage of the MB and his backhoe, and under Deborah's supervision, I dug out another 30 feet to extend the underground drain pipe beyond the back of the garage (which is 30 feet square) so that she'll be able to grow asparagus and rhubarb in the soil in front of the garage.

I'm coming to today, Thursday, because that's my story. Now the biggest problem here is getting stuff to us: there have been some miraculous deliveries (the bed with the fridge and washer and dryer -- Home Depot take the prize) but mostly it's a matter of going to Sydney or Port Hawkesbury or Halifax and ferrying stuff back in our trailer. So today, Thursday, we go to Sydney to get our screen windows from NorthAir, the Cape Breton company which also made most of our windows and doors.

I think it will be a half day, but I always get it wrong. We leave at 9.30, get back at 6pm, a whole day of it. 225 kms.

The day starts well: I fix the electrical wiring for our trailer. It's lightly raining and we make good time to Sydney, stopping in East Bay for coffee and a muffin. I love the baking around here: very high standards.

The windows are ready and magnificent, but they don't take cards. We leave the trailer full of windows and head into town to find money. First a call at the farmer's coop to buy some plants and a branch cutter. Then to the bank downtown, a magnificent building from 1901 with neo-classical ambitions. Then on to a rather uninspiring lunch at Allegro on Charlotte Street and a quick walk around the craft and art centre. On to a Home Hardware in search of spare filters for our water system and then to Home Depot to pick up various bits and pieces... Then back to Super Store to food shop for the week and finally make it back to the window factory  at 4 pm, It looks like it's closed. Only one car in the parking lot... She's there...

An hour and a half later we pull into Cape George and slowly get ourselves up the hill. Unload all this stuff while Deborah works at a wonderful meal.

Which goes to show that an 8-hour day of in and out of shops and factories can be exhausting, but luckily we now have a nice bath to fall into and Netflix to turn on to watch the last two episodes of The Hour, a wonderful British thriller set in 1956 in and around the BBC...

And tomorrow I am scheduled to work with the MB on his sawmill producing siding.

Geddit? Another day of small triumphs. It's a great way to keep moving, working through a lot of  jobs. Great training camp.

No witches on this fire, just rotting wood

 

What we do every day? Take Tuesday 9 July.

The photos are fun.

Of course Deborah isn't painting a coffin: it's a set of shelves made by Austin Venedam whom we met at the Antigonish market. They will hang above the kitchen counter at dwarf-apple height, perfect for the resident chef. She paints them whitish like the walls.

Austin lives in the house he was born in back there at the end of the ashphalt road at Monk's Head. Nova Scotians either up and go to Alberta or don't leave home at all. Literally.

We drove over Friday to pick up these Shaker-like shelves in the middle of a three-day heat wave and I can remember a very cool O'Keefe's India Pale Ale in his workshop. We also picked up two Adirondack chairs so I feel like we are now true North Americans arrived at the lakeside.

On the way back to the Cape we bought a washing line set-up from Canadian Tire. Gradually getting round to the details.

Deborah paints the two Adirondack chairs a beautiful shade of green and they disappear on her lawn.
I'll photograph them if I find them.

So, what do we do in a day? Just to give you an idea. Me, I make a list of things I'd like to accomplish and then just go at it until the evening when I start another bonfire to burn up all the brush lying rotting around here. The photo follows. There's a lot to burn if you want to keep up with what is growing.

The problem today is a smell, a very bad smell. It's obviously coming from the bathroom and kitchen sinks. I wonder if the vent pipe is maybe too small, should have been 4 inch. Or what? I venture into the crawl space to discover that we FORGOT to put traps into the two sinks and we left the vent pipe open at one end to receive the sump pump... How did that happen? We (Michael and I) were so proud of our idea to put the traps under the floorboards that we just forgot to do it! Thought we wouldn't clutter up the cupboard under the sinks. And as the septic system starts to generate gases, we've now the smell of crap right through the house.

It's actually not that bad. Not fainting level yet.

So, I fix that. Glueing ABS plastic pipe is a bit like Lego except that when you've applied the glue, it's done. While I'm in the crawlspace, yes crawling, I also check why two of the fluorescent lights aren't working -- something to do with the humidity. And I take the pick-axe to the shale floor to start digging out a sump pit. We need an active sump pump.

This crawling around in the wet shale will give me leg cramps overnight. But very good training.

Back up though: before I can fix the sewage smell we have to go 10 k to the village to pick up plumbing parts, so while we're there I ask Blair Landry, the hardware store owner, whether I can get parts for the old lamp Donagh gave us (1930s?). We don't find anything so he suggests that I mend it and sells me a very strong glue.  Good salesman really. He also explains how to assemble the traps. Good teacher.

I load 4 by 10ft white drainage pipes onto our roof-rack to drain the approach to the house and we go back into the village, collecting clean water on the way.

Just think: with our ultra-violet light now working 24 hours a day for us, we'll be able to drink the water from the cistern, ie the rainwater. That's how we move ahead: one little bit at as time.

So, back to the village of St Peter's. We sit in Tim Horton's for coffee and a muffin wondering why the most beautiful view of the sea isn't exploited by this building. Everything faces the main street where, of course, Tim Horton's business comes from. Even the parking is, by sign, limited to 20 minutes and there are No Loitering signs. The business just invites you to come in, drink a coffee and leave... If they were making money from the sea, they'd probably face that way: as it is they just park their garbage containers there.

Then we pick up a fillet of trout from the mobile fish-monger set up by the liquor shop and make our way back to the Cape where I can now fix the smell issue.

Unfortunately, while installing the bathroom sink trap I disturb the sink set-up and it leaks. That's a job on the list for tomorrow. And so one thing leads to another and time passes.

The smell is bottled, so I cut a chainsaw gas-tank of wood and burn it on a bonfire which we watch as the light fades. We eat the trout and a wonderful zucchini salad, then watch House of Cards on Netflix.

The internet has indeed revolutionised our world. We are here, there and everywhere all the time.

Deborah sporting her birthday gift from Adrienne, a Wimbledon visor

 

Anna preparing for a role in a Gone with the Wind

 

Preparing a Cape Breton coffin?

 

Deborah sorting out her garden. Cold frame made from Mary-Anne's old windows behind.

 

No corner store out here on the Cape

 

July 8 2013 How we ended up on Northampton at night

It was distressing to hear that people very close and dear to me were going to the blog and discovering not a word. Wondering, no doubt, whether we had just vanished into thin air. Well, I did re-start writing just before we came down to Nova Scotia in mid-May but I never finished or published. Just got on with the move. The Big Finish.

Is it worth your time? I hope so.

Warning: this is not the heroic period of the build. It has not the charm of the frog in the well. It is just two old people fiddling with the details of a posh little Scandinavian-style wooden house in Cape Breton...

So now, in the middle of summer, I start the blog again with an image of the bed we sleep on in this wonderful open house. Here's the story of the bed which is a Stearns and Foster model called 'Northampton'.

Is it just age (our sixties) which makes a good mattress so important? Is it  the memory of overnight torture gathered from youthful crappy mattresses that incited me to visit the Dorval Hudson's Bay back in April. I came on a mattress salesman who is from Sri Lanka so we talked mainly about cricket. We got around to mattresses and I started falling onto his floor models, maybe 5 of them, until I came to a Stearns and Foster model called 'Northampton'. This was the mattress: this was too big a coincidence, this 'Northampton' and not a little superstition in this decision. I was coming home.

Circling round to where I come from.

A mattress named after the city of the Saints Rugby club where I actually scored a close-in try back in the 60s playing for Bedford was too much of a coincidence so I lay there thinking about the bruises I sustained that day and just fell asleep, lightly, but asleep.

'I'll take it,' I said, coming out of my reverie. Where's the salesman? So, right, I want 'Northampton' delivered in Nova Scotia. Sydney. Is that possible? Of course it is. For consumers everything is possible.

So now we are driving East towards a house and a bed called 'Northampton'. But how will I get it from Sydney to Cape George, 80 k? Shall I jog up there with my trailer and balance the bed across the 4 by 8 trailer bed? What happens if it gets damaged?

The solution to this problem is not something you would find in Montreal. Sister Janet suggests it. Call the kind deliverers who are bringing our fridge, and washer and dryer down from the Home Depot in Sydney to see if they like cash and bingo! for $100 they agree to pick up 'Northampton' and bring it along at the same time. Not a bead of sweat from my brow. Just a few of those new plastic washable $20 bills and the deliverers even set up the bed. I was worried they might be tempted to try it out and fall asleep like I did back in Dorval.

So here we are at Cape George on 'Northampton'. During the day we float out on images of the lake and at night we go to 'Northampton' for perfect sleep.

In these strange ways we tie knots.

2013 I feel I have been neglecting you. Time to re-set.