This is the kind of DIY project where you see how much of a country mouse I've become...
Spring has sprung - the first shipping vessel came to my city recently and the captain reported that there's barely any ice on Lake Superior, which is totally unbelievable. The shipping season has opened earlier as a result and with surprisingly balmy temperatures, that familiar smell of spring (damp leaves and dog poop) is in the air already!
It was a little rusty and beat up, though, but functioned perfectly. Hubby asked me to paint it,
but I was super busy with other projects and work, so he dangled this
carrot: "you can paint in turquoise".
Sold.
I had a case of Rust-Oleum Harbor Blue in my spray paint stash and, after prepping the wagon (thorough wash, light sand), I blasted it with multiple thin, light coats - even the wheels! Now I'm eyeing up our ugly old riding lawnmower too...
Between this trailer, our turquoise front door, and the turquoise guesthouse trim and door, I'm easing the neighbors into the day I decided to paint our entire garage bright turquoise with a huge, Instagram-worthy mural on the garage door. #notkidding
Being alone in the woods at night has always ranked high on my list of irrational fears - right up there with a Zombie apocalypse and shark attacks in swimming pools.
I never planned to move to the country. I longed for a lake house, but I always imagined living close to a city. Lakefront properties, however, do not often come up for sale around here and, if you remember my Sliding Door series, they are often out of our reach. When this lakehouse came up for sale, we fell in love immediately. It had some flaws to overlook (why would someone build a basement five feet tall?!?), but my biggest concern was its rural location.
We were actually cautioned against moving so far out to the sticks, largely because of the 45 minute drive to town. But because we had been living in Ottawa, where rush hour can turn a 10
minute drive into a 45 minute ordeal, we weren't concerned
about the commute. Hubby had grown up in the
country, on 80 acres deep in the woods, so the distance worried him even
less. He was more concerned about our measly little acre of land. To
him, our new home wasn't rural enough.
I'll admit, I was mostly worried about zombies (in the woods - two fears in one!), so I didn't heed anyone's advice because their concerns (winter driving conditions/convenience) seemed pedestrian when there were much larger concerns to consider (seriously, why was no one else worried about the zombies?).
Shortly before we moved, we started watching The Walking Dead - which was such a mistake because it scared me senseless. For months after moving here, I wouldn't set foot outside in the dark alone. If I was in town for the day, I'd tear down the highway after dinner, trying to get inside before the sun went down. If Hubby was out of town for work and I missed that sunset cutoff, I'd crash at my parents' place in my childhood bedroom. I bought underwear and socks to keep there because this happened so often.
But it turns out that there are scarier things than zombies! Since moving here, I've dealt with black bears, getting my truck stuck (and unstuck) in the snow more than once, a frozen well, and some really close calls with moose and deer on the highway. Like, "is that deer fur caught in my grill?" close.
Surprisingly, I took to country life like a duck to water. The drive, the distance from everything, the well, the propane tank, the wood chopping, the garbage hauling - all of it feels routine now. Eventually my fears melted away too. I started driving home alone in the dark (although I'd sprint to my door at Olympic speeds). But then I relaxed about that too, and now I putter around at night, taking out the garbage and admiring the stars.
One night Szuka ran away during her evening pee and I took off after her
in my nightgown. When I reached the road, I remembered that without
street lights and our home's motion lights, it's really dark at night!
Then I remembered I was in the woods. At night. Alone. At night. Undeterred, I
started jogging down the road until I found Szuka, who looked startled,
like "oh sh*t, I thought you don't come out at night".
Being able to be outside, in the dark and alone, seems ridiculous but that was a huge accomplishment for me. Everything else was easy to adapt to, so when I finally felt comfortable in the woods at night, the country finally felt like home.
We even started watching The Walking Dead again (we're all caught up!)
It would have been lovely if someone could have pointed out that it's October already. How did that happen? When did that happen? (Sometime between Friday and Saturday, I imagine).
It seems like the leaves changed color and started dropping overnight!
The other day the bay was so calm (which is rare for Lake Superior), and the surface of the water looked like a mirror, reflecting all of the vibrancy of the nearby trees. The water just glowed shades of gold and orange. It was so beautiful and I almost sprinted back to the house for my
camera to snap a photo for Instagram or the blog, but I decided to just
enjoy it.
I've been trying to live in the moment more.
Yesterday I did manage to snap a few photos of the trees - but only because I was outside photographing a DIY project in a makeshift set I made. I needed something larger than my normal backdrops, so I morlocked our old turquoise front door out of the garage but because I could only manhandle it so far, I set up shop in a fairly visible spot where everyone who drove or walked by could see me. Feeling embarrassed that I was taking photos of a cleaning product in a pile of dog kibble on top of an old door (I am an artist, lol), every time someone went by I either sprinted toward the garage and hid, or started taking photos of the trees, which seemed less weird than what I was doing.
Gosh, the trees are pretty!
In addition to our large blue spruce (my favorite), we've got some baby blue spruces closer to the garage. Of course there is also a lot of cedar - in addition to the wee ones we planted. There's a huge white pine and tons of birch trees. It's a really good mix, encircling three sides of our property.
But reading this infographic by TruGreen really made me panic...
Trees only live 50-300 years?!? Our neighbor is supposedly cutting some dead trees between our property this fall and I have this recurring nightmare that I'll wake up and she'll have clear cut the land between our homes entirely.
Then everyone will definitely know all of the weird stuff I get up to.
And did you see that each of us pretty much consumes a whole tree every year? Wow.
Thanks to my last post with TruGreen, I've still been thinking about our property and the trees we have. As a little update: thanks to their encouragement, I'm going to be pruning our existing cedar hedges this weekend (last month I pruned the raspberries). As per their advice - and advice from readers! - I'll also be bundling
up our little newly planted cedars this year so the harsh winter wind that whips off
the lake won't parch the poor little guys.
I was happy to collaborate with TruGreen again because I really owe them one - thanks to some of the FREE tips I picked up from their website,
I stopped scalping my poor lawn and raised the blade on the riding lawn
mower so now when I cut the grass, it stills looks green - not brown
- when I'm done. This means I'm mowing more frequently, but the lawn is looking better and better - perhaps you noticed in Friday's post? It's looking more lush. Although I've abandoned weed whacking around the
shore and fire pit (perhaps you noticed that too, haha), thanks to TruGreen I haven't given up on lawn cutting just yet, like I
normally do. Instead of letting it grow super long before that first snowfall, I'm following their advice for winter prep: "after grass stops growing, cut the lawn a final time at one setting
lower than normal. This will reduce matting of the turf over winter and
reduce the occurrence of snow mould problems."
TruGreen has so many great resources on their website and also an opportunity for a quote to create a customized plan for your yard and trees, to prep them for winter and keep them healthy. Whether you're interested in some professional help (because you'd like to branch out in your yard maintenance), or just looking to soak up some free information like me, hop on over and root around their site.
This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of TruGreen.ca. The opinions, terrible puns, meandering digressions, turquoise-laden photos, and text are all mine. The crab apples, however, are my Mom's. She brought over a giant bag one day for no reason whatsoever so I photographed them on a turquoise background (naturally) and now I guess I'll be looking up crab apply jelly recipes...? I think she wants to help with "Project Tanya Embraces Fall".
Hubby is mildly obsessed with Google Earth and he's getting me hooked on exploring our neighborhood from the sky. From our seemingly tidy neighbour's secret stash of junk hidden in the forest behind his house (busted!), to a landlocked shack deep in the woods, it's really interesting getting a bird's eye view of the area! Truthfully though, Hubby spends most of his time examining our own property, comparing current aerial shots we took with older logged images to keep tabs on the rate of our shore erosion.
Lake Superior has wreaked havoc on the properties of many of our neighbours, who have had to hire out expensive reconstruction. The higher water levels are to blame and they've caught even seasoned lake lifers by surprise. We've been somewhat sheltered from the damage because of our location on the bay, but we're still going to have to devise a plan for next year to keep our lawn from getting washed away. Living lakeside is amazing, but we weren't prepared for the extra work of owning a lakeside property (#notcomplaining)!
Meanwhile, last year Hubby noticed another trend while spying on our house: thanks to Szuka, our lawn had such bad brown spots, you can quite literally see them from space! We're pretty rough on the lawn too though: we frequently leave stuff lying around so the lawn dies underneath and when we finally cut the lawn, inevitably it's too short! Oh yeah, I also drove across the lawn in our Ram 2500, loaded with thousands of pounds of gravel, and you can still see the faint tire treads.
With the combined efforts of our complete landscaping ineptitude, Szuka's bladder, and the black bear that forced our hand and made it necessary to chop down two beautiful apple trees, we kind of made our property worse the first couple of years we lived here (despite feeling swamped with yard work)...
I'm sure neighbors wondered what the heck we were doing with our time to still have such a crummy looking yard! Even though we're pretty rural, our neighborhood is changing: smaller homes and cottages are regularly torn down to built giant houses - one of our neighbors supposedly spent $100,000 on landscaping alone! Everyone who walks by our house peers down our driveway and frowns, so I have this sinking suspicion they think we're dragging down property values.
We're trying to improve, but we're not used to having any land so it's taking us some time to get the hang of it! We were spoiled in the townhouse because the condo hired out lawn care so we didn't even own a lawn mower! We planted a cute little bush
and some lily of the valley flowers but that was it. We'd make a fruit
smoothie and watch someone else cut our lawn from behind the sheer
curtains. We have big plans for next year, but this year we chipped away at some outdoor projects: we finally fixed the riding lawn mower so we cut the lawn weekly instead of monthly (go us!).
We replaced the crumbling fire pit with our new modern DIY fire pit, finally got rid of the geese for good with a rope fence, removed some rotting flower beds, and finished cleaning up all of the junk and debris left on the property by the former owner - including that 1960s boat we kept moving around the yard, killing the grass! Just this weekend we even pruned our overgrown raspberry bushes.
I'm going to develop a green thumb, just you watch. Once I can keep a shrub alive, I'm getting chickens.
In our most victorious bout of landscaping, we planted four teeny, tiny cedar trees! The goal is to eventually line the entire property with them - including where we tore down the apple trees - to fill in the natural tree line and create a perfectly private backyard.
Womp, womp, womp.
Seriously - those cedars looked WAY bigger when we brought them home in the truck. Well, we're getting there! Fifteen years from now we'll be happy we started today.
We have the enthusiasm, but it's clear we need a little guidance.
When TruGreen reached out, I was really interested in their services and expertise - especially the tree and shrub care. Even itty bitty trees are expensive, so many of the TruGreen services, like seasonal insect control and a spring dormant oil application, help protect that investment - and they're essential for protecting old growth. TruGreen specializes in providing the nourishment trees and shrubs need to grow, essential if your plan is to block out nosy neighbors as quickly as possible. TruGreen also deals with pest control and tackles pressing problems like the Emerald Ash Borer. I learned so much about what my trees need to be healthy from perusing the website.
Until I cut my own lawn, I never realized how easy it is to completely destroy it with improper maintenance. My crime was letting it grown too long, then cutting it too short. I'm slowly getting the hang of it (although Hubby and I still bicker over the height of the lawn mower blades). We've never fertilized or used anything on our lawn, which I realize now is a huge mistake. We can really see in our aerial snooping just how dry and crunchy our poor lawn is. With TruGreen, lawn care is a science, with different services tailored to ensuring a weed-free, lush lawn. I love that they actually customize a plan for a specific lawn - it's not a one-size-fits-all service, which is the key to getting great results. Plus, all natural and organic services are available - which is always a way to win me over!
Even if you're not in a position to hire professionals to help you out - or there isn't a service available in your area - TruGreen has such a great learning centre and I've picked up some great tips for mowing the lawn! It turns out there's a word for what I was doing: "scalping" my lawn (oops). As well, now that it's finally running, our old beast of a lawn mower could use some maintenance to ensure we aren't butchering the lawn each time we cut the grass. I learned that excessive clippings can be a sign of not mowing enough - yep, guilty! Plus, I didn't realize there were actually different mowing suggestions (like how short to cut it) outlined for different types of grass - seriously, a gorgeous lawn takes some know-how! Luckily the TruGreen team can put together a customized plan for achieving that perfect lawn that will turn neighbour's heads - in a good way!
If you've been struggling with your lawn maintenance or trees and shrubbery, or just need some customized advice to help your yard looks its best, see if there's a TruGreen in your area and get a quote.
This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of TruGreen.ca. The opinions, meandering digressions, sad little cedars, and text are all mine.
On some of our looooong drives home from town, Hubby and I often weigh the pros and cons of living in the country.
Pros of Living in the Country:
Lake view! With ducks and otters...
Foxes, deer and bears mosey through our yard like we live in a Disney film
Well water (the water in town tastes like a swimming pool)
Peace and quiet
More land than we could afford in town
Better odds of surviving the Zombie apocalypse
Beautiful neighbours:
Cons of Living in the Country:
35-60 minute drive into town (depending on where we're going in town/who's driving)
No pizza delivery
Mailbox that's 7 km away from the house
Treacherous dirt road that covers the truck in mud
Mud covered truck that covers my clothes in mud
So much mud
This:
Our lists get pretty lengthy, but always in favor of living out here! One money-saving perk was that (until recently) we had lower electricity bills than the folks in town. While those suckers were on time of use (TOU) billing for electricity, we enjoyed less expensive tiered pricing. TOU simply means that there are different prices for using power at different times of the day/week and the highest
prices are, of course, when people are getting ready for work or making
dinner at the end of the day. In other words, when you need electricity. This is the breakdown:
It's Monday! I have a funny story about Szuka, which I hope makes you smile.
Last year Szuka mostly avoided the lake, until Hubs and I jumped in one day. Szuka reluctantly joined us, but then proved herself to be a strong, if a little timid, swimmer. The fall encroached quickly, followed by the ice, and Szuka didn't get much time to test her sea legs. Last week I spent an afternoon raking, with Szuka at my side. She plucked a super mangy piece of driftwood from the shore - just totally rotten and disgusting - so I tossed it back into the lake as soon as I could get my hands on it. To my surprise, she dove in after it. I started tossing stick after stick into the lake. No matter how far I threw a stick, she obligingly retrieved it. After last year's tentative swimming, I'm surprised by how much she loves the water!
Here's the funny part. Hubs and I were sitting on the shore, admiring my handiwork and the view, and she was chewing a stick near us. Then she heard geese squawking across the bay and took off running across our neighbour's yard. We yelled at her to come back, and she did - begrudgingly. She knows she's not allowed off our property - and she knows exactly where the property lines are - but sometimes the urge to protect us makes her willful. She wouldn't come back and hang around us, but instead decided to wade into the lake and inspect our dilapidated dock (unusually high water levels last year totally destroyed it).
She walked out a little bit at a time, intensely sniffing every segment, until she reached the end.
That's when she started to book it toward the other side of the bay. Toward the geese.
We just about died laughing at her determined swimming (and creative disobedience). We called her name and she turned around with an expression that read, "What? What do you want?"
We instructed her to come back. She looked peeved, but starting swimming back.
We're kind of curious how far she would have gotten, or what her end game was. We were warned Komondors can be stubborn...
In other delightful doggy news, Hubs and I were having lunch with my Dad when he said he saw a mini-Szuka. I turned around and spotted a corded pup! She is a white Puli (which is less common than the typical black). Pulis are another Hungarian breed, but they have way more energy because they're livestock herding dogs (not guarding dogs, like Komondors).
Her awesome corded coat, made even more special with colourful threads woven around some of the cords, made me regret - just for a second - not cording Szuka. I'm always envious of people who have corded their Pulis or Komondors because it looks so cool!
A small part of me was hoping it was actually chocolate milk...
It's been over a year since we moved out to the sticks and I have to say that other than close proximity to grocery stores for late night ice cream runs, I don't really miss living in the city. That's not to say that country living doesn't have some pitfalls. Most recently, our well ran dry. Cue the sad trombone! (If you follow me on Instagram, this isn't news to you, but here's the longer story.) My Mummu and Mom were actually visiting me when I consumed the last drops of water. We were tinkering with the Etsy shop, photographing new items and writing listings. I was washing a few new finds when the water started to come out in spurts - like there was air in the lines. Was the pump failing? Were the lines frozen? Was the well dry? All of these were questions that I was ill-equipped to answer. Hubby was out of town so, at a loss, I crawled into our basement to investigate. The pump was working overtime and making angry noises, but I didn't spot anything else out of order. I wasn't standing knee-deep in water, so that was a good sign. I tried calling Hubby, but I couldn't reach him. It was getting dark and I didn't like the prospect of a water-less evening, so I tossed some clothes in a duffel bag and booked it into town, actually "blowing the doors off" my Mom's Jeep as I passed her on the highway (in my zeal to enjoy a nice hot shower). I was able to reach Hubby shortly after rolling into town. He asked if I'd thrown the breaker on the pump before I left.
Nooo....
At 10pm my Dad and I drove the hour back out to the lakehouse, and I threw the breaker (puttered for a few minutes, to my Dad's chagrin), and then drove another hour back into town. At least I could sleep easy, knowing the pump wouldn't overheat and catch fire. The next morning I drove back out to our house to meet my father-in-law, who kindly drove out from his place to investigate. Long story short: our well was dry! I also learned that the well cover is ridiculously heavy concrete. We suspect that because of our really, really cold winter, coupled with very little snowfall, the three sources that feed our well had frozen. That's the problem with less snow: it doesn't provide the insulation we country folk need. Fortunately the lines to our house weren't frozen, so we were able to pay for a water delivery ($225). At first, the water level kept dropping so the whole truck ended up getting pumped into our well - it's the same price, apparently, whether we need some or all of the water. We had no idea if the water would stay, or disappear overnight, because unlike a reservoir a well won't just hold water indefinitely. I started melting snow to flush the toilets and we crossed our fingers.
It looks like topping it up - combined with balmy temperatures that helped things thaw - worked, because we're back in business. We check the level daily and, not only did enough water stay in the well, it also looks like water is coming in again because the levels have dropped only a little bit. Whew! Happily, this didn't happen earlier in the winter because we might have had to make a monthly, or weekly, appointment for water. I know people who have gone a month or more without water because their well or water lines froze, and so a water delivery wouldn't even help.
Just another reason to love spring! And another way that rural living keeps us on our toes. Next time I'll have to tell you about our $400 internet bill...
I've had to adjust, moving from a city of nearly a million people to a municipality of only a few thousand. Sure, there's a proper city within an hour's drive but with only about 100,000 residents, it's small potatoes. I've been meaning to write more about this ongoing transition, but a lot of what I've had to adjust to has turned out to be far more enjoyable than expected, and I've easily slipped into new routines that now seem so comfortable and natural.
One change still feels kind of weird: dealing with our garbage. When I hear couples argue about who brought the garbage cans back from the curb, who left the lids off and whose responsibility it is to move those cans twenty feet, I want to knock their heads together. Hubs and I (although sometimes it's just me), collect, bag and tag our garbage and then drive it many kilometers to our municipal landfill, which has somewhat inconvenient and limited hours. Each tag costs 50 cents, but we get an annual allotment plus a free bag tag for each bag of recycling we bring in. It's an open pit landfill, with black bears strolling around. We stand in the back of our truck and heave our bags so they fly as far as possible into the pit.
Sometimes it smells, as you might expect, and it's normally super muddy, but in the winter it's not so bad. At first I was horrified by this process, but now, even though it still feels strange, I've grown to like this household chore and I loiter there more than Hubby would like. There's something kind of powerful about seeing all of this garbage against a beautiful, rural backdrop. It's eery and horrifying, but in some ways strangely beautiful. In the city, folks are so removed from the collective amount of waste produced, thanks to door to door trash collection, but also because the landfill in our nearest city is a giant trash compactor and you don't see anything but a large silver machine. It seems so neat and tidy. Here, though, it's just heaped and sometimes the wind takes pieces, obscuring a beautiful landscape. It makes me really mindful of the garbage we produce. I hope it's encouraging Hubby and I to produce less waste - we definitely produce less than when we lived in the townhouse. It certainly makes me think more about garbage.
On an uplifting note, the picking is awesome. There's a shed for people to leave things for free, and I've scored mittfuls of vintage goodies - incuding turquoise Pyrex (I've left treasures too). On instagram I hashtag these finds #goodneighbourshed, but I've only shared a few finds. I've absconded with quite a bit more than I've let on. I have yet to pluck something from the actual landfill, but there was a box of vintage dishware - just out of reach - that had me thinking about wading in.
The Good Neighbour Shed!
After we moved into the lakehouse, we devised a system for garbage that was not totally unlike what we used before. In Ottawa we had a garbage bin and then a black bin and blue bin for recycling. Here we bought a huge new garbage can that holds colossal GLAD bags so we can cram in as much garbage as possible - I really cling to those 50 cent bag tags (could I be any more miserly?). We bought another huge can for blue bag recycling. I re-use a carboard box for paper recycling to save a blue bag (miserly!). Inside the house, a cute aqua bin collects recycling under the kitchen sink, and I bring it outside to sort almost everyday (I try to make trips outside with Szuka fruitful, much to her chagrin - she'd rather we just play). I haven't really devised a good system for our garbage
inside. Our old step-can was in the way in our small kitchen and so I
used a random lid-less can I found in the house, that the old owner's left behind. I stuffed it underneath the kitchen sink when we were working on the house, and there it stayed. At one point I used GLADkitchen catchers but when they ran out, I started stuffing various plastic bags I accumulated into the empty box. It seemed cheaper, but these bags often leaked and some were a tight fit for the can.
When GLAD offered to send me some product and sponsor a post on trash talking, I was happy for an excuse to ramble on about our landfill and the weirdness of handling our own trash to such an extent, but I was a bit reluctant to use the kitchen catchers. Surely what I was using was just as good? And free! Well, the odor-guard kitchen catchers have sure come along way since I bought my last box. These new odour-guard bags with Febreeze are fabulous because although they smell perfumed coming out of the box, once they've been in the bin they don't smell flowery. Instead, they neutralize any odor really well, without just masking it. It was never atrocious under there because I take the garbage out to garage regularly, but it is garbage so it didn't smell like roses. After testing these bags for weeks, I don't smell anything! It just smells clean under the sink - these bags are perfect for use with my open can. And they fit the can with room to spare - no more leaks thanks to too-tight bags splitting. I'm sold.
I haven't tried the compostable bags because we don't compost. Isn't that horrible? I feel a lot of guilt about that. I didn't realize until recently that our dump has a compost section. I thought we had to compost ourselves, and with my lack of interest in gardening, Szuka the digger, and our bear problem, composting seemed like a nightmare. I'll have to make some room under the sink for a compost pail and start!
This post was sponsored by GLAD and I also received product to try out. The idea for this post and all words and photos are my own - as is the embarrassment I endured taking photos at the dump. I wasn't super keen on showing you the under the sink area, because its only redeeming features are that it's clean (go me!) and it boasts a pretty a pretty aqua can (thanks Umbra!). I have not washi taped or pattern papered anything. Bad blogger! While garbage and garbage accoutrements are certainly not the sexiest topics to blog about, particularly in the absence of any beautification, products that make our day to day lives a little nicer are worth their weight in gold! I'm happy for this opportunity to re-think what products I'm using. Maybe getting stuck with my garbage for a month won't be quite so smelly this summer? Stupid landfill hours.
