Jo Edgett

If a picture is worth a thousand words, the following represents 98,000 words about just how much fun I had going back to BC in June. It was a treat to celebrate grandma’s 90th with my Vancouver Island family, and equally great to visit with family and friends back on the Mainland. Here’s what the entire trip looked like through the lens of my camera:

 

   

 

We’re still here! Alive and very well, thanks for silently asking. I’m never sure where the time goes once it has gone, but we did some stuff, that much I remember. Here are some visuals, with brief captions, to catch us up:

When we (in this instance meaning Lauren, Griffin & I) visit the Smiths at Mavillette during Spring Break, the attire is quite unlike what is worn at other Spring Break destinations I can think of. Toques, boots, mittens, down jackets, maybe even some ski pants are what is required here.

B’s not-from-a-kit homemade cider, aka apfelwein. It’s a still cider, truly more of an apple wine, just as its German name suggests. We added sparkly stuff (7Up, or sparkling water would do) to fizz it up a touch. Delicious. He needs to start a carboy of this stuff every month if we’re ever going to match the speed of production with the speed of consumption. I reckon it’s a losing battle, with consumption always winning.

April Fool’s Day, 2011. No joke! Though it’s a pretty good joke. Those snowflakes were huge.

The Winter/Early Spring view of Annapolis Royal, as seen from our bedroom windows. Which were still nekkid at this point. I had to finally come to terms with the fact that roman blinds needed to be made. By me. So out came the Janome:

At this point, I had essentially created two big pillowcases, with grey jute on the showy side, and UV-blocking lining on the other side. As there’s a ruler and a pencil in this shot, I must have been measuring for the rings.

Rings! Attached. Blind stapled to the thin strip of plywood. Eye screws screwed in. String strung through. Ready for hanging.

Violà!

Blinds open (apologies for blinding you) and pleating perfectly. There’s a cleat screwed into the window casing, but the over-exposure renders it invisible in this picture.

This is how I keep the hot sun out during the day, while still letting any breeze come in. New cotton matelassé quilt at the foot of the bed, mostly to finish off the look, a concept kind of lost on B at first, but he digs it now.

Part of szhuszhing the room called for moving my collection of Judy Maher creations up to the bedroom, like an adult version of my childhood stuffies. That tall rabbit in a coat is named Harold Hubert Hayes, after my great-grandpa. It was the most suitably dignified name I could think of, so it stuck.

Another of Judy’s creations, a sheep wearing a shrunken Frenchy’s sweater, on B’s dresser.

I found this craft ball and wound some yarn scraps through it, to help out the nesting birds.

Here it is hanging on our arbour. Some birds used it! Other birds looked at it like it offended their nest-building sensibilities. And that’s okay.

The first Goldfinch I’ve seen in our yard. I have no idea whether s/he was a yarn-ball fan or not.

Stray-cat Clover, still a huge puff-ball of fur in April. Still living in and around our yard. Still my favourite cat who isn’t actually my cat.

One day we came home to a purple pom-pom and a handkerchief full of marbles waiting for us on our back step. We knew immediately that it was a gift from Sophie and Sunna, and that they were for the cats. Monkey was all over the pom-pom.

Rooster, well, he’s a bit more timid. The handkerchief confounded him for about an hour. He just sat there alternatively hitting and sniffing it. I don’t think he ever did get to the marbles inside.

My light-yellow Broom blooms at the same time as the lilacs, and I really like that.

Window box, one of five, just planted. This was in late May.

B created a website for our neighbour Janet, who makes awesome cakes, including the one for my 40th birthday bash. He didn’t take any payment, so…she pays us in cakes! Like this crazy delicious creation.

Yeah, so, erm…Monkey’s diet is still not working. Clearly.

Last Wednesday was our first trip out to Whippletree Farm in Round Hill to pick up our premier box of CSA goodies. Soooooooo good! Loving that we bought a share! I mean, look:

And that was just for one week! We go back tomorrow for a whole new box. Also: chard is my new favourite veggie.

Taken today, July 19th. This is my third year with the window boxes, and this is my best planting yet. So lush.

This one is the most special to me. It’s the kitchen-sink window out on our back deck. Until this year, we could never get anything to live beyond a few weeks in this box because we didn’t have gutters on the roof, and the box would get water-logged as there’s no real roof overhang on this side like there is on the driveway side of the house. But we got gutters this Spring! And they match the trim, so they’re barely noticeable. They work like a charm, and you no longer take a shower when you enter the backdoor when it’s raining. And this box can finally thrive, and boy, does it ever.

I’ll be back shortly with another post, all about my June trip back to Vancouver Island and Vancouver. Hold tight. I doubt it will take me four months to post another update (here’s hoping!).

It’s not entirely finished yet; roman blinds have yet to be made, art has yet to be hung, bedside tables have yet to accumulate the detritus common to bedside tables. But we’re in! Sleeping soundly …until the sun blazes in our eyes at 7:30 am. I’ve got to get going on those blinds.

The storage room at the end of the upstairs landing, midway through clearing it in preparation for the reno.

The bedroom, also mid-chaos. I would hate for you to think this was its normal state, but the reno prep mayhem provides a better contrast with the end result.

Bedroom cleared, paint samples up, colour chosen. Paper laid to protect floors. Reno is a go!

First they got down to the plaster, then the lath.

Then they popped the window out to connect a sonotube chute to the big skip parked in the driveway.

It always amazes me just how old our house looks when stripped to her bones.

Check out the lean on that chimney. (It’s capped and unused, for the record.)

The wall between what was the storage room and our bedroom is out, to make way for the walk-in closet.

All plaster gone, it’s now time to straighten the walls and ceiling,

and build a new wall to create a long storage closet on the other side of the room.

Electrics are roughed in, so in goes the Ecobatt insulation to replace all the insulation that wasn’t even there to begin with.

Vapour barrier up. At this point, the room was already improved 100%. Warm, or at least now able to hold heat once the baseboard heater got put back, and quieter than before, if that’s even possible.

A level ceiling!

The storage closet drywall goes up,

as does the drywall in the room.

A new built-in bookcase replaces the door to the old storage room.

The mud-guys did their magical thing.

And Jerry dropped off the headboard B had sketched onto the back of a ripped envelope. B’s original design was good, but Jerry made it amazing.

First look into the walk-in with its newly sanded old floorboards.

The windows get their trim.

And the bookcase is almost compete. Next up were crown mouldings and baseboards, then the clean-up, and then the guys were out. Our electricians put up all the fancy new fixtures, B mounted a new TV to the wall and even ran the wires through the wall, and I primed and painted like a madwoman. The final step before we moved back in was to scrub and finish the floors, which took some effort. So here are the results (I won’t caption anything else, but I will say that the windows and door and bookcase still need their final coats of paint, but we were too anxious to move back in there to wait for all that to be complete):