THANKSGIVING NUMBER ONE DONE!

Last week I saw one of my favourite memes on Facebook.     I have always loved the second and third breakfast conversations from the Lord of the Rings movies.  But this one is particularly funny to any of us Canadians that go down to Texas each winter.  We always leave after our Canadian Thanksgiving and are there to enjoy the US Thanksgiving in November.  

I usually make it a point to go around and wish all our Canadian residents a "Happy Second Thanksgiving".  

I am certainly DONE with turkey for now.  We had a lovely traditional dinner last weekend, then there were leftovers the next day.  Toasted turkey sandwiches for breakfast one morning.  Then of course hot turkey sandwiches for dinner one other night.  And finally Dan just finished off the last of the turkey vegetable soup that I make from the turkey carcass.   


ONE DOWN ONE TO GO.  

PROGRESS CONTINUES

Today we made a trip to the hangar to drop off dock items we left behind when left the harbour.  (Bumpers etc.)

Plus picked up items that were left aboard Thunderbird at the end of the season.  

The marina is becoming deserted and the hangars are fast filling up.  

And now work continues, full time, on our renovation projects. The bathroom is nearing completion as we are down to the shower stall tiling.  Then some more painting and it will be finished.  

I'll be glad to see the end of this project and we won't start another until next spring when we get back from Texas.  

AS THE WEATHER GETS COLD WE ARE THINKING OF TEXAS

MY NEW BEACH HOUSE BATHROOM

We now have running hot and cold water and ........... a flushing toilet. I'm happy!!  The new bathroom in the beach house is coming together much faster now.  It's always the things that don't show (like the plumbing & electrical) that take all the time. 

I've painted the walls in certain areas and the toilet is in.

 

The vanity is installed and the medicine cabinet is hung. 

The final thing we just did was to build that missing wall where the old bathroom door used too be.  It was not exactly a private facility with that gaping hole.  Once the water was hooked up and the toilet was in, that was next on my list, and Dan, tired of hearing about it, was teasing me saying "Now you're just being spoiled.  You sound like Donald Trump.  I want a wall, build me a wall."  LOL
 

Tomorrow I will start staining and varnishing both the doors to the bathroom.  

 We still have the big tiling job to do in the shower stall.  And, the shower door to hang.  We should manage to finish that in the next week or so.  


IT'S GETTING THERE. 

THE END TO ANOTHER SUMMER SEASON

Today Lake Agassiz Marine pulled the Thunderbird, Gator, Loafhaven and 2 other boats out of the water and tucked them away for the winter. 

This end of season ritual actually started last week when John West decided to head back to RMYC to put the Gator away there.  They only got as far as the mouth of the Red River and had to turn back, as there is not enough water to get through.  

 

So, he decided to winter in Gimli with the rest of us.

 

We all headed out early this morning.  It was really cold, I had the stove going all the way to Gimli.  The trip was a little rough, certainly not the nicest trip to Gimli I have ever had, but certainly not the worst either.  We were first out, so we had to be there by 9:00am.   .  

We left the harbour with "Thunderbird" at 7:45 followed by John in the "Gator", also on the schedule for today.  Sharon and Casey had booked to have "Loafhaven" pulled out today as well.    

We all made it to Gimli by just short of 9:00 am when "Thunderbird' would be pulled and sure enough there was the trailer sitting in the water at the launch ramp all ready for us. 

This was a new experience for me as normally Dan would pull into a dock and await the trailer and when the trailer arrived I would get off the boat with the dog and wait on shore.  But today they were waiting for us so we just drove straight onto the trailer.  I must admit this made me nervous.    I covered my eyes as we got close and only peeked here and there.  I guess I could even get used to this.  Lets face it when we first bought the boat I was always too nervous to follow behind when they were taking it down to the harbour.  For some reason I always thought something bad was going to happen.  Now it doesn't bother me at all.   

SO ENDS THE SUMMER SEASON LIVING ABOARD THUNDERBIRD

FEEDING FRENZY IN THE HARBOUR

We woke up this morning to gulls screeching and swooping all around the harbour. 

There were hundreds of them.   

Whenever I see this I am always reminded of some of my favourite characters in the "Finding Nemo" movies.  The gulls swooping and screaming "Mine", "Mine", "Mine". 

 We soon found what was attracting them.  

The harbour was full of all kinds of small fish very visible, even for my camera, as the water is becoming clearer and clearer since the zebra mussels arrived.  

There were small "Jack", Northern Pike to the non-Manitobans "Pickerel", Walleye to the non-Manitobans and assorted other species.    

They didn't look to be doing very well.  I think something un-natural has found it's way into Boundary Creek again.  

GGGRRRR.....THIS INFURIATES ME

 

DIY: BEACH HOUSE PROGRESS

 Well, Dan has been very busy the last couple of months.  First we stripped everything out of the original  bathroom. Then we opened up two new doorways into the bathroom.  One from the kitchen and one from the bedroom.  Since then he has been working  down in the crawl space under the house.  He has moved the well pump to a more convenient position for maintenance, Ripped out all the old cobbled together plumbing, drains and water supply.  Then started the process of installing all new lines water supply and drains.  He has been like a prisoner trapped in the dungeon. 

But we were finally starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel.  Everything is ready for the final hook up, but I wanted to get my flooring installed, so that we could bring any pipes up through the flooring rather than having to install it around them.  And that has caused many delays. 

This is custom ordered flooring, which I first ordered July 31st and they said "that will be 3 to 6 weeks for delivery, we will call you when it comes in."  OK, we will carry on until it gets here.  Then August 26th  we get a call to say "Your flooring is in."  Wonderful, we go to pick it up and order more of the same for my porch on August 28th  and it is the wrong damned colour.  So we make them take it back and re-order the double order for both bathroom and porch and of course are told again,  "that will be 3 to 6 weeks for delivery.", now we are thinking should we go ahead with the plumbing and lay the flooring after ? or ?  But we got a call on September 9th that our new flooring order is here.  Unfortunately it is still not the exact colour I wanted, but it's better than the first error, so I settled for it, as we have to get on with this.  So I got busy right away and the flooring is finally installed.

 .  

The bathroom door into the kitchen is hung and the fibre glass shower base is in,  protected by an old shower curtain for now. 

The utility closet for the hot water tank and water softener is all wired up and the water supply lines are all in for the hot water tank.  The water hook up should happen this week.  If all goes well we should be ready to move back into the house by the end of this month.  

I'M REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO THAT.  

I USED TO HAVE BEAUTIFUL GARDENS

Still plugging away at the beach house, so I sorted through some old pictures for a post.  

The last house that Dan and I owned, before we moved into our condo, was a 2200 sq. ft. split level on a 1/2 acre of Red River property at 5454 Henderson Highway between Winnipeg's perimeter highway and Lockport. We had put our boat "Lindan" aside and we were concentrating on the new house.  The construction site that I started with was nothing but a barren clay mess.  The clay that is brought up to the surface during construction of a basement is the real heart breaker and back breaker for gardeners.  By the time we sold the house 10 years later, I had a beautifully landscaped property.  

The year after the construction, we put a nice big 20 X 32 ft deck on the back .  Then I started my gardening.  I never really got into vegetable gardening.  Everything that I grew was decorative, with the exception of a small Strawberry Patch behind the garage and some Raspberry Cane beside the composter.  

My first flower bed was around the septic tank, to block it from my view.  And a hammock overlooking the river, with morning glories climbing up each end of it.  That was the start of it. 

Then later, in front of that I even added a fish pond with 6 Koi, that of course we had to over winter in the basement.  A used Lobster tank from a restaurant that was closing, served that purpose.  

I bought two barrels and cut 1/3 off of one and flipped that over and put spouts on all three of them and added a circulating pump.  

The water was pumped into the tallest barrel and when that overfilled it spilled into the next and then the next and down into the pond and back to the circulating pump.  It worked great.

 

Then I moved on to the front and side yard.  We had a secondary driveway, for which I made a visual barrier with movable posts and rope, for the nautical look.  I planted a few trees.  A couple of Pines, a triple Birch and a Maple.  (We happened to pass there today and those trees are thriving.)  Then I filled in the beds with all perennials.  

Then I returned to the back yard again, to put in something to look at when sitting on the deck.  

This was one of my favourite gardens as it turned out so lush and colourful and easy to maintain.  I planted all perennials except for a stone planter that was built into our front step.  That I used to fill with annuals.  

I was constantly starting another flower bed.    I would say, "I need something over there that I can see from the dinning room windows", or "I need some colour behind the garage."

or "I need a bench overlooking the river, and some rose bushes and spring tulips that you can look passed when you're sitting there. "  And so it would go, and GROW. 

I enjoyed creating it, I even took a landscaping course, and learnt a lot.  But I just kept adding and adding more and more flower beds.  A lot more than I am showing here.  And that is a lot of work.  After two knee replacement surgeries, I think it was time to give it up. 

It was a very enjoyable hobby, while it lasted, but once we got back into boating and the big projects of restoring the "Thunderbird" my gardens were taking away from our new interest.  After a spring of working so hard on the boat and the gardens, once the boat was launched and we were enjoying living on board the boat, we had that pull of the garden and house maintenance that started to disrupt our new pleasures.  

That was when we decided to sell the house and move into an apartment, so that we could just lock the door and walk away, with no maintenance to have to worry about.  That is what has allowed us to boat all summer and winter down in Texas without worry about maintenance on a house or gardens.  




AND NOW WE ARE GETTING BACK INTO HOME OWNERSHIP  ????


(But I will never put that much work into gardens again, I will  plant a few perennials, but then they gotta make it on their own.  If they don't survive, boo hoo  :)