Wow. First of all, sorry about taking so long to write another post. Moving, as I’m sure you all know, is hell, and we’re not done yet. But we’re finally here, and this is now home. Here is how it all went down:
June 10, 2011: The sale of our house in the GTA closed. After a nightmarish couple of weeks packing and moving everything into not one, but three storage units, we were almost done. We spent the night before closing day in a hotel, and a good job too because we needed the rest. Closing day dawned, and we still had last-minute stuff to pack, dispose of and store. It felt strange to sweep the floors and clean the bathrooms for the last time. Our friends the Fay had, of course, to play one last joke on us, and they stole the bag with all the keys. Now, if you know the Fay, you’ll know that the keys were found in the last place we would ever think to look. But found they finally were, and off we went to catch our flight to Sydney, Nova Scotia. Our two cats were wrestled into their pet carrier, and thence to Toronto Pearson International Airport, where they promptly ordered us to take the cats out again, so the carrier could go through the x-ray machine! Given the trouble we had getting them into the carrier, we had visions of two cats running loose in the airport … but amazingly, they went limp in our arms and waited, most un-catlike, until we put them back into the carrier. They survived the flight, or should I say the baggage handlers survived, and off we went to drive home.
Arriving at the house, we found everything in order: we had water, we had power, all was as it should be, except of course that the grass was a foot long. By the time we arrived all the grocery stores were closed, so we chowed down on MREs, which are great in a pinch. The next evening however, we celebrated our wedding anniversary in true pirate fashion, with a bottle of champagne and a hearty steak dinner.
The cats explored the house, nervously at first, but as soon as they picked up the scent of Mouse they were off. We let them put their scent in cupboards and under the floorboards, and they even found a way to get inside the staircase! It’s funny, our mouse problem seems to have suddenly disappeared … ! Here are some photos of a pair of very happy cats:
Exhausted after a hard night's mousing.
Chillaxing on the deck.
Strange how, even when you have several acres, you still have nowhere to put anything. We hired a local guy to prepare hard standing pads for three areas: a future power house (for a large generator as well as fuel storage), a garage, and a guest cabin. I took pictures of the progress:
If a dump truck like this can make it up our road, anything can!
Prepping the garage pad. Sadly, the crabapple tree had to go, but it had already suffered quite a bit of animal damage. This side of the barn was essentially spare space and the perfect spot for a garage.
The finished garage pad.
Breaking ground on the cabin.
The prep work for the cabin is done - next step is concrete.
Preparing a short driveway for the cabin.
Finished driveway.
Paul inspecting the finished pad for the power house.
View of back of house from power house pad. This is a good location for a shed to store fuel and a heavy-duty generator: not too close to the house, but not too far away either.
The week went by in a flash, and all too soon we had to fly back once again to Ontario to get at least one of our storage units cleared out. We rented a U-Haul trailer, hitched it to the back of the pickup and drove to Cape Breton, with our other car in convoy behind us, driven by our daughter and her boyfriend. It was their first long road trip together, and a real adventure for them. It felt good to be finally getting the cars out of Ontario for good. The drive was long and tedious, but with one overnight stop in New Brunswick we made it to the Cape. Nothing feels quite as good as seeing that “Welcome to Cape Breton” sign on the Canso Causeway bridge.
It was damp and buggy when we finally arrived after a long and tiring drive. The fog banks that sweep in from the sea settle over the highlands in dense clouds of moisture-laden haze, making it difficult for the sun to break through. The kids did enjoy their time with us in spite of this, and of course as soon as they left the sun came out. More about their Willow Retreat adventures later!
We're having surprising success with the garden. We had, somewhat rashly, bought a sack of seed potatoes back in May, and used our brand new rototiller to dig up a stretch of the vegetable garden and planted them. I never expected anything to grow, and when we arrived back the patch had been filled in with long grass. But after I cleared some of the grass away, guess what? Potato plants!
Our very first potato plants are growing!
My not-very-well-tilled potato patch, which was thick with grass, but the potatoes are growing regardless!
I walked past a patch of grass and said "Oh look, asparagus!"
I walked past another patch of grass and said "Oh look, rhubarb!"
The garden is looking really great now that we have our Cub Cadet ride-on lawnmower here.
View of the garden looking towards the grapevine.
Nicely tilled vegetable beds. (Anything "nicely tilled" was done by Paul, not me!)
It did seem strange to drop the kids off at the airport and realize that we didn't have to leave. It's slowly sinking in that this is now Home. We are now officially Nova Scotians: we have our NS driver's licences, car registrations and Nova Scotia licence plates! We only have to return to Ontario once more, to pack up a 26 foot U-Haul truck with our remaining belongings. Luckily, we
Well, this is turning into a really long post, and so I think I'll gather some more photos together, and make a Part 2 shortly. I promise not to leave it so long this time! Part 2 will feature some exciting items, including fireworks, a huge bonfire, poppies, and a shiny red Russian named Boris the Beast!
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