Where cranberries come from...

Our Thanksgiving Turkey

We escaped the city for Thanksgiving weekend. We winged it. The "plan" was to have Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday with Anne, at the cottage. When we arrived however, we found our chief chef was a little distracted. She has been, and was, obsessed, and now Sandro assisting, with building a Lavish and Squalor display with consignment goods from her store in the Port Severn General Store. We all ended up hanging around the General Store for some time. And it was 8 pm before dinner (centered around French onion soup) was finally rounded up.

The "idea" when we were heading north, had actually been to head to a cranberry marsh and tour the harvest in the afternoon before dinner. That, obviously, didn't happen. However, the next day (Sunday) suddenly it was decided we were going to go after all, and off we went.

Backup Turkey

I can tell you now (though it should seem obvious, if anyone had thought about it) it's a bit of a crazy idea going to a cranberry harvest during thanksgiving long weekend. So many cranberry-crazy people. And Anne wanted to go to the flashier, more tourist-popular, one near Bala. (There is alternatively a somewhat more relaxed, though actually larger, cranberry operation run by the Iroquois much closer to the cottage which also has tours.) Besides the standard wagon tour around the flooded cranberry fields, the Johnston's Cranberry Farm had wine tasting, helicopter rides (!), and quite a substantial gift shop. And entirely inadequate parking for the occasion! And the helicopter was very, very loud as it came and went.

Still, we learned quite a bit about cranberries! Like that the white ones are actually the ripe ones. And the kids love the candy apples. Anne attended the cranberry wine tasting. It was fun, but honestly, I think the most fun of it was just the kids climbing around on the big rocks by the drive way.

Anyhow, winged or not, it turned out to be a lovely day. We all took a bunch of pictures.

(Ironically, we didn't actually partake of any cranberries in any form at any meal over the weekend. Though my mom did find (and claim and take home), when we were cleaning out the fridge to close up the cottage for the season, the remains of a bottle of cranberry-strawberry jam that Selena made many moons ago.)

Camp and Campy

When was it we dropped Istra off at her first overnight camp? Saturday or Sunday, or some such day? Anyhow, we got an email from the camp yesterday saying everyone is having a great time. And there are a few more days yet to go. Above you can Istra showing off her cabin... the last time we saw her.

As one might expect, she got pretty nervous when camp day arrived, and made many an attempt to get the whole crazy thing called off. But when we finally got there, and she got her bunk chosen and set up with her stuff, and (most importantly) found another girl her age (who had the bunk over her), everything was instantly good...

We can hardly wait to hear how things went from her. So many new things packed into a week. And there was a massive thunder storm in the area on her first night, too.

As for Me and Mommy, and Em... we yesterday did what some might consider the most Canadian thing possible. We actually canoed to Tim Hortens. Seriously.

Cottage Delinquents

The kids had a week with Gramma at the cottage. They are back now, and we get to see a bit of what they were up to...

 Ah, the arts... so enriching of the heart and soul.

But of course, the physical self needs stretching and exercising as well....

And mental stimulation, also is good! King to queen's bishop five... how unorthodox, but okay!

A pause for a casual serenade?

Complete with crooning....

Naturally, one must encouter some nature up north... nuttily, or not.

Add some literary ambitions... or natural science journalling? Perhaps both! There appears to be much love in the effort, either way....

(Speaking of words, how about some word play? This advanced scrabble variation may boggle your brain... if you think some of the words might not be entirely valid, it shows what you know! You may need to consule your Poke Ball... and the odd edition of Captain Underpants...)


So, quite a lot of varied activities for our little truants last week. What? There's more? What else....

What?!! Now that's just crazy. It's barely past May... that water's got to be coooooooold....

We would have Gramma arrested for cruelty to children on this evidence! But the kids refuse to testify, actually claiming the water was "warm".

Sure, kids, sure. You'll say anything for your Grammas and Grammies, won't you.

Well, there's more evidence here to go through yet... we'll see... we'll see...

Last weekend

Last weekend Anne took the kids to the cottage with Gramma, while we (Selena and I) stayed behind at Anne's place in Toronto and had a sort of kidless holiday. Here are some pictures of what was going on.... (click pic for more)

Some of Summer's Last Adventures

This last week of summer holidays, we took another crack at Burrows Lake; this time with the kids. We pulled the kids behind the canoe in a dinghy. We didn't paddle all that far, so it worked out all right. We stopped the lake's biggest island for a picnic and a swim.

(Also we ended up taking away an extra garbage bag full of refuse left by less considerate visitors to the island. Mostly beer cans, but also other trash... and even an old pair of socks. Humans, it seems, are the animals whose leavings can be sharp and nasty and do not decompose in a timely manner.)

You can see all the pics (of this week, so far) here.

Near the beginning of the summer, Emeth, for reasons yet inexplicable, announced that he wanted his summer project to be to make his own soap. Okaaaaay? We somehow haven't managed that, yet. But this week we did manage to hook up with a small town soap maker we'd met years before at a farmer's market, and she graciously volunteered to let us come and see her soap making process with the kids. The kids got to pick out a bar of soap for themselves each. Emeth got pumpkin pie soap. Istra went for Blueberry soap. Mommy couldn't leave without about a half dozen assorted bars, naturally.

And, once again, we hit the Uhthoff (rail) Trail, scavenging for semi-wild apples. Last year was tough, most of the trees did not produce apples. This year, the apples are back! But, most of the trees were not ripe yet. We did find a couple of trees with ripe-enough fruit to snag a grocery bag full without much effort, however. I sense a giant apple crisp hovering over us in the near future....

So that's what we've been up to this week so far. There's still a few days left. Who knows what's still in store...

Wilderness Channel, with kids... and barrel.

We somehow managed to go on two canoe/kayak trips this weekend. The first one was shorter, the second one was epic. If not entirely epic, at least it was long... nearly 5 hours (including a stop for a snack and explore). And the kids put in a good effort (without even complaining!) too.

[Link to bigger map, with min-slide show]


Selena and I, and the kids, went in the canoe, towing the kids' kayaks behind us ("in case they wanted them later"). Gramma, of course, was in her little red kayak. When we got to around to where the first (north-most) marker is on the map above, a nice calm channel that we call "the wilderness channel", the kids launched out on their own. They paddled themselves through the channel, and around the big island to around where the south-most markers are. At that point they hitched up to an adult craft for towing; Istra behind Gramma, and Emeth behind us. But even then, especially Istra, helped a lot with the paddling the rest of the way home.

Here is a close-up of the trail just before the north-most marker on the full map. The large squiggle is where we got out on a little peninsula, and had a snack and a little wander around.

When you zoom in on the satellite view, you can not really see the water in this channel: it looks mostly like land. It is in fact marsh. All the lillypads, and greenery beneath the water, make it look solid from the sky. (For example, the picture below is looking north-east from the marker in the close-up trail.)

The small loop, to the left in the close-up picture, is us backing up to take a run at a beaver dam, to get over it! The old beaver dam there is mostly submerged, with sticks just breaking the surface intermittently. There are slightly lower parts it is possible to push yourself past. But with me and Selena, and the kids, and towing kayaks, it took a bit more effort... ramming speed! The old canoe did not break up. We survived!

The kids launch out on their own... with Gramma.

Well on our way back, when we got to the peninsula near the relatively small island, sort of near the  middle of the map above, we came across a big barrel floating around. We'd seen it the day before, in a different location. It's the type of barrel people use for floating docks. Since it seemed abandoned (not to mention potentially dangerous), I got the idea of towing it back to our cottage and see if we could use it to help any of our dilapidated docks somehow. We managed to attach it to a rope, but the thing had a significant amount of water in it... it was heavy. It slowed us down a lot, and it made paddling much more... epic!

We could not now at all keep up with Istra and Gramma, despite their going slow for us, so eventually they abandoned us to our fate and zoomed ahead. When we finally rounded the last peninsula, and the cottage was in sight, even Emeth opted to be released and paddle himself the rest of the way ... and easily beat us back to the dock.

(Selena complained that forcing her to pull this thing amounted to some sort of spousal abuse; but today she says she's enjoying the feeling of the exercised muscles in her back and shoulders.)

Istra kayaks around a beaver lodge (Emeth coming in the background) --- which it appears hunters set up a duck blind on and must have used as a sniping post last year :(.

Click on Istra to see all the pictures... (looks like to get a slide show you now have to then click the down arrow to the right, and select "slide show" on Google---why oh why do they keep hiding this critical function?!)

Some autumm

We floated north last Easter long weekend. We spent some time at the cottage, and some time at Grammie's. Easter egg hunts were everywhere.

Wild ginger coming up?

One afternoon we wandered around in Grant's Woods, which is a little conservation area on some land near Orillia that someone donated. It's pretty amazing the diversity of neat things that take hold when land is left to do its own thing for a while. I was especially interested in discovering wild ginger, which I had not know of before.

At the cottage we plays with Anne and Mo, and the midges.

At Grammie's place the big eggs came out. Until they were all found, and brought in.

And we explored even more... and even after my camera battery died.

Here's the slide show.