Another beautiful day!

The day started out wonderfully. First, Fernando Alonso won the Japanese Grand Prix thanks to an engine failure in Michael's Schumacher's Ferrari - his penultimate race. (These links are all high-bandwidth sites.)

Then Freda and I enjoyed a nice cup of coffee on the porch. The sun was warm enough that I could wear shorts. By the afternoon, the day had warmed up to the high teens, so we saw lots of other people wearing shorts!

Today, we had several long walks with Tawny. As well, Freda took her for a swim and a play while I was mowing the lawn. We got home from our afternoon walk around 5:30 and Tawny just crashed after she ate her supper. Tawny normally sleeps on the floor somewhere near us, but tonight we were making too much noise so she went to the bedroom to get her beauty sleep!

Deer on the lawn

When friends ask if we see deer, they are often surprised when we say that we see them every day. I took this photo of deer on our front lawn this morning, just so you can see the evidence for this statement.


The deer appear not to have touched the lilacs again since they chowed down on them. I got some advice from friends who live in the country, and so far it seems to be working.

A beautiful day!

The fall colours are at their peak right now!

Here is Freda standing by the completed line of fence posts. The fencing crew came on Friday and completed the fence post installation by drilling holes in the bedrock some places. They didn't say when they are coming back to install the chain-link - we hope it is on Tuesday! :)

Today we put the lattice on the bottom of the deck. On the other side, steps will run the full length of the deck. Before we put the lattice up, we put up some hardware cloth, to keep the critters out, in case they decided they wanted to chew through the lattice. :)


This is the deck with the completed lattice. It sure looks a whole letter better, and cleaned up!

Fencing - Day 1

The fencing crew arrived today. They started digging and encountered rock right away. They charge an extra $15 per hole for "hard digging". We will be charged $15 extra for every hole because of all of the rock. At least they are digging the holes deep enough so they will be below the frost line.

In fact, there is so much rock, that they need to rent a big drill to cut through the rock. This truck is delivering the trailer mounted air compressor that will drive the rock drill. It works sort of like a well drill, it has a hammer action and rotates a bit with every blow. Lots of air flow is needed as that is what blows the rock chips out of the hole.

This is after some of the crew left for the day. They left before the compressor was delivered, otherwise they likely would have had all the posts planted. Unfortunately this means that they won't be able to stretch the fencing tomorrow as they need to install all the poles and have the concrete cure first.

This is Michael installing our antenna for the fixed high speed wireless internet connection. Unfortunately his drill bit was neither large enough nor long enough to drill the hole through the wall. Michael did manage to get the antenna mounted on the roof though, so that part is completed.

Tomorrow - the fencing crew returns and so does Michael to complete the internet hookup.

Pink for October

This blog will be pink for October - see story here - which is National Breast Cancer Awareness month (US) and Canada.

And by the way, guys can get breast cancer too. In fact, my mum tells me that a former neighbour of ours in N.B. died of breast cancer -- he was 42.

I don't know enough about Blogger templates to make this all pink, so please accept my apologies in advance if anything looks ugly.

Another busy wekend

Tawny acting the fool.
When Tawny thinks we are not paying sufficent attention to her, she finds a stick (or log) and rolls on her back, writhing around, playing with the stick with her paws and mouth, often getting tangled up in the leash, and with her tail wagging furiously all the while. The funny thing is that she will occasionally look at us out of the corner of her eye to make sure the attention getting action is continuing to be effective! She is very amusing!
The lawn freshly cut.
Today I cut the entire lawn for the first time, including the part that was seeded. It looks far better now, and you can't even tell that the seeded part looked like it was mostly weeds before. I also trimmed the trees to eliminate some of the low-hanging branches that looked a bit scruffy. Looks pretty good now!
Fireplace is now going.
Since it was a busy weekend, I also spent some time getting the fireplace going. The key thing was looking at the control for the Off-Pilot-On dial. Charles had shown me how to light it and I realized today that presumed that the indicator for the dial was at the 12-o'clock position. In reality, the indicator was at the 9-o'clock position. Once I got this sorted, then the fireplace started in a couple of minutes.

Fall colours

The leaves are just starting to change colours now. In dry summers, the colour change happens earlier - sometimes even in August - but we had a lot of rain in August and September, which reduced the stress on the trees.

Last night also was our first light frost.

We had to raise the ground level at the back of the house by 1 foot when we had the grading done. That meant we had to raise the air conditioner unit as well as the propane tanks. (Yes, I did blog about this before.) The technicians for the company that put in the a/c did not check the putty around the hoses when they raised the external unit. I called the "quality manager" five times and spoke to him once when he said he would be out "that day" to fix the putty. He never came so I had to write a letter. Guess what? Instant response!

When I took Tawny out tonight to go potty, she sniffed at this rock on the driveway. I thought, how would that rock have got there. Then I looked a bit closer and saw eyes. Since rocks very rarely have eyes (unless they are fossils) it clearly wasn't a rock. This toad did jump to move, but it also kind of walked -- and that's when I took this photo.

In other news....
The only choice we have for high speed internet is Simply Surf. Another company that was potentially an option, but would have cost far too much for installation - between $750-$960 - has actually gone bankrupt so is no longer an option. A Simply Surf technician was by today to check signal strength and will be back next Thursday to get us set up.

Also, the company who will be installing the fence is coming next Thursday to start the installation.

We are still waiting for the company who did the lousy job of caulking to come and finish the job.

Greenery

As you can see, the back yard is now noticeably green!!

Two steps forward and one step back...

Yesterday, Freda and I decided that it was time to hang up our art, so we spent some time yesterday and today doing just that. That's the first step forward.





When walking Tawny today on the road behind our property, we noticed that we can see green in the back yard for the first time! That's the second step forward. (Pictures tomorrow!)

This photo shows the step back -- Freda noticed that deer have been chowing down on the lilacs that we planted about a month ago, as you can see in this photo. The surprising thing is that lilacs are supposed to be something that deer don't like to to eat!