Farewell to Salmon Lake

This will be my last post on Salmon Lake Today.

On Friday, we will leave this very special place behind. With us, we will take 22 years of memories made here. Wonderful memories that we share with our children and now our grandchild.

Many of them involve many of you - friends we have made over the years and with whom we have shared this pristine piece of heaven.

It is not easy to say goodbye.

We leave our place in very good hands. Wonderful people who love it and will enjoy it as much as we have. If I can figure out how to transfer the content, they even want to continue with the blog.

We will miss this view. It really has been wonderful watching the seasons come and go. But the winters have become too long and too hard for us to keep up with the snow.

Wishing all of you a wonderful rest of the summer, now that it is finally here.

Garage Sale Season Has Arrived

Seems like everywhere you go, there is at least one garage sale somewhere. In cottage country, it seems to happen when the leaves are out, but it's still too cold to go swimming.

And this year, we are joining the parade. That's right, this Saturday, June 20th, we will be getting rid of 22 years worth of things that we don't use anymore - things that got pushed to the back of the crawl space when we renovated. All kinds of things. From tools to folk art, there is quite a variety of "stuff".

There have never been so many ways to get rid of things as there are these days. You can go digital with ebay, kijiji, craigslist - the online options are endless.  But for me, that's just too hard to keep following what's going on and dealing with people who are a keyboard away. I still like the old school kind of sale. I think most people still like to spend a day going from sale to sale, poking around to find something that someone else is getting rid of at a great price.  And furnishing a cottage is always a work in progress.

For some sellers like us, it's a little bit sad. Saying goodbye to things that at one point were important enough to buy. But now they are just extra "stuff" and you need to get rid of them. But for buyers, it's a chance to get something at a fabulously low price. Do you really need it? Maybe not, but you can always put it in your own garage sale later.

More and more, people are opting for the all-season garage sale, where they put up a temporary shelter, fill it with stuff and put out their sign any Saturday or Sunday they are around, and see who comes along.

For us, it's a one-day, one-shot deal from 9:00 to 4:00. That's about all the excitement we can stand.
If you are up this weekend, look for us at 319 Salmon Lake Road.

The Leaves are Out. So are the Bugs!!!

For those of you who weren't here for the long weekend, you missed incredible weather. But you couldn't go outside for most of it because the bugs were "the worst ever". I may say that every year, but this year I honestly thing they are. They are huge. There are millions of them. And even a brisk breeze doesn't seem to keep them away.

But with the wild fluctuations in temperature (Sunday and Monday's highs were close to 30 degrees and todays is supposed to be 9), I am hoping they have the wrong wardrobe and eventually go the way of all good bugs. Gone!!!

Here are a couple of pictures to show you how full the leaves are. And the gardens are doing nicely.
I still haven't planted anything outside and think I will wait a couple more weeks. You just can't tell what to expect - or what to wear.

Larry Columbo has taken over the water monitoring and has been out in his boat a few times. Other than that, we saw one on the weekend. Rick is just picking up the motor for our tin boat, so hopefully the temps will warm and the bugs will leave so we can have a few nice rides.

Ice Exit and Loon Arrival

It was an incredible weekend with temps so warm that garden activity was done in shirt sleeves on Saturday. Sunday was a bit cooler, but still lovely.

Then Monday morning happened. We were wakened by the incredible winds and rain. It was wild.
The wind was so strong that it  blew the ice into shore from the middle of the lake - moving our dock as it came.

But by the end of the day (with a good power outage and a little workout for the generator), the ice was nearly gone.

Here's this morning's photo.  Ice is pretty much gone, with just a bit around the shoreline. This was a much faster melt than last year.

And the first loon call was heard around 8:00. They really must be circling to see when it's safe to land.

Is it Spring yet?

What a winter it was!! It made for a great spectator sport from Barbados, but we were very happy to miss the extreme cold temperatures that seemed to go on forever. The silver lining for all of us from Ontario was that our friends there from Nova Scotia and PEI had it way worse than we did. I am sure they are still digging out.

Don't tell Mother Nature, but we have had 4 sunny days in a row!! With the sunshine and the milder temps, the snow is melting quickly and the ice is starting its slow departure. The last few days have encouraged us to walk, and the grader did the roads yesterday, so a few million of the potholes are gone. Still absolutely no point in getting the car washed, but you can't have everything.

Here are some pictures we took on yesterday's walk. You can see that there is water around the shoreline and that the portage is really starting to open up.

This is our shoreline and you can see water at the edge.

The Salmon Lake side of the portage. Look at that blue sky!!!

Still patches of snow under the trees, but going quickly. 

Today on the way back from town, I heard on the Moose FM that the snow is going very quickly due to the warmer temperatures and warm winds. Should all be gone soon.

Someone said that they were on their lake last weekend and there is still lots of ice. Even though we can see the water round the edges, there may still be up to two feet under there.  But fingers crossed it will be all clear by the time you and the loons start coming back.

Next up - blackflies.

Snow for 11 Days Straight

Not sure if this is some kind of record, but we had snow every single day since New Year's Eve (except for the day that it was _36 with the wind chill and too cold to snow - or go outside). We have more snow now - on the 11th day of January - than we did after a whole month of snowing in November. And it is still falling!!!

The forecast is getting ridiculous - "Snow squall warnings with 5-10 cm today, followed by 5-10 cm tonight and then 5-10 cm tomorrow."  We see Parry Sound on the Global Weather report virtually every night.

Since we spend our days moving the snow in the driveway, the deck has been sorely ignored, resulting in this. The drifts are nearly up to the railing and the snow on the railing has curled down on the outside.  This is now officially a job for the professionals. Our backs are much too old for this!

Rumour has it that we may get a reprieve this week, but by then we will be heading for someplace warm to hide for a bit. So we will leave whatever comes next to our "house sitters" to deal with. Surely this can't keep up forever, right?

Still no snowmobile tracks on the lake - either that or it just keeps snowing and covering them up.

And we thought last year was Snowmaggedon.....

So Much Snow

After nary a flake in December, January is more than making up for it.

We returned from Toronto on New Year's Day and it hasn't stopped snowing since. Every day we are waking up to 6 to 8 inches of new snowfall. Today we are somewhat housebound waiting for it to stop.

When we went to bed last night there was a good foot of snow on the deck railing. Unfortunately, I couldn't take a picture and by this morning, some had blown off, so it didn't look nearly as impressive. However, I did take a few pics to show to the folks in TO who have none.

Keep in mind, the decks and driveway were totally snow-free on December 30th. The first signs of snow were on the highway on New Year's Eve.


Here is a video I shot earlier today, to show the flake size  - and now the snow is even worse - cannot see across to the island out the window.

So, if you want to shovel, snow shoe, ski or make snow angels, Salmon Lake is definitely the place for it.