A belated spring post

As I've missed writing about the arrival (and departure) of spring here in Northern Town, I've some catching up to do. The next few posts will try to remedy that as well as throw in some current news now and again.

So, without further adieu, waaaaaay back in April, when the landscape looked like this photo below (taken by ManNorth on one of his regular super-hero flights to check out the changing landscape) and community members were still building quinzees

and spruce bough shelters during ice fishing excursions, we were busy preparing...

...for our garden in the community greenhouse. We purchased a few small plastic flats to start our seedlings. The beans got off to a roaring start while the lettuce, tomatoes, swiss chard and various herbs took their time. Meanwhile, the peppers that we started last summer and which had begun producing fruit finally began to ripen. We realized that we had mistaken hot pepper seeds for bell peppers eeds (we saved both from fresh peppers we'd purchased at the grocery store) but were, and are, happy to have such festive looking and tasty hot fruit.

Daylength at the end of April was noticeably longer and already longer than most days much further south. (Of course, relative to a month of no direct sunlight in the winter, this may not mean much to any of you.) The photo of the peppers and tray of seedlings was taken at 11pm and illuminated by outdoor light. This is what the sky looked like outside at the same time as the sun slowly set.

Next post(s), stories from May.

Monday Update

It's been a busy week and a half since I began my new job. There were days of meetings, a few deadlines to meet and reports to begin and finish and despite my rookie status, I think that I managed admirably and have a few compliments from my supervisor in support of this. The pace should slow down a bit for me this next week although I'll be working overtime a few hours each day to bank time so that I can devote them to completing my Prairie Project without too large a pinch on my pocketbook. There'll be more to say as I familiarize myself with my new position and many new adventures to report on as my schedule unfolds this spring and summer.

In other news, ManNorth is working on his own blog entry as I write this and we hope to have his inaugural post up by tomorrow night or Wednesday. You wouldn't believe how hard it's been to get him to finally post but he's in a fine mood to rant, er, I mean, to write. I'll let his post speak for itself and only add that it's been fun being with him as he writes and chuckles to himself now and then. Check back in soon and look for it.

Finally, and I admit, this isn't terribly newsworthy but it's better than reporting what I ate for lunch (a can of peas eaten out of the can with a spoon), the tomato plants that I started from seed last summer have decided that they'd better attempt to reproduce before they wither entirely away and I have a single ripe cherry tomato ready to harvest. We'll try to share it between ManNorth and me but there's not much to go around. Thankfully there are 7 more tiny tomatoes still green and ripening and some new blossoms just opening.

Our bell pepper plants have also finally begun to produce fruit and have stopped dropping all their blossoms. Curiously, all of the new peppers are long and thin instead of big and round, but we're not complaining as we're just glad they're producing.

In a month or so, we'll plant a flat of new vegetables and hope that they'll be ready for transplanting to our garden plot at the greenhouse in May. We're confident that with all the summer sun, we'll get a much better harvest than from our wee apartment veggies under their small grow lights.

Ta da!

“Busy old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?”
-John Donne

We’re hoping that the new curtains we put up yesterday in our living room and kitchen will not only block the sunlight streaming through the windows in the middle of the night this summer, but will also help to insulate against the cold in the winter.

Yes, yes. I did quote Donne just now. ManNorth quite likes Donne’s poetry which provides one justification. I also didn’t think that Churchill’s iron curtain speech would be an appropriate segue into this post’s topic. ;)

We purchased the curtains in late August but stubbornly refused to pay for the single kind of expensive curtain rods that were available in town (or to purchase ugly, cheap and flimsy aluminum rods which was our other option) and devised our own plan that would require lumber to be brought up with us from Prairie Town during our New Year’s trip and a wee bit of creativity and elbow grease from us. Of course, we not only love building things and projects that we can do together but also making these projects more complicated than they need to be so this fit right in!

We knew exactly what we needed when we came up with our design. We wanted to block sunlight that would shine up towards the ceiling along the top edge of the curtain rod as well as providing a good base from which to hang our blinds. It would be nice too, if the contraptions could also serve as additional shelving. Something like this:

(Excuse the coffee stain.)

ManNorth did the honours and cut the boards I’d marked, routed the decorative edges and used our jigsaw to cut the s-curves in the side supports.
I had great fun routing out ¼ inch holes to counter sink all the screws and less fun using our hacksaw (of all things) to cut all the doweling to cover said screws. I had the most fun putting it all together and then staining both units. The “red mahogany” stain was supposed to be a bit reddish but it came out simply dark brown, which was also just fine. Staining wood is one of my favourite things as I love seeing the grain come out as the stain goes on. I wish I'd known though, that wood glue doesn't pick up stain well and a few areas along the joints now show all the glue that I smeared on the wood when I tried to wipe it off after it leaked out when I attached all the boards. Ah well.

...and voila! Scratch another project off our to-do list.

For the curious, here are the materials used:
Tools: router, jigsaw, hacksaw, drill (which also doubled as a screwdriver), hammer, sander.
Lumber: 2 8ft X 9 inch X ¾ inch boards, ¼ inch doweling, 4 wooden drawer knobs (cheaper than buying finials), 2 5ft mop handles (I couldn’t find any doweling long enough), 8 ½ inch wooden craft “buttons” (to cover the mounting screws instead of doweling because they can be popped out when we need to take the shelving down)
Misc. Gear: 32 1 ½ inch wood screws (plus 4 de-headed 1 inch screws to attach the wooden drawer knobs/finials to the ends of the mop handles that were used as curtain rods), wood glue, wood filler, plastic gloves, wood stain, brush, varathane, patience, absent neighbours.

Triple point, double word score

I’ve not said it enough: We like our apartment and we are happy to be in this building. In spite of occasional dirt in the hallways and stairwells, we really have few complaints. We love the high ceilings and the hardwood flooring (even if it is laminate). We like our many windows and our view of the river and distant mountains from the balcony and from one of the windows (if you look from just the right angle). We like the easy access to the town center and to walks by the river and around the lake. Other residents are usually quite friendly in passing, greeting us cheerfully and even occasionally surprising us with tidbits about their lives, such as the couple down the hallway, who we learned while holding open the door while he and a friend carried their new couch in, that it was purchased in order for “her to have something cushy to laze on while watching Gray’s Anatomy”. Thanks. That was nice to get to know a bit more about you. I’m sure she appreciates you sharing with us her fondness for lounging and medical dramas.

We don’t see or hear much from our neighbours or others in the building and although we’ve never met them, today I’d like to direct the remainder of this post to the neighbours with whom we directly share interior walls or ceilings and floors:

Neighbours to our east:
We wanted you to know that we don’t mind, terribly, the occasional repetitive booming noises from the other side of our home office wall as you fire away at electronic villains since your video games aren’t played at times likely to disturb us and are only an hour or two in length. It sounds like you have fun. We hope you don’t mind our taste in music (if indeed, you hear us playing it on our computer) and we want you to know that we intentionally keep it turned down, so as not to bother you.

Neighbour to our west:
When you blow your nose in your kitchen, it makes the most peculiar sound. Although amused, we are also concerned for you, given the daily frequency of such loud sinus clearing events over the past few months, and think it might be time to see a doctor. We’d also like to compliment you on your musical tastes. Although we rarely hear anything but nose blowing from your apartment, the few times your music has been heard, we thought it a fine thing that you shared Womannorth’s fondness for Nick Drake and Leonard Cohen.
We play Scrabble occasionally and have some skill thinking of adjectives with high point scores. We play with a dictionary handy for challenges and are pleased to learn new words with each game. Although we hope our apartment is quiet from your side of the kitchen wall, we hope that if you hear anything, it is our laughter as we enjoy the game.

Neighbours Below us:
You seem to be neighbours of extreme differences. The usual silence of your apartment is only ever broken by sounds of your arguing, slamming of doors, stomping and shouting of overly colourful words, particularly at late hours. Today we’d very much like to offer a few reminders and pointed words of advice:

1. No matter whether you believe you are in the right, you automatically LOSE an argument (i.e. become a loser) the second that you shout “F*** you” at your partner (or anyone, for that matter). If she happens to shout it back at you (instead of spending the next hour sobbing, as she sometimes does), shouting it again, repeatedly and with emphasis, does not and will never win you the argument, nor does it ever make it right for you to say it to her. What saying this to each other does say is that you are a hateful person who doesn’t care a whit about the person you are arguing with and suggests that you are intentionally trying to hurt them. This is no way to resolve anything. That you do this to someone you live with, and presumably should care about, makes your behaviour all the worse, and is horrible and repugnant.

2. We don’t know why she puts up with you and we think the best thing for you both (and certainly for her) would be to immediately go your separate ways, or at the very least, to seek counseling and learn how to respectfully disagree with each other.

3. Should you never learn the true meaning of respect, you might consider giving each other the silent treatment (although it is as equally unproductive at resolving conflict as your current swearing/shouting strategy) but at minimum, your neighbours would benefit.

To him: We’d become hopeful when your apartment was quiet the last few days and we’d hoped, for her sake, that she had moved out. (That we briefly overheard her shouting back at you this afternoon suggests otherwise, unfortunately.) We were infuriated that you woke us up in the middle of last night, while you shouted obscenities at her for over an hour by phone and we were horrified that she didn’t hang up on you. We could understand less of your hurtful invective when you switched to shouting en francais by about 3AM, but we could still hear you and you were still keeping us awake.

4. As explained above, in these specific ways (as this is all we know of you), you are a hateful and horrible loser. Please add banal to the list of descriptives we’ve judiciously applied to you. If you insist on waking up your neighbours and disrupting their sleep at all hours of the night to show your partner what a sorry excuse of a person you are, you might consider picking up a dictionary or thesaurus. If we had to choose, we’d rather overhear complaints of you not treating her as quixotically as she might like and you responding with complaints of her repetitive cloying remonstrations than hearing you include “F***” as a prefix to every other word you say.

So, to Uncaring Rude Neighbours below us: learn what love and respect truly mean or separate, be silent or add some new adjectives to your vocabulary. If asked, we’d be happy to share some with you.