Building Our Lakehouse

Hello dear friends, I hope everyone is enjoying summer.  After some hot and humid conditions we feel that there is a touch of autumn in the air!

Today I am popping in with some information on our little lake house.   For some time (a few years! ) we had been thinking that it would be fun to have a little cottage at Lake Ophelia.  It was just a half baked idea to be honest but we thought perhaps we could occasionally sleep there during some of the hot summer nights, read, entertain, use it as a guest house...but after consulting with the county we were disappointed but not surprised to find out that building a little cottage would not be approved.  So our idea just simmered in the background.

Then, a couple of years ago we decided to attend an open house at Bunkie Life, a small company not far from us that makes pre-fabricated bunkies that don't require a building permit.  The bunkies are smaller that we had originally wanted to build but we quite liked what we saw and thought that the kits were brilliant.  Unfortunately my mother became ill right after we attended the open house and the whole project fell to the side.

Last year my husband thought that we should buy a little boat that he saw advertised on line.  Off we went on a Saturday to look at the boat and I frankly thought it was the ugliest thing ever.  But as it happens that day was also the Bunkie Life open house so instead of buying an ugly boat we bought a bunkie instead.  That is the abbreviated version of how our lake house came to be!

So...we attended the Bunkie Life open house and barbecue and had a lovely lunch.  We also bought the Bunkie Life kit which was delivered very promptly.

All of the parts of the bunkie were precut and labelled.  It was my job to sort all of the parts and load them on one of our hay wagons so that we could easily access them by part number and make sure that they could be covered by a tarp to protect them from any rain.

The assembly was really quite easy!  It was like building a kit from Lego or lincoln logs.  The instructions were very clear, the quality was very good and between my husband and I we went gangbusters building our little bunkie.

The only part that was a little challenging was putting up the rafters.  We used our farm tractor and a good friend came over to help us.

It only took us a few days to get this far in between all of the other things happening on the farm.  Then my husband contracted Covid19!  And of course he gave it to me!!  So our construction project was put on hold.  We were so tired. Neither one of us had contracted covid before which astonished so many of our friends who had already had 2 or 3 rounds of covid.  So our bunkie ended up on hold  We didn't our friend that had helped with the rafters to come back as he has 2 young children and we didn't want to take a chances that they could get covid from us.  We were both so tired and it took weeks before we felt our energy levels starting to return to normal.

Well, even bad things come to an end and we recovered enough to carry on with the construction.  At this point to be honest I think I might mean my husband carried on with the construction.

We added a red metal roof.  The windows and doors were part of the kit.  The floor went in last but as it was already so very late in the season we covered it with contractors' paper to protect it, loaded it up with some garden furniture and shut it up for the winter.

Spring arrived quite early this year followed by another round of winter so we didn't get around to working on the lake house until early summer.  I knew that I wanted the lake house to feel beachy so we bought a semi transparent stain for the walls in a light colour and a different colour for the floor and the rafters,  The weather was most uncooperative with heat, humidity and rain but eventually I managed to get the walls, ceiling and floor done.

Next we wanted to add furniture!  We moved our old kitchen table and chairs to the bunkie using our lawn tractor and a utility trailer.

Around Lake Ophelia we go!

Ta da! The first round of furnishings complete!

We had a wonderful Canada Day barbecue for family in the lake house.  It was a great success!

We sometimes have lunch in the lake house.  On this particular day we were surprised by a quick but powerful burst of rain.  The open window is the perfect height for Vera.

And finally a view back towards the house.  It is just a 5 minute stroll from the house to Lake Ophelia and the lake house.

There is still much work to be done but that will need to wait for another post!

Thank you for visiting my blog and wishing everyone a wonderful weekend.

 

Late Afternoon Garden Views

Hello dear friends, our gardens are quite lush with the rain and warm temperatures we have been having so far this summer.  I took a little walk around a couple of days ago and have some photos to share with you.

A view from our pergola terrace.  I am not sure where time goes as we built this several years ago now and haven't really used it.  This area needs a little love which it should receive in the next couple of weeks!

A view from our fire pit with Lake Ophelia peaking through the trees in the distance.  Our blue spruce was purchased as a wee little tree so many years ago and then was run over by the company that used to mow our lawns.  :(  It is starting to recover nicely and is now really taking off.

This is our fire pit which has gone through many evolutions over the years.  We are still working on landscaping this area.   It was a last minute rush to get this done when we had a service for my mother after she passed away two years ago.  Last year we had such a hot dry summer with so many fire bans we didnt get a chance to use it.  This year has been seen a lot of rain (this month may be the wettest July on record!) so we still havent used it.  When the evenings cool down it is a lovely place to sit with friends and a glass of wine.

A different view looking towards the house.

Walking around the front of the house with a different view towards our dining pergola.

We have been expanding our memory garden this year.  Some unruly perennials have been removed and we are adding others.

My husband built Rose Cottage after he retired.  We wanted to build a little structure to store outdoor furniture and he decided that in addition to being functional it should be pretty!  Which it is.  

Vera is demonstrating an ability to come when called!

And Abby is demonstrating the same ability!

A view towards the side of our house.

And finally another view of our pergola area.

Thank you so much for visiting and wishing everyone a great week!

Summer Catch up

Hello dear friends, I cannot believe it has been almost one year since I have updated my blog.  So let me do a quick review...I have been retired for almost 23 months and I had a list of things I was going to do in retirement:

walk every day

read books

keep my house clean

stay on top of my gardens

upload photos to my blog every week

Oh dear.  It would seem that my list was a little ambitious!  All is well at Carogil Farm but I confess that I cannot believe how "busy" I seem to be every day!

Our fur children are well.  Lucy sadly passed away earlier this year.  Abby is getting older and suffers from hip dysplasia.  She is becoming a very big Momma's girl and is quite attached to me.

Vera is just Vera.  She has settled in very well and is her Daddy's girl.  At 85 pounds she is a very large lap dog.

Lake Ophelia has been a large, multi part project for us.  During covid we had the pond completely rehabilitated and then started building the ramp and platform last year. Last year the water levels in the pond dropped significantly but this year we have had so much rain that the water levels have stayed relatively high which ironically is hampering the next part of our building project.

Last year we bought a little bunkie kit from a local company.  We ordered it in the fall and it was delivered promptly.  We call it our lake house and began working on it right away.   Then we both got covid!  Perhaps surprisingly it is the first time for both of us and it took several months to recover our energy.  We did manage to finish building the lake house before winter and this year we are working on finishing touches for the inside.  Staining the inside and outside has been a challenge as our weather has been wet and humid so not conducive to painting.

A view from Lake Ophelia towards the back of our house.

 

The gardens have been a struggle for me this year.  After a non existent winter and early spring (sun burn in March?!) we have had a lot of wet weather with unbearable numbers of mosquitoes.  So although I had an early start to the gardens the weeds have gained the upper hand.  Many of our perennials are in desperate need of thinning including this monarda.  We will be moving large clumps to new beds around Lake Ophelia to create a bird/butterfly/bee paradise.

This yellow achillea has outgrown its' location in another garden and will also be relocated to Lake Ophelia's pollinator garden.

I have been learning a lot about invasive plants over the last year.  I had received this campanula from a friend about 15 or more years ago.  Many gardeners are struggling with creeping bellflower and some people seem to think that this is one of them.  Although I am not sure (it hasnt spread or self seeded everywhere here) I dont want to take a chance and will start removing it.

We are raising turkeys again this year.  We do love turkey and in the fall will be sharing some with friends.

Lots of happy frogs in our koi pond.

While visiting the Butterfly Conservatory earlier this year I learned about feeding stations for butterflies.  I have been using a thrifted glass plate with over ripe fruit to feed butterflies and am excited to see different varieties visit.  It didnt take long for our resident chipmunks to discover it and start stealing the fruit!

We have water lilies in both Lake Ophelia as well as our koi pond.

An early morning visit from a heron.

Wishing everyone a great week!

Summer at the farm

Hello dear friends!  It is hard to believe that I have been retired for a year already!  As I was winding down my career I had a list of things I wanted to focus on in retirement...walking every day, reading, staying on top of housework, journaling, sketching and painting, photographing our farm activities and posting them on my blog weekly...and I have not managed to accomplish any of them!

So thank you to those of you that were wondering what happened.  We are all well and here I am at long last to share some of our activities.

We have had a strange summer in terms of weather.  We haven't really had the prolonged heat waves we can experience here in our region and we haven't needed our portable air conditioning units although we did set them up for Lucy (more on that below!).  We have had a lot of rain although much of it is what we refer to as nuisance rain (5 mm or less) which is not enough to soak the gardens but enough to make a mess of plans to paint or cut hay.   In general though it has been warm enough to allow us to enjoy our outdoor seating areas.

We refer to this as our "breakfast deck" but I think we should rename it the "morning deck".  We like to have coffee here in the mornings.  This veranda receives full sun in the morning and we installed bamboo blinds to provide a bit of shade.  We added an outdoor rug and there is an old table that has been in use to hold some of the many plants we started from seed.

This veranda is at the front of the house.  We added two more outdoor rugs to this area as well.  (The dog beds and dog toys are always on hand).  The area in the forefront is the "afternoon deck" and the other area is the "wine deck".  The afternoon deck has shade early afternoon and the wine deck has shade just in time for happy hour.

This is the kitchen deck.  Earlier this year we developed an addiction to facebook marketplace and this is one of the many purchases we made!  This is a very comfortable set of Hauser furniture that we purchased from a lovely lady whose parents had passed away.  

Lake Ophelia is still a work in progress.  We have a heron that makes frequent visits and is no doubt eating our frogs and fish.

We were so upset earlier this year when we discovered that all of our koi had been eaten!  We have had fish in our koi pond for about 8 years and they were a constant source of delight for us.  After some investigation we believe that a mink paid a visit to our pond and ate them all.  We have since purchased other gold fish but of course they are much smaller.  We have a shade over the pond as the big ash tree that had provided shade has sadly succumbed to the ash borer and is now dead.  We are debating what to do with the dead tree and are thinking of leaving parts of it standing and growing climbing hydrangea up the truck.

I purchased a number of little concrete statues including this little bird which I have added to a bird bath.

Another facebook marketplace purchase was coloured glass vases which we have hung in some of the trees.

More garden views....

I decided to add a garden in front of the chicken coop.  It is a work in progress.

My assistant Abby is checking for soil temperature and consistency.

Dear old Lucy has given us some worry this year.  She is 13 1/5 years old and struggled with some health issues but after many vet visits seems to be stable.  She has been struggling with hot and humid weather as well as the poor air quality we had earlier this summer due to forest fires.  She seems to be feeling better now.

We haven't had much use of the firepit this year.  Earlier this summer many parts of our province experienced wildfires and the smoke traveled to our area.   We didn't  want to have a fire when the air quality was already so poor and then for whatever reason we just haven't gone back to enjoying evenings around the fire.  Maybe tomorrow!

Bailey's garden is waiting to have mulch spread.

I always dread hay season.  We need the weather to cooperate (which has not happened this year).  We need the equipment to operate properly.  And the work is physically very hard and as I get older I find it harder and harder to help my husband with this task.  He does most of the work and I just complain about it!

Another view of our fire pit with Lake Ophelia in the distance.

Lucy is very happy about a stuffed purple fish that arrived from Auntie Brenda!

Abby is resting with her stuffed dog!

And of course Vera is preparing to destuff and desqueak her stuffie.  (And all of the other stuffies as well)

We have been thinking a lot about gardening for the pollinators and have some plans!  The echinops is popular.

We grew some hyssop from seed this year and it is a great plant for pollinators.

We always seem to have something happening here at the farm. This year we are having a garage built!  It is going to be a 2 car garage with a loft that I will be able to use as a quilting and craft room.  I am so excited!

The excavation is just being done so stay tuned!

Thank you for visiting and wishing everyone a great weekend.