Tea for the Queen

I’m getting out the silver to celebrate the Queen’s long reign and have tea and scones with a friend. It feels fitting. 

I’m using my mom’s silver tea service, her silver plate and a lace tea tray cloth from Christopher’s cousin Helen. Lovely. 

Gardens

I’m putting the garden to bed. Harvesting the potatoes and carrots. 

The bright lights Swiss chard is stunning 

LET THE DUST CREATION BEGIN!

Thank goodness for all the many doors in these old homes. After 4+ hrs of additional scraping... we are generally satisfied that the floor exposure is basically even. Now onto the sanding!

The Week In Review...

It seems it is never possible to accomplish everything one wants to get done in a week. There are constantly setbacks but you have to focus on what was accomplished and who showed up. Our good friend Rod Jacob flew here after a trip to Ottawa with his fantastic lady to give Chris a boost for 2 weeks before Sarah arrives. Writing this note Sunday morning... the ceiling in the parlour is ready for painting... and the floor is ready for the first coat of Varathane. We are hopeful that the dining room floor will be ready for the first coat later today. Because of the thickness of the various paints and coatings on the floors... Rod (mostly) and Chris have had to hand scrape the floors. This really knocked the schedule back. A huge thanks goes out to Roderick Jacob for all his help; Darrell for dealing with drywall mudding when the 'pitch hit' mudder only showed up for 1.5 days in a week and a half; Cubby Gillis and Boss for helping Christopher with some wood splitting; Perry for the loan of the splitter; and last but definitely not least... Aunties Linda and Betty for taking Scapa for afternoon of puppy play exercise on a few days this week!

Accomplishments From the Last 4 Days

Christopher had a lot of help and the following tasks have moved forward. Justin and Heidi (Ted Gillis' Helpers) came by and helped Christopher put up the deer fencing from the old railway bed up to the weird neighbour's and all the way along the bottom of the slope borderline the old railway bed. Darrell has been her sporadically to prep ceilings and walls for the drywall and plaster mudder. Wade Ryan, a new addition to the team is completing skim coats on the ceiling and walls of the dining room. He should be done the dining room tomorrow and move onto the parlour and kitchen ceilings... then to the suite. Christopher's generous friend Rod is here now and we are hand scraping floors furiously... especially Rod.

Monday Night Jelly Night

Yesterday I picked lots of the crab apples from our crabapple tree in the front yard cooked them up and strained them overnight and after I got home from work today I added the sugar and slowly simmer until I got to the jelly stage. I’m pretty confident I actually have jelly this time because the stuff was gelling in the pot while I was sterilizing the jars.

On the tree, and in the pot.

There’s nothing like the taste of home made jelly.