outdoors – Page 2 – Juanita Collins

April 7, 2015

F: Firewood at Fox Lake

A couple of years ago I started making little one-minute vignettes. I called them meditative moments. A chance to sit and relax, rest your mind and gaze at a meditative moving picture.

Here is last November 18, 2012. Getting ready for winter at the Fox Lake cabin:

It’s so relaxing, watching else someone stack the firewood, isn’t it?

The sound you hear in the background is the generator. We had been using the splitter. I took a break to make this little film.

I’m participating in the Blogging From A-Z challenge. One blog post for each letter of the alphabet, each day of April (except Sunday).

July 14, 2014

Garden Tour

It’s too hot to sew. It’s too hot to dig in the garden. It’s too hot to go for a walk. How about a garden tour? That will cool us off!

I know some of my Whitehorse friends have been dying to see what I’m growing down here.

My new yard here in the Shuswap isn’t very big.

It’s pretty tiny, actually.

Over the spring I was busy digging a border and filling it up with perennials.

Some plants were already there. I didn’t know what a lot of them were and probably pulled out a few before I found out they weren’t actually weeds…

Does anybody know what this blue flower is? It isn’t morning glory.

At the far end of the yard there is a small vegetable box. Mr. C is going to built me another. I also planted three blueberry bushes and a sickly rhubarb that the neighbor passed along (and is looking much better already). Everything will grow up nice and big over time.

I put raspberries under the deck overhang.

And vegetables wherever I can fit them in.

Bush beans are in the planter at the front of the yard. Please excuse Samson, he is giving me the stink eye because he didn’t feel like posing.

There was this funny oval in the middle of the yard with nothing growing in it but weeds and one scraggly rose bush. So I filled it up with strawberry plants, tomatoes, chives and bell peppers. (oh yes, and marigolds)

There are lots and lots of daisies along the driveway (which are my very favourite) that were here already.

Here is one thing that I almost pulled out this spring. I’m awfully glad I didn’t…it is a hollyhock and already taller than I am!

Of course I put in lots of shrub roses. Rosa Rugosa, in honour of us being from the Yukon, you know!

I hardly bought any annuals at all. Just these to decorate the front gate.

So that’s us. How’s your garden growing?

July 12, 2014July 12, 2014

Thrifty Retirement Living: how we saved $1,800!

One of the challenges of early retirement is learning to live within a (smaller than we were used to) fixed income. There isn’t a lot of wiggle room, and making a big purchase means the money has to come out of our investment savings. That’s okay… we’ve built in a buffer to cover the occasional larger expenditure. After all, houses do need occasional maintenance and repair. Appliances will eventually fail and need to be replaced. And, lets admit it, once in a while we’ll want to take a bigger vacation than simply traveling around the province in our camper. But when the possibility of a large expense comes up, we need to do a lot of research on it first. We can’t just order it and be done.

What “came up” was the hot summer weather versus the smoked glass ceiling on our covered deck! 27º in the yard sends temperatures on the deck soaring towards 40° (that’s pushing 100° for you Fahrenheit friends.) Unlivable. And it was heating the rest of the house up something terrible, as well!

Enter the need for a sunshade. Mr C went on-line and found a variety of sunshades. The cheapest he could come up with that would cover the entire deck was going to cost us $1,700. With tax & gas, that comes to $1,870+.

But wait! I had been at the thrift shop just the day before and purchased a couple of large, light grey sheets that I thought I could use for quilt backings or to work out the kinks on a dress pattern with. Sunshade cost breakdown (drum roll, please!)

Two thrift store sheets: $2.00
one roll of clothesline: $4.00
assorted hardware: $2.00
TOTAL SUNSHADE: $8.00

Money saved: $1,862. One thousand, eight hundred and sixty two dollars, folks!

We were back out on the deck eating supper and enjoying a nice glass of chilled white wine that very evening.

Boo-ya!

June 11, 2014

Going for a Walk

Would you like to take a walk around the neighbourhood with us?

I’ll take my camera and snap a few pics along the way. 🙂 Samson is in charge. Which way shall we go today? Right or left? Samson chooses to turn right. Here we go!

The water is high this year…there’s no more beach to walk on! Samson is disappointed.

Another cross-roads. Right or left, Sam? Sam chooses right. Okay! Up Mobley Road we go!

Another cross road. Sam decides he’d like to walk the “Badger Road loop” today, so we turn left here.

These are the chickens that lay the eggs we buy. 🙂 And back onto Mobley Road headed for home.

081 Wouldn’t you like to live here, too?

May 2, 2014

Pretty in Pink

This flowering tree is in my neighbour’s yard.

I don’t know what it is, but it doesn’t grow in the Yukon.

Being a Northern gal, I don’t recognize most of the trees & flowers here!

It sure is pretty!

December 4, 2013

Alaska Highway: Watson Lake to Fort Nelson December 3, 2013

Day 2 Driving the Alaska Highway

Contact Creek Lodge just outside of Watson Lake:

Contact Creek has the cheapest gas on the highway:

Somewhere between Watson Lake and Muncho Provincial Park (if you’re viewing through email, you’ll need to go directly to the website to see the short video)

Bison on the road. They lay on the sides of the road like statues. Like big boulders. You don’t realize it’s an animal lying there until you’re passing it, sometimes!

Caribou on the Alaska Highway in Muncho Provincial Park (if you’re viewing through email, you’ll need to go directly to the website to see the short video):

The drive through the mountains was awesome. A-MAZ-ING.

A long and winding (but scenic) road that used all my defensive driving skills. The road is quite a bit narrower in the winter because of the snow plowed off to the side. It wasn’t scary at all, but you do need to be alert and drive to the conditions.

I didn’t take any pictures of the road as it winds around the lake. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s sort of like driving on a flat roller coaster. Every corner is a blind corner. The road is about 1.5 lanes wide, and you can see what’s coming from several bends ahead, but you can’t see it coming right around the bend you are on. So you go slow. When you meet a transport truck, one of you has to pull off onto the side as far as you can, with a sheer rock wall on one side and the lake right on the other. Then you creep past each other with a wave and a grin before continuing on your way. It’s probably not so bad in the summer, but in the winter the snow makes it even narrower. So you can understand that I didn’t have any attention to spare for my camera!

All the mountain driving was tiring. Just when I thought I was through the mountains, I hit Stone Mountain Provincial Park. The road here was nice and wide, though, and other than a lot of climbing and descending, it was just fine.