I (Liam) spent 48 hours at the cabin after realizing it might the last opportunity for quite some time. I barely walked in the door and Ernie was by (he knew I was coming). He took me for a long drive (with granddaughter in back) to show me a possible fishing spot if our lake is too buggy. It’s on the side of a 80 km/h road, so not too tempting. We went back to the cabin on the back road and he did a bit of a patrol to see who was up to no good. He’s convinced my encounter with the three guys and guns was related to a grow-op. There truck matched the description of some guys up to no good, allegedly. I’m not convinced. He also told me about how they booby trap their plants. Anyway, by chance we encountered one of the gun guys mowing some grass. He remembered my name and didn’t look thrilled to see me. Weird/awkward encounter. Regardless, we’re lucky that Ernie insists on making eye contact with every single person he encounters on the road. We’re also very lucky that Ernie voluntarily mows our lawn/path every 2-3 weeks. It seems he’s going right to the opposite tip. I walked it twice this summer. He literally took longer to mow the path than for me to walk on short grass.
It rained a lot, but the bugs were much more manageable, so I walked around a lot (probably 8 hours or so spread over three days). Nina bought me a book about edible mushrooms in Ontario, so I went foraging. In the end, I only found one kind – but a lot of them. Lobster “mushrooms” are actually a parasite that transform real mushrooms into lobster-coloured mushrooms. Apparently, there’s a risk that they convert inedible species of mushrooms, so you’re supposed to have a small sample before going nuts. I actually found a few of these last summer, but couldn’t find them in our more scientific book. Anyway, I had my eyes glued to the ground for 5-6 hours of walking in the woods, including walking through a lot of damp buggy areas, and found this cluster of a few dozen lobsters. A bit disappointing considering the amount of rain we got.
I went fishing on Friday and no luck…not a single bite. Not sure whether it’s the new lure or weather. I can’t believe I put a dent in the fish population during past fishing trips. I didn’t try again.
I also wandered around the new property quite a bit. One nice thing it has that the cabin property somewhat lacks is big trees. There are a few dozen maple trees that are likely older than Canada (based on the supposed rule of thumb that each inch of trunk diameter is worth 5.5 years for Sugar Maples). A few are on their way out, but plenty of them are quite healthy.
I moved the hunter’s canoe on the new property over to the close side of the pond so that I can easily go for little laps around the pond. It takes about 10 minutes. The pond is absolutely teeming with frog eggs. Actually, they don’t occur nearly as densely in the cabin lake, so I decided not to stock the pond with fish (except for a small dead catfish that Katie and I found, it seems to be void of anything bigger than minnows).
I also found a deep well on the new property. It’s an impressive stone well that seems to have lasted many decades. I’m not sure how we didn’t find it before because it’s right beside a bathtub-size open tank (maybe for feeding sheep?). This well is a bit far from the potential home sites to be worth it. Still very cool.
atmurphyroad 