Friends Visit

 Well, I better squeeze in a blog post before we start another month. Last week was again very warm down here. Actually it was really hot! Amazingly the grass keeps on growing and the weeds and crabgrass are spreading in overabundance all over our lawn. Oh well :))

At this time of year the waterlilies emerge in the marsch areas of Lake Erie, just a short distance from where we live. Really pretty to look at.

Not so pretty were a cluster of Webworm Caterpillars I discovered in our front yard berm. They quickly defoliated a branch of our tall shrub. These fall webworms develop into small white moths and the adult moth lays her eggs, a few hundred at a time, on the underside of leaves in hair covered clusters, which hatch in about a week. When I looked again, the web was empty!

Lots of hungry webworm caterpillars

I needed to renew my passport and at the same time decided to have our two dogs microchipped. This is a new requirement the USA has put into effect since the beginning of the month if you want to bring your dogs into the country. Apparently Canada is exempt, but I could not find verification that it’s true. Their distemper (rabies) shots are not due until November, so I have to book another vet appointment for them. 

The external tags for the microchips

We were expecting Marcie and David, our longtime cruising friends who circumnavigated the world on “Nine of Cups”, to come for a visit before they would again cross over to the USA after their extensive travel through Canada including northern Quebec and Labrador this spring and summer on their up-fitted Promaster 1500 van, which they lovingly call “Blanche”. You can read all about their travel on our side menu: Our Blog - Just a Little Further.

We sat out in front of the house because the deck got too hot

Photo of their van is from their webpage

David is explaining the interior

Amazing all the clever storage arrangement

However, another longtime cruising friend, Richard, who cruised with his sailboat “Pandur” and who we shared anchorages with during our sailing years on “Najade” surprised us for a visit on his land yacht, i.e. his beloved Chief motorhome, a Dodge Sportsman, just a couple of days ahead of Marcie and David. So Benno and I reminisced in cruising tales and the wonderful times we all had on the water with our friends. Gosh, we should do that more often!

Richard with a care package for later

Richard explains the layout

And last, although lately there was quite a bit of cooking going on, I forgot to take any photos except of the almost demolished Zwetschgenkuchen / Pflaumenkuchen (blue plum cake) that is a German specialty cake for the month of August and is eaten with a generous dollop of whipping cream.

Oops, almost ate it all up before the photo

Let’s hope September will bring a bit of relief in the weather so Benno’s project will keep progressing!

Wishing everyone a happy Labor Day and thanks for dropping in.

Yay, another post!

It has been brought to my attention that it has been far too long since my last blog post. What can I say as an excuse other than I much prefer working outside and helping with Benno’s boat work than sitting behind the computer screen. 

So even though sometimes it felt like working inside of an oven, Benno made lots of progress inside our little trawler named Albatross. We didn’t like the interior layout the boat came with, so we are trying to improve it with our own design and work with what is given and can’t be changed. There are hardly any straight walls so even making a cabinet has many challenges. 

I snatched one of Benno’s worksheets from the wastebasket to show you the measurements he calculated for creating templates before cutting the actual marine plywood for the cabinet, also for making the wall panels and ceiling.

And here are the photos of that cabinet. Inside there are two layers of shelves that can be removed, and a coat rack for pants to hang up. We used a Kreg Pocket-Hole jig that inspired Benno from a picture in Jim and Barb's Adventures blog a while ago when they were building a cabinet with drawers. He loves that jig and even I was using the jig for drilling holes in the wood framing for easy assembling. Easy peasy!  (Not that I will take over the build :-) After the framing was installed in place I crawled into the cabinet to paint the walls and I put a couple of paint coats on the shelves inside the garage before assembling those in the boat. 

There were many more drawings to create templates for the ceiling panels that gave Benno a headache for sure as those were even more complicated. All looks good now.

While on a parts run at the beginning of the month, Benno found himself stuck in a traffic jam. Leamington hosted again the annual “Hogs for Hospice” and there must have been well over 1,500 motorcycles taking a round trip from Seacliff Park to Point Peele National Park. It sure was a site to see. The lucky raffle ticket winner won just shy of $450,000.

The arial photo is from The Southpoint Sun Newspaper

The flowers in my garden are doing great with the hot temps and a few good rain showers we have had. I am still at war with whatever cat is using my front berm as her/his litter box and planted today a couple more flowers in it so to eliminate any available space for doing her/his business in there. We’ll see how that works.

Our son and grandson spent again a weekend with us. We really enjoyed their visit and wish our teenage granddaughters would find something of interest here too so we could entertain the whole family. 

Speaking of visits, our neighbours hosted their extended family over the long weekend and there were seven tents pitched on their lawn. It looked like a fun event for all.  

On my sidebar under “blogs we follow” I have added Möbius World that some of our readers might enjoy following up with as well. Wayne and Christine are converting a Horton Ambulance vehicle into what I believe will be an amazing RV to tour the world by land. Enjoy the read as well check out their previous yacht and Christine's website with reference to her published books, all of which I highly recommend.

Thanks everyone for your visit. Wishing all of you a great summer!