Alain and Melissa's Blog

New Website Coming Soon!

2007-08-20T19:01:00.000-04:00

Hi Everyone!

Sorry it's been so long since we've written. I've slipped into project mode - that's just the way I am... I always need Something to keep me busy, and since work is moving along smoothly and school is totally done for me, I needed something to fill the void.

What is the new project you ask?? Well, how about alainandmelissa.com ?

That's right, Alain and I are hard at work developing a website that will allow us to bring you more updates on what we're doing, more content and of course lots of photo's.

So, how is the website going to be different?? Well, it'll have our name as the URL, not the blogger URL you're used to. Also, since we're writing the html and designing the webpage, we'll have a lot more flexibility in the structure of the page (ie, not just one big long page with everything on it as blogger dictates).

There will be a section to keep you posted on what we've been doing, one about going green and jumping on board the environmental movement (the easy way!), a section for interesting news, and a section each for interesting videos and current music favourites. Alain and I will also each have a section where we can express our own points of view on any subject under the sun. Check out this section and you can follow me through my laser eye surgery experience from start to finish... That's something I know you'll want to hear about.

The site isn't quite ready yet, but hopefully will be by early next week. I will post here when it is ready to let you all know, so check back soon.

We know you're going to love it!

Camping in Algonquin Park

2007-07-22T21:07:00.000-04:00

Sitting by the campfire roasting marshmallows, watching the sun set over the mountains and the forests while the stars come out and reflect in the calm lake... Yes, that would certainly have been wonderful. That isn't quite the camping trip we experienced, however. Looking at the pictures below, you might think it was all nice and sunny and fun:

Caneoing on Stratton Lake heading to our site

The quintessential scene with our canoe on the shore:

The actual trip stated quite nicely. The drive up went well, we got our canoe at Algonquin Portage, got to the Achray campground and set off. I must give high praise to Kelly for being such a great girl in the canoe. We were afraid she'd jump out to chase loons or go meet other people and in doing so make us capsize and send all our gear to the bottom of the lake, but she sat nicely and kept a serious watch for threats from, I don't know, sharks or water bears.

Right, so we head out onto Grand Lake and we went right past the portage to Stratton, so we turn around in Carcajou Bay, making the same mistake about ten other people had made before us. It started raining rather intensely for a while but had pretty much stopped by the time we got to the portage. We took a few minutes here for a snack and drink, then paddled off in search of a nice site.

We found a spot close to High Falls and set everything up, found some firewood, had dinner. That's when the fun began.

Imagine the most intense rain storm you've ever seen, and focus it entirely on a single lonely tent in the middle of the Algonquin Park interior. Then make the storm a little more intense, take away all natural light, add the threat of wolves and bears and such and you have some idea of our situation on Thursday night.

The rain never, ever let up. After a few hours, Kelly left her towel in the corner where she'd been sleeping so nicely and jumped onto the air mattress and didn't want to return to her corner. That's when I put my hand down on the tent floor, which, unexpectedly, waved. This was because there were a few inches of water under the tent. It so happened that the flat spot we'd chosen was slightly lower than the area around it so the spot turned into a lake. The tent held up well but it could only do so much, so we had to move the tent in the middle of the night, in the middle of the storm.

Anyway, as it usually does, the sun eventually rose and with its arrival the storm finally broke. With the site, the forest, the entire park being soaked, along with much of our gear, we decided to cede defeat and head home. Sure, it isn't the trip we might have wished for, but we will certainly always remember it!

Hope you all had a great weekend,

Alain

strawberry treats

2007-07-12T21:28:00.000-04:00

MMMMMmmmm tasty strawberry treats. With our freshly picked strawberries we made milkshakes and strawberry ice cream topping and angle food cake with whipped cream and strawberries (one of our favorites!)

Here are some photos of the angel food cake (yes, there is some cake under all that whipped cream), and us enjoying our tasty treats.

You're jealous aren't you?

Doesn't it make you want some strawberries??

Strawberry Picking

2007-07-12T20:44:00.000-04:00

woo hoo! We LOVE strawberries! Who doesn't love strawberries. Let me tell you, it is even more fun to eat the strawberries when you picked them yourself at the strawberry patch right around the corner from your house! That's right, Barrhaven has it's own strawberry patch, gotta love that preserved agricultural Greenspace.

The strawberry season is probably very close to over, but these are from a few weeks ago. We spent about 40 minutes picking strawberries and got about 8 litres in that time. We might have gone a little overboard... We got home and looked at each other and our 8 quarts of strawberries and thought, "Wow, that's a lot of strawberries, what are going to do with all these strawberries???"

Well, we got cooking.

It worked out okay, more about the treats in the next post. We did end up using up virtually all of the strawberries, and have some frozen for future treats.

oh ya, did I mention, We Love Strawberries [and buying locally].

M

Canoeing!

2007-06-28T22:00:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone,

I can’t believe how much I have been sucking at updating this lately. I really do try, but there doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day lately! I will keep trying and hopefully can do better over the coming weeks. There are exciting things ahead, I can promise you that! I will sign off for now with a fun photo we took a few weeks ago when we took Kelly canoeing on the Rideau River. As usual Kelly was a total star and took a liking to canoeing (although perhaps not immediately). This is good news as next week we are taking her canoeing in the Interior of Algonquin Park. Hopefully we won’t spend the whole 3 days tipping over! I’ll write again soon, I promise!

Finished Deck!

2007-06-28T21:54:00.000-04:00

While we finished the majority of the deck the first weekend we tackled it, it took us a little while to finally get all the railings done.

I think the deck looks fantastic, and opens up the yard a lot as well. It is huge improvement over the old one, and something we will enjoy for years to come.

Strawberries

2007-06-21T21:29:00.001-04:00

We have enjoyed our first (and probably only) strawberry crop of the year, and while we enjoyed it, so did the birds!!!

We did manage to get 3 bowls full of strawberries, which is pretty decent and although they were smaller than the hybrids you'll buy at the grocery store, they were fresh and they were from our own garden!!!

Even Kelly got to enjoy the strawberries (we like to share, of course).

Update: Our Organic Garden

2007-06-21T21:02:00.000-04:00

Our organic garden is doing quite well. So well in fact that we are starting to see some of the "Fruits" of our labour. But what has gone on so far you ask??

Well, you saw the original set up, and a little of the planting, but since then we have had a few troubles with the local rabbit population. Apparently there just isn't enough for the little guys to eat without them munching our our growing veggies. They particularly seemed to like the corn and the broccoli. Well, after all our planning and all our hard work, we were not going to let the bunnies eat our food without a fight.

Several weeks ago we decided to upgrade our existing fence system, which used to look like this:

It included a plastic netting in between the wooden slats of the fence, which last year worked fine in keeping the rabbits out. This year the bunnies broke through in several places. Onto plan B. We bought and installed closely spaced lattice. Of course, this seems like a simple task, but each piece had to be cut to size and stained to protect it, so it ended up taking most of the weekend to complete.

That should have been the end of it, at least we hoped, but we've actually seen the rabbit jump over the fence. We found a few places that seemed too small for a rabbit to get in, but actually weren't, and filled those in the best we could.

Thankfully that seems to have kept them out at least for a while.

Since the rabbit problem seems to have been fixed, we have focussed on getting everything planted and weeded. We have even enjoyed a batch of fresh strawberries!

Graduation!!

2007-06-21T20:27:00.001-04:00

Last weekend (well, Friday specifically) was my graduation from Carleton. This was a really exciting thing for me, I honestly don't think anyone (except maybe Alain, who was there for MANY of the tears) understands what it was like for me to complete my MA.

Of course, it was worth it, but I am glad to be done and working towards a promising (at least I hope) career.

Everyone came down from Cambridge to help me celebrate and we spent the weekend enjoying the best of Ottawa.

Friday was the big convocation day, and I didn't even trip while walking across the stage! The ceremony was long (2 + hours) but still worth going to. No photos really worked out from inside the actual ceremony, but we made sure to take a lot of photos outside before and afterwards, these are just a few...

Mom, Dad and Monica surprised me with a beautiful painting of downtown Cambridge that was just released by local painter Alex Krajewski (see his website http://www.krajewskicollection.com/p roducts/3 89 )

I actually have his first Cambridge print (which looks down the Grand River from the Concession Street bridge), but I definitely love this one as well (which features my church, Wesley United as well as the market building and city hall). The new painting is already hanging up prominently in the library, and having it framed and looking all pretty encouraged me to FINALLY frame the other one as well, so I should have that in a few weeks too!

I'm going to wrap up this post because it's getting kind of long and difficult to manage, but I'll be back soon with another.

Deck Update

2007-06-17T08:45:00.001-04:00

Finally, here is the deck update you have been waiting for with baited breath! (I'm sure you really HAVEN'T!)

Deck Demo:

No More Deck:

New Deck Frame:

Our Deck has a Floor! :

Working on the Stairs:

Enjoying our new Deck! (no railings yet!) :

The boys enjoying their hard work (Alain and Charles):

New Deck!

2007-06-09T08:16:00.001-04:00

Today is new deck day!

Alain and I have been dreaming about this day since the dark days of winter.

Our current deck, which is as old as the house and was never properly weatherized, is falling apart. It's also bigger than we would have liked and we're pretty sure it was hastily constructed to begin with.

Alain and I have had big plans for a new deck, all nicely stained to match our fence and with stairs off the corner opening into the yard (and maybe eventually a nice cobblestone patio).

And today is the day!

Alain's brother Richard and his friend Charles are coming over to help and by the end of the day we should have a new (smaller and much prettier) deck.

Here are some photos of what we have now, I'll update as soon as possible with the new deck.

The OLD deck has seen better days... Even with repairs done last year, the steps were collapsing and the old floor planks were lifting. I think we're doing this just in time!

Computer Down...

2007-06-09T08:11:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone,

Just as I started to get back into blogging, our cpu, with all our lovely photos has crashed. Not just a temporary crash, an all-out-can't-be-fixed crash. We can still get our stuff back, which is the good thing - just not yet.

I have a really good detective / rabbit story to tell you about too (you're intregued aren't you??). Well, it will have to wait, at least a bit.

Don't worry, I'll still be posting, just more recent stuff. (Thankfully we have 3 other computers on stand-by).

Check back soon!

M

Our Organic Garden... Up until now...

2007-06-04T20:42:00.000-04:00

Alain and I have been working quite hard for the last while on our Organic Garden.

This involved planting seeds as early as February and transplanting them over the past couple of weeks.

In addition, since we are trying out a new growing method called Square Foot Gardening (learn more at http://www.squarefootgardening.com/) with a continuous crop system, we had to get the garden area all prepped.

The square foot gardening system involves laying out several units measuring 4 feet by 4 feet and then dividing each unit into 16 one foot squares. Each type of plant has a certain amount of space which it requires to grow to fully size, and plants are planted accordingly.

For example, a broccoli plant requires one square foot, so one plant is planted within the square. Carrots, on the other hand, require much less space (about 3 inches square I think) and thus a one foot square unit can hold 16 carrots.

The square foot gardening method requires the soil to be tilled at the beginning of the season, and then, for the remainder of the season, walking within the unit is off limits. That is why there are paths in between each unit. Additionally, only the number of plants that you want to harvest are planted, so there is no thinning and you don't end up with more veggies than you can handle at any one time.

If you take the system one step further, you can plan for a continuous harvest, which staggers the planting times for each variety and ensures that you don't have all of your plants come ready to harvest in the same week. This means that every week we plant a few seeds, this week for example it was 2 bean plants, last week it was 8 carrots. With this staggering, we hope to not have a bunch of veggies which we cannot consume and are forced to throw out. It requires a little more initial planning, but is easy as it goes along.

So far so good, the system is working very well for us. Aside from the initial set up of the units, and the vertical growing system, it is not very time consuming at all. We spend a couple minutes here and there weeding, a few minutes planting every week, and that's about it. As plants come ready for harvest, the idea is to empty out the square and plant something new (and ideally different). This way the soil doesn't get tired out from planting the same type of plant, and you get to keep the gardening season going.

We have quite an extensive list of veggies that we are hoping to harvest over the next coming months. I hope that I can keep this blog up and let you know how it goes. I'll see if I can list all the veggies (and a few fruits!):

Carrots

Beans

Peas

Broccoli

Tomatoes

Cherry Tomatoes

Potatoes

Corn

Green and Red Peppers

Rubarb

Strawberries

Lettuce

Onions

Cucumbers

Here are a few photos of the units in progress. There are three units in total, which equals 48 squares full of fruit veggies and flowers. In the free form area we are growing potatoes, strawberries, rubarb and maybe over the next few weeks some squash.

Tomatoes, cucumbers and peas will be trained to grow up the vertical supports and thus will not sprawl across the garden. I don't have a great photo of the vertical supports yet, but will be sure to put one up soon!

These are a few photos from a week or so ago. A lot has happened since then, but that will be for another post!!!

Stanley's Olde Maple Lane Farm

2007-03-08T16:32:00.000-05:00

It's nearing spring time, the weather is warming and the sap is flowing through Maple trees all over Ontario. What better time is there to visit a good ole'fashioned sugar bush?

This past weekend Alain and I met his family at Stanley's Olde Maple Lane Farm http://www.stanleysfarm.com/ for an all you can eat Maple themed buffet (think pancakes, waffles, french toast, maple baked beans, maple glazed sausages and all the maple syrup you can consume in one sitting), a sleigh ride and some good old fashioned maple snow taffy. MMMMMMMmmmmmmm.

Alain and I are so addicted to maple syrup, it is definitely a staple in our household.

Stanley's farm was okay... It wasn't great, but it didn't suck either. The breakfast was decent, and the sleigh ride was fun. The taffy portions were a little on the small side, and although we didn't see one maple tree on the property, we were assured that there were indeed some "way out back"... although they weren't tapped yet. Maybe our disappointments had to do with the fact that it was the first weekend of the "maple season" and the staff at Stanley's wasn't as informed or prepared as they could have been.

We didn't actually even end up buying any maple syrup there either, because, although we love supporting local farmers and tradespeople, the syrup (from last years crop) was just too expensive to justify it. Surprisingly we buy the real stuff for cheaper at Loblaws...

Regardless of all the mediocrity, we did enjoy ourselves and spending some time with Alain's family. I've included a few photos of me in the barn petting the livestock, although for some crazy reason Alain and I were most charmed by the barn cats...

Welcome!!!

2007-03-08T15:59:00.000-05:00

Since Alain and I have moved in together, we have become more and more of a unit. I also haven't had much time to maintain my blog all by myself (see http://melissablog2006.blogspot.com/ ). So, I thought it was time for us to branch out and start doing this together...

This new page will continue to allow you to see what we've been doing, but hopefully (eh-hem, I haven't run this by Alain yet...) will also allow you to experience things through Alain's eyes, rather than just mine.

I hope you'll enjoy the new blog!

Melissa