'tis the season

One positive of the 'Saug is that Christmas is much less disgusting here. December is almost here and, unlike when I lived in Ottawa, I'm not yet sick to death of Christmas lights and Christmas music and Christmas food and Christmas decor and Christmas "deals". There are hints of Christmas, a few houses with lights, the occasional wrapped tree on a car or snippet of music but it's not oppressive.

The Santa Claus parade, now featuring Mrs. Claus (how long before Santa's just the goofy figurehead and she's the dominant figure who makes things happen?), is this weekend so I expect the Christmas push will pick up speed after that but that's fine. I have no problem with a Christmasy December. It's the October creep and day after Halloween blitz that bothers me. Two months of all out Christmas a year is just too much. It's like claiming to be a vegematarian because you only eat meat one day a week.

I guess it's because a lot of the people who live here aren't Christians even only nominally and so they don't feel the pressure to partake in the orgy of consumption that celebrate's the saviour's birth. They have their own observances to make and luckily there is now enough of this diversity in the 'Saug that I don't have to suffer Christmas overload.

Who knows in 10 or 15 years I might want to put up a tree in my own home again?

First of the first!

Yesterday the boss and I bought some gourmet chocolate covered rasins. But we were not just any customer buying any gourmet chocolate covered raisin. These were the first raisins ever produced in Canada from Canadian grapes and we were the first ever customers. They took our picture. Take that Neil Armstrong!

You might be asking where and how we accomplished this monumental leap in human evolution, how two regular folk from eastern Canada managed to advance human progress so far? Well we were on a whirlwind wine tour in the Niagara Region, 4 wineries in 3 hours! The raisins are at Reif Estates if you are interested, also home of the best icewine I've veer tasted. Disclaimer: I'm not an icewine fan as I find them too sweet but this one was good enough to bring home two bottles. http://www.reifwinery.com/wines/Vidal_Icewine_200ml

Found few other wines we really liked, mostly at Caroline Cellars. The wines are only sold at the winery so we had to by them there. Worth the visit if you are ever in the region IMO.

http://www.carolinecellars.com/

We also poked around Niagara-onthe-Lake, a favourite of the Boss, and a few minutes at Fort George. I think I'd like to go back to the fort in the shoulder season, maybe while the Boss is boutiquing. Or maybe that would be too expensive? Anyway the Fort left me with a big question I'm hoping someone can help me with: what do the feng shui people think about having a canon pointed directly at your front entrance?

BTW the gourmet chocolate covered raisins were the best I've ever eaten.

Doing without

For many a long year now I've thought of my microwave as essential. Of the many things I thought I could do without the microwave oven was not one of them. Just too much convenience to go back. And this from someone who eschews those frozen "instant meals" as too little nutrition per dollar spent.

This summer we moved from a too huge house to a human sized house which just served to further illustrate that we have way too much stuff. Way too much. One of the temporary sacrifices I made was to not set up the microwave. The kitchen is full of kitchen stuff. Over full. The dining room is full of boxes, mostly books. The living room is full of furniture and boxes of miscellaneous. In the end there was no surface on which to put our 1984 era microwave so it's just sitting in the garage. I assumed this would be temporary as what kind of freak could survive in 2011 without a microwave? The unibomber maybe? The Amish?

Well it turns out that I haven't missed the microwave enough in the last four months to bother setting it up. Weird. Really weird.

But I guess it shouldn't be. One of the things I learned on the bike tour was that stuff, especially convenience stuff is not something I really missed when it was not around. The one thing that comes to mind as a thing I've missed when it's not available is a BBQ.

You'll just have to trust me

I forgot my camera at home so there are no photos yo upload at the moment but the bunkie is coming along nicely. The roof is on and the windows are almost in. I should have the windows finished and the door hung before I leave tomorrow and maybe even a temporary install of the wood stove. So all is well as the remainder of what I want to do is interior work .

Te Boss discovered a bee supply shop in Tweed so I went over there to day to buy some bottles and had a good chat with the owner operator. He has twelve hives himself and said my winter preparations sound good but recommended I keep feeding them sugar syrup all winter.

The unpredictability of recent winters has caused a lot of problems for the beekeepers. Sometimes winter goes on too long but the worst are the unseasonably warm spells. Apparently when it gets warmish the bees like to get out and stretch their wings etc. and this means they eat a lot more than when it's just continuous bitter cold.

Good to know anyway, I'll bring up some fresh syrup next visit for sure. After all, a man's gotta take of his girls.

OH the bee supplier's link for anyone interested:

http://www.busybeebeekeepingsupplies.ca/

PS: I'm totally jealous of his work shed, which smells like warm beeswax.