Family = Home

Last week I traveled back ‘home’. Home to where I was born – but never lived there very long. Home where my aunts and uncles and a multitude of cousins still live. We had an idyllic childhood spent roaming the streets of a village that was home to two sets of grandparents and amazing shorelines of Georgian Bay. We traveled as a group of about ten kids – all ages – all sizes. We even had a plastic boat that we would carry the littlest ones in when we all walked to the ‘beach’ (rocky shoreline) to spend the afternoon. Moms or aunts would bring us lunch and then when the day started to wane we would toss everything into that little boat and walk the few kilometres back to whichever home we were crashing in that night. Somehow we were all safe – all sun tanned and barefoot – and satisfied with days filled with adventures fishing, swimming, catching tadpoles and eating too many green apples. Loved it!

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When I got home one of those Midland grown cousins came to visit here with her two daughters and my sister. It happened that my junior farmers were here as well for that day. So we gave them a tour of the place and even popped down to a friend’s barn so my ‘cousins once removed’ could have the chance to see a horse close up. It all worked out very well – except for when the monster chickens would walk across the paddocks! Seems they can be pretty scary critters if you are not used to farm animals. 😉

I’m excited to be spending this next week with the girls. They will arrive here tonight after enjoying a weekend on Sharbot Lake with friends. Their mom arrived on Friday to work in this area and the girls got to spend the day hanging out with us – and the cousins.

The scraping and painting continued all this time. These old boards really had a going over. Now they are soaking up the paint. We’ll put another coat on all the way around and that should make good protection for quite a few years to come.

Somehow the end of July snuck up on us and the gardens are in full bloom.

There has been enough rain and sunshine to encourage everything to grow to gigantic proportions! It looks great and smells divine.

The critters are enjoying the full on growth. The donkeys and goats are treating the front fence line like a buffet. The chickens are finding nice shady spots to spend their afternoons snoozing. The newbies have now been roosting in the coop with Goldie and his girls for three nights – no special crate required to help them hide away. And Goldie has taken to teaching them that his gentle ‘Woop! Woop!’ means he has found them a special goodie eat. Slowly a semblance of routine is returning to the paddocks. Phew!