This year on May 11-12, Ayden and I embarked on our first canoe trip of the year. We've had this mindset that canoe trips had to be a weekend long or a two night event but this year we decided to try going for just one night and see if the hassle of getting everything together would be worth it.

Since it was going to be only a one night stay, we decided on doing the Seagrim Lake route in Nopiming Provincial Park. It's an easy, scenic route with short portages and decked out camping spots. Decked out when it comes to back country campsites you need a canoe to get to, of course. We had my brother, Thomas, join us for the trip and he partnered up with a friend of his, Damien, who'd never been on a canoe trip before so a route like the Seagrim lake chain was a perfect first toe dip into the world of canoeing.

For being so early in May we definitely thought it was going to be a pretty chilly weekend but we were pleasantly surprised with warm weather and toasty sunshine. It was so warm in fact that Ayden and Damien decided to take a dip into the cold lake waters.

After two short portages, we made it onto Elton lake where all the campsites for this lake chain were on. We paddled our way to campsite #7 and were pleasantly surprised by what was all in it. There was a rock firepit with a grate, a picnic table, and a whole bear box to keep our food and gear safe in the night. We got there, set up camp, gathered wood, and then continued to enjoy the beautiful May weather we were having.

It definitely started to get chilly as the evening turned into night, with the wind picking up and a couple of short sprinkles of rain but it gave us a beautiful rainbow to end the evening with.

The next morning mother nature decided to remind us that it was still early May and even though the sun was out and shining, it was pretty cold. It was also quite windy which didn't help the situation. But we made the most of it and still enjoyed the morning with some breakfast sausages, scrambled eggs, and baked beans.

And then it was time to clean up, pack up, and head home.

So was it worth it? 100%. A taste of the great outdoors made us grateful that winter was over once more and summer is on its way. It made us look forward to our future summer plans and be happy to live in an area with so much beauty just a short car ride away.

And made us grateful to have all the comforts we have waiting for us at home.

While Ayden has been dreaming of the garden and all of it's potential, I've been looking at the spaces indoors that could use a bit of a revamp. While there are many areas I wish to upgrade, there are certain areas that are a bit higher on the priority list. One such area, is the space above the couch. This is what it looked like before:

We bought this painting off of marketplace when we first moved into our house. I didn't want to spend too much money or time trying to think of a gallery wall and we had so many other things we needed to buy for the house that trying to make the space look nice wasn't top priority. And I love this painting. I love the style, I love the vibe, me and Ayden both love that it looks like the lonely mountain from the Hobbit, and it worked as a great filler of space.

However, Ayden has mentioned to me a few times over the years that he wished there were more photos of us and our lives in our house so it felt more like our home, not just someone's. And while I love this painting, it is taking up precious real estate in our small home. So work needed to be done.

I'm definitely not an interior designer in any sense of the word. It took me over a year to do the first little project in our house(our bedroom) and even though that turned out really good, change is quite intimidating. Especially when it can turn out bad. But nothing a little planning and some painter's tape can't help fix!

Since we are on a tight budget at the moment, I perused ikea online to see what was available shelving wise. I also had to make sure the shelves weren't too deep since the last thing you want to do when plopping on the couch after a long day is give yourself a minor concussion from hitting your head on a shelf.

After finding what was available and which sizes the shelves were in, I took pieces of tape the size of the shelving and placed it on the wall. Then I had to find out what size frames they had available and mix and match the placement of the tape frames until it came out just right.

Then it came time to build! While I don't have photos of the placement of the shelves, I have photos of what the other residents of our home were thinking while it was happening.

After only an hour of work (and a couple of days until I actually went and got the photos for the frames), this is the result!

Yesterday on May 8, 2024, Strider turned two and has officially reached dog adulthood. We've definitely notice him mature over the last couple months and his lanky teenage body has now filled out into his adult man body but he is still just as emotive and dramatic as ever. With maybe a touch less youthful energy, but only a touch.

For your enjoyment, here are some photos and videos of Strider's second year of life.

And to end off this appreciation post of Strider, here's a reminder that while he is very cute... he is still a dog. And dogs, without supervision, will be dogs. Here is a reminder to not let your dog have 45 minutes unsupervised in rainy weather, if you want to keep your lawn intact.

Happy Birthday, Strider. I hope you're as excited to become a big brother this year as we are for you.🎂🎉🎈

I love birds, who doesn't? We have quite a bit of bird action in the back yard this year, and I figured it would be nice to use some scrap wood from another project (Kitchen Shelving) to give them a place to call home!

I did a bit of research on bird houses and these were my main takeaways from the following site: The Backyard Naturalist

1. Small hole
   The entrance hole should be 1" - 1 1/4" to limit the ability of predators to get in. Also, this helps you select which species you will attract (due to size).
2. Easy to clean between seasons
   Birds, like people, appreciate a spring cleaning, and most will not re-use an existing nest that has material, so easy opening is key.
   Fun fact: Eagles use the same nest year after year, which is why you will find MASSIVE eagle nests out in the wild.
3. Ventilation
   There needs to be a few holes for ventilation (It seems that you only need one, but I went for 3 for good measure)
4. Drainage
   You need to drill holes in the bottom of the bird house for drainage, nobody likes a wet floor, especially songbirds.
5. No Perch!
   I was surprised to find out that bird houses are not supposed to have perches. (for native songbirds, at the very least) The reason for this, is that it is more often used by predators to get into the bird house than the bird itself. If you watch birds rip around and land on stuff, you can quickly understand that they don't need a perch to adeptly land in a hole.
   This being said, I think aesthetically, a perch makes a bird house look quite a bit better.

It was nice to use some scrap wood to give back to the bids that give us entertainment, scratching the ground, pulling up worms, and playing us tunes in our back yard.

I also hope that they will help us out with pests that we get in the garden. I'd call that adequate as a mortgage payment

Once the framing was up for the fence, it was just a matter of the finishing touches.

Completing the Frame

We needed to finish up the frame so we had wood to staple to. This also braced the fence and made it even more solid. We went with pieces of 2x2 and screwed them into the main fence posts.

Adding the wire fencing

We managed to get ourselves 50' of 3' tall 2" x 4" wire fencing to enclose the garden.

This was the trickiest part of the build by far, in my opinion. We had to straighten the fencing wire (Diana did most of it because I got too frustrated 😅) then cut the wire to length.

This was most certainly a 2-person job, since it was very difficult to hold down the fencing and staple at the same time. I would staple down one side of the fence, go to the other side, and the part I stapled would come off! 😤

One thing I learned through this process, is that there's no shame in asking for help, especially when it means the difference between enjoying the job and being cranky!

Building and Hanging the gate

After the wire fencing went up, it really started to look complete, now we just had to finish with the gate, and we had a full-blown garden fence!

We grabbed some black hardware at Home Depot when we bought all our lumber, and it worked pretty good. I will say that the gate is not super satisfying to close, since the gate latch chatters quite a bit. It requires a nice delicate swing for it to close without coming out. This will be a feature to remind us to calm the f**k down when we're in our garden, so I don't mind.

Finished Product

I'm not sure if it's just me, but after this fence was built, things in the garden felt different. I think there's something about having a nice, enclosed space that really makes the garden a place that's special.

This project really felt like it was greater than the sum of its parts! I'm very thankful for all the help we got to get this in, and it was an awesome learning experience!

Sneak Peek: 🧄

See below for a collection of Drone photos I've taken over the last few years:

There is a thief that lives among us. He is black as shadow and is cute as a button. He loves strawberries and tomatoes. His name is Strider.

Strider has also made a habit of standing on the garden beds in winter (I think it's because they're warmer than the rest of the back yard) and has gotten too comfortable doing so. We don't want our precious garden soil to get compressed, and lead to any animosity between us and our beloved dog.

Being a resourceful bunch, we figured we needed to use our human ability to build a structure to solve this problem.

The Plan

We decided to go for a wooden fence, with a 1" x 2" wire grid stapled to the fence frame. We planned for the posts to go 2' into the ground, then pour concrete into the post holes to set the posts and ensure they stay straight as long as possible.

The Build

After picking up the material from Home Depot, utilizing some gift cards that were burning a hole in our pocket (Thanks Mom & Dad), we met up at the build site and got started. With a solid plan, and lots of manpower, we were able to quickly get the fence set up. We were lucky with where the roots were, where there were roots, a quick cut with some pruners did the trick.

We had a lunch break that included perogies, a delicious cream sauce (DELICIOUS), and some homemade lemonade (thanks Diana!). After that, we worked on finishing the frame, then setting the posts straight and pouring concrete in the post holes to make them solid.

Phase 1 - Complete

By the end of the day, we had a fully framed fence that was somewhere between, level, straight and looking about right. Our next steps will be finishing the frame off, adding a gate and putting up the wire grid.

I am so happy to have this project nearly complete, and I'm very glad I had so much help, it made for a perfect sunny mid-April day. I am also grateful for my infinitely intelligent wife that demanded we rent a post hole auger, rather than me breaking my back doing it by hand.

Stay tuned for Phase 2, which will include the finished product (and hopefully more green in the picture!)

It's easy to forsake your own backyard for greener pastures elsewhere. I've always thought that Manitoba was boring and that to find beautiful places I had to go anywhere but here. But when you stop staring at the clouds dreaming of more "exciting" destinations and open your eyes to what is around you, you'd be surprised at what you find.

So today, to show that beautiful and interesting things do exist in Manitoba(and just across the border in Ontario), I'll be showcasing native plants that I've personally come across in my limited travels of our very own backyard.

Prairie Rose

Rosa arkansana

Rosa arkansana - Wikipedia

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.Contributors to Wikimedia projects

Spreading Dogbane

Apocynum androsaemifolium

Apocynum androsaemifolium - Wikipedia

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.Contributors to Wikimedia projects

Yarrow

Achillea millefolium

Achillea millefolium - Wikipedia

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.Contributors to Wikimedia projects

Black-eyed Susan

Rudbeckia hirta

Rudbeckia hirta - Wikipedia

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.Contributors to Wikimedia projects

Harebell

Campanula rotundifo

Campanula rotundifolia (heimisch) - Eulenhof - Staudengärtnerei

Rundblättrige Glockenblume

Eulenhof - Staudengärtnerei

Fireweed

Chamaenerion angustifolium

Chamaenerion angustifolium - Wikipedia

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.Contributors to Wikimedia projects

None of the photos pictured are captured by me

Raised Beds
We built five 4x8 raised garden beds, which have been the foundation of the garden. They're the perfect size for our needs, and gave us 160 square feet of growing space!

Soil
The soil that we chose was of high quality, and included a 4-way mix & compost from St. Leon's Garden. We also used a lot of soil that was from our old resin beds from Costco.

Irrigation
We ordered a Raised bed kit from Irrigation Direct Canada and it came with everything we needed to rig up the beds we built. Because of how lazy we are, this was an absolute must, as it made it very easy to manage the watering of our plants without having to wake up at 5am every morning.

Trellis
We built a trellis over the Tomatoes bed so we could vertically grow the tomatoes, cucumbers, beans and peas. We used tomato clips to attach the vines to the string that hung down from the top of the trellis.
This worked out great for tomatoes, beans (beans twist themselves around a string after a bit of coaxing), and peas, but the cucumbers didn't seem to like growing straight up.

Plants 🍅🫛🥬🥕

We were successful in growing a variety of crops.

Visitors 🦋🍄

We are lucky to have gotten visitors last year! Unfortuanately, the butterfly's wing is damaged, and wouldn't be travelling south last year.

Overall, last year's garden, was set up for success, We thoroughly enjoyed our time spent in the garden.
We're thankful to have a garden, and couldn't imagine a life without one!

I am so excited the start of this year's gardening season!