Cottage Journal, Post #1, 2023

Since our arrival almost two weeks ago, I have been overcome with lassitude. Along with smoke from Quebec forest fires, it's been too hot to swim, (not for the bird families above) so I lounge in the lake on a saddle-shaped piece of yellow foam, moving my arms and legs in a half-hearted attempt to mimic an aqua-fit exercise in 80 degree (F) water. Yesterday a young snapping turtle eyed me from a couple of meters away. I said, "Hello Turtle," in a sing-song voice. This was obviously not pleasing to my terrapin friend, who promptly dove out of sight.

After sixty-four years of summers here, I have finally discovered the definitive sunscreen: Coola Visage. It feels like silk on my face, and is tinted so that I do not resemble a Hallowe'en ghost in a bathing suit, as the tint disguises the titanium dioxide and the zinc oxide.

The disappearance of our ice cream scoop caused a bit of angst, until an email to a departed guest was answered with certainty: it had been put away with the serving spoons. And though I had looked for it in that particular drawer at least seven times, the assurance of its location meant that I finally noticed the pink edges of the scoop's handle. It's amazing what we can't see when we think we are looking in the wrong place.

Bella has taken to barking us awake in the middle of the night. There is something outside the window – a fox, perhaps, or racoon, or a bear? Whatever it is, I wish that our dog would respect our need for uninterrupted sleep. Any dog trainers know how to manage this?

A new food recycler, acquired for participation in a monitored study, is reducing our garbage. The heavy pail holds about 6 cups of vegetable scraps and then takes 4 – 8 hours to grind and burn them, reducing the scraps to a sort of gritty dust. I can't save the planet, but we can reduce our waste by a little.

The perennials that we planted by the back door last summer are thriving. This fact has awakened in me a desire to expand our modest garden here. I trust this is not a perverse desire to tame the wilderness, but rather a need for splashes of colour in a very green landscape.

Apart from this new idea about planting things, I have abandoned my long to-do lists. Perhaps lassitude is not altogether a bad thing.