Cedar to Cauchon

Another successful canoeing weekend. We made the run up from Cedar to Cauchon and back. The original plan was to do a more complicated one-way trip that involved another couple, two cars, and two bikes – but the other couple ended up  not being able to go, so we thought quickly to come up with this route. Actually, we were surprised we hadn’t considered something along this route sooner, since it involved all of 1000 m in portages (500 m each way) for the whole weekend. That’s peanuts compared to most of the other trips hubby has had us doing!

This may well go down as the best weekend (weather-wise) in our canoeing history, and it was not too shabby both on wildlife sightings (we saw a beaver and probably 7 or 8 loons) as well as the scenery.

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This is war

Dear Critter.

If I find you, I will please me greatly to pull out each one of your pointy little teeth one by one, to make sure this doesn’t happen again. I hope you enjoyed your nibble of my precious zucchini.

Well, of course I won’t actually do that – something about being against animal cruelty or whatnot. A girl can still dream in a fit of garden overprotectiveness, though.

But I was still very angry to find some missing zucchini when I checked on the garden today. Well, actually, I was surprised not to see some yellow and green zucchini poking out at me, since I saw some nearly-ripe ones when I last checked on the garden on Sunday. And then I was angry when I discovered the end gnawed off this one, as well as (on closer inspection) some telltale signs of other, smaller fruit missing, fallen to the same fate.

Stupid critters. I guess this means I’ll be adding “put chicken wire around the garden” to my list of chores for the weekend. Although if it’s actually a squirrel doing this, I don’t know how chicken wire would stop it, short of also putting a chicken-wire roof on my veggies. This will require some further investigation. Any suggestions?

In better news, I picked a pretty good haul off my three types of beans. Delicious! And colourful – although sadly the purple beans turn a rather pale green during steaming. Booo.

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Camping

We saw this guy when we were canoeing in Algonquin last weekend.

Hubby has much better eyes for spotting wildlife than I do, and he’s gotten quite good at paddling in a quiet and non-threatening manner, allowing us to get close enough for shots like this. This is definitely the closest we’ve gotten to a loon, and in this case the closest we came is when after another bout spent underwater, he actually popped up closer to us than he had been before. Love the curious wildlife.

Although maybe not so much when it tries to take a sip of my drink – the first afternoon, I found a chipmunk prostrating itself on top of the can with my drink, looking for all intents and purposes as if he wanted a drink. My best guess is that actually he smelled the peanuts from the trail mix I was munching on just before taking a sip… Still – that’s a gutsy chippy!

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Kitty-cat presents

This is what I’ve been coming home to for the last couple of days.

I don’t know whether this is a sign of affection or hint at bloodshed to come, but every day, “Mouse”, our kitties’ ancient toy, has been finding his way to the front entrance. So cute to come home to after a long day at work!

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