I have to say this has been the best summer ever.
As Canadians we all know too well how quickly the summer comes and goes.
Well we haven’t wasted one minute of it this year!
We’ve been busy!
Preparing the land to be a building lot is actually a lot of work, the endless digging and rock moving around here is astounding.
It hasn’t been all yoga, bbq and chipmunks around here either!
Ok it HAS been all chipmunks every day – meet MeatBall.
One day MeatBall woke up and there was a trailer beside his hole.
Then it started to rain peanuts and sunflowers on him and he decided – hey, these guys are good in my books!
Oh the adventure we started when we took the first step and got this place!
This was last year up top where the house is going to go (see the line marking it out)?
This was the next step in clearing a spot.
Hey tree hugger! We love trees to – don’t freak out we still have lots but ya can’t build a house on trees.
Now after much digging and scraping we are almost where we need to be!
Its like living in art – check this painting out by one of Group of Seven’s painter AY Jackson:
Similar – I would go one further and say uncanny!
Even the elevation seems right.
Here’s some background on this print.
It was stolen from a Toronto Art Gallery along with other works of art by the Group of Seven.
This painting is of the Canoe Lake area, a spot in Algonquin where canoeing is spectacular and incidentally the very lake where Tom Thompson died.
Tom Thompson (another Group of Seven painter) went missing on a canoe trip at Canoe Lake in 1917.
His body was found 8 days later in the water.
Lots of mystery surrounding his drowning, you can read more about that here if so inclined.
Anyways back to our progress.
This is the lot if you’re standing with your back to the lake – almost ready for a foundation or footings or some other process which starts a house building project!
This here is the ‘driveway’ looking down from the rock as it was earlier this summer…
And this is looking up the driveway, after!
It’s actually driveway-like now!
The place is really starting to shape up!
The rock here is so spectacular we wanted to clean up all the moss and weeds and see more of it.
Amazing right!
It’s nature’s artwork.
We’re enhancing nature’s design with a few nice flat rocks and the beginnings of a stairway of sorts.
Another fun fact we just learned about is that Robert Bateman (another fantastical painter) has a cottage on this very lake!!
Wow talk about inspiring and if that wasn’t enough he mentions the old Hwy 35 (which runs through our property along the lake) in this article!
Unfortunately he’s selling his cottage BUT still!
Robert Bateman lived on this lake – just once more – wow!
Makes sense actually this place is incredibly inspirational.
Our labour of love and source of inspiration continues..
knot anchored 
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