Greatwall Studios Graphic Design

So yesterday I jumped right out of the gates as the girls left, to go find one additional bag of trash to go out to the curb for garbage day. I did a big one by filling a colossal construction bag full of old curtains I was keeping (of my mother’s from the 90’s), a broken chest, two busted back packs, and ripped gift bags, shredded gift tissue packing paper, and some old Christmas cards from about five years ago or more. Plus some random litter from the main floor to round out the bag. Which was a terrific start.

I cleaned various metal scraps from out of the shed, and the garage which was gone before I finished shutting the garage, and then the shed too. Some industrious fellow swung by in an Aztec and swooped it all up. Nice. I get more space, they get my junk, we are all happy.

Then I turned my eye towards a basement closet with two massive bags of clothes. Some of which was size 6, and 7 so nobody here can wear those, immediately expelled from the premises. Then I had to sort for larger 7/8 items for the fall and winter. I kept anything that was an 8/9 or above, provided it wasn’t ripped, torn, perma-dirty with stains, or not to my kids taste. Though, that is evolving as they grow, so I might need to take a keener eye to what they gravitate towards, and that which they avoid. Might need to recalibrate! Potentially. Either way, I mulled it all over and kept one much smaller, albeit overflowing bag of clothes for the youngest. The rest I drove to the donation boxes first thing this morning.

I took a detour to the inlaws and their neighbours to walk the trash & recycling down to the curb for them. Now that I have eaten I will go try some garlic removal for a short while.

I did some last minute edits on my report, and sent that off this morning as well. All in all a successful hour has gone by already. I might need to nap later today. I’m off to the garlic patch to try to finish the last row, and a bit before the sun peaks overhead. Ciao Bella!

**UPDATE:  I managed to get down to the garlic patch for 8:30 am, and it was already nearing 30°C on its way to feeling more like forty with the humidex added in on top. I started from the bottom, and did 60% of two rows side by side. Same variety of garlic so it didn’t really matter that I crossed multiple rows. The ground has begun to dry out after the last 1.5″ of rainfall we had on Sunday morning. So I did the lower lying stuff that I could pull up more easily. I left the top 40% of each row for my brother in-law to do himself later on today when he goes down to rota-till his old strawberry patch. As you can see from the photo, the weeds outshine the garlic by about 36 inches over and above. A tad prickly! The mosquitoes seem to love being in there as well. I left my bug spray in the other vehicle, so my 90 minutes of pulling was unpleasant. I did not go swim afterwards, I showered instead.

***UPDATE TWO:  in keeping with my desire to get rid of busted crap and replacing it with already purchased items, still in the box, but currently in storage. I am going to tackle our plates & bowls shortage. The set we got for our wedding has seen a number of breaks over the last fifteen years. So now I will open up, wash, and rotate in a new set of four, and rotate out my old bachelor sets,band out those back in the basement kitchen as part of our emergency reserve, along with all the bottled water, safety kits, and long term dry goods storage. It won’t be a readily noticeable improvement, but I’ll know about it, and will be pleased. Moving on!

Without needing to call anybody, nor ask about town, you can usually bet that within two to three hours of carting your old scrap metal bits down to the curb, some industrious person will pull up and take care of it for you. I am now so much closer to emptying out both the shed, and the garage of all of the left over bits of junk from our former tenant. Only taken ten years, but I am down to just the last few bits & pieces. Paint cans and old tech is all I have left at this point. If I can muster the strength then I’ll get rid of an ancient computer, monitor, my busted karaoke machine, and the old water softener. I’d be willing to bet we have some crud in the laundry room I could see taken away too if I was so inclined.

For when the purge bug hits, it strikes deep, hard & fast. Right down into the marrow of you. My heart beats faster, and I feel so alive. So very productive! Make room for what’s to come. If I have the time I will sort clothes and take a bunch to the textile donation boxes. My closet, and the basement still houses quite a bit of clothing that nobody has worn in a long time. The house will never get bigger I tell myself, but it can start to feel a bit roomier if you take the time to let it. If you are willing to make the effort! I am that man. I do. And I will.

These are the Chronicles of my week ahead. The goal — to fill at least one garbage bag with junk to go out with the trash, and to reclaim as much closet space as I am able. Either by donation to the CP people whom come and retrieve bags from the porch, or by taking items to the drop off bins located all over town.

I don’t wish to live with nothing but the minimum viable amount of “stuff”, but I am comfortable getting rid of “things” with no value add to our daily lives. I always start with my own closet, shop, and spaces. I would not purge more of my children’s things, than I would do for myself. It’s not a case of one pair or pants and a shirt from me, and six garbage bags of kids items. I’m not that kind of asshole. Plus a slower, and more measured approach means lifestyle change, versus a life altering event, and it’s associated trauma. This is a good thing to happen. It nurtures growth, exploration, and expansion of what means something to us, instead of doggedly hanging on to things just because he got them at some point, but no longer have any use for it, beyond “but, it’s mine!”.

Life is too short to get bogged down with things, stuff, and physical entanglements that can hold you back. We have more than a suitcases worth each, so it’s not about depriving anybody of anything. But keeping just the good stuff, and letting go of the rest. For peace of mind.

If I remember to document my journey, be sure to follow along won’t you? Take care out there. Ciao Bella!

Started earlier but still got bit by the sun. So much left to do in the second field, but we are down to 1.5 rows left to unearth in field one. Glad for yesterday’s rain, as they mostly pull up ok. Still using my forks though because the Italian Soft Neck gets real slick, and the stem will slide right off the bulb with even the slightest resistance. With 8 varieties of garlic to pull, we have our work cut out for us.

Welp! With a massive isosceles sweat triangle down my entire back, pit stains, and chest sweat, and stinging eyes I find it’s time for a swim, and then home to my day job tasks for today. I also have a grocery delivery to attend to. I also need to get ready for tomorrow’s garbage & recycling pick up. I do need to cut the grass at some point too. Maybe if I skip garlic, I can do my lawn instead? Depends on the inlaws, and their desire to run through the garlic as fast as humanly possible. I don’t wish to see it moulds, and rot in the ground, but I also don’t want to spend every morning doing garlic, with the heat, sweat, big bites, and blazing sunshine.

It’s a real sweet treat to be able to collapse into the pool afterwards, of that there are no lies detected! 10 stars, would recommend to anyone. The heater has been off for a few days so it’s a very refreshing dip at that. Well worth the effort of pulling garlic for a couple hours each morning.

We are so close to finishing the first field, you really can taste it. The garlic that is. Gets into you. Pores and all. Sweat, breath you name it — Garlic. Ever present. You know when you are working with garlic. Better than hot peppers, by far, because you can still touch your eyes and face if you have too without giving yourself chemical burns. You can pee freely without having to scrub your hands for twenty minutes first. You only misjudge that once. Believe you me.

It’s taking so long because I have to pull the weeds in order to find the garlic stalks. If it had of been weeded properly then we could just fly up the rows. It’s a little different when you have five foot tall thistles hiding your rows from you, and crowding out the bulbs. My back is sore, and my legs ache. I dread to think of the state of the second field. Whatever weed mitigation they’ve used hasn’t worked, like – at all. Next year before they plant they should take a propane torch to the soil and burn it all away then plant the garlic in November.

Well we are back to a very hot Monday. I’m ready to eat some lunch. I have some cleaning up to do around here. Laundry, and floors, dishes and the kitchen in general. Everything needs a good cleaning up. If my wife does abscond with the kids & dog then I can really get after it over the next couple of days. Garbage bag(s) in hand, and Purge! Purge! Purge!

We are moving the teeter totter to the cottage along with some kids chairs. We got the old pirate ship water table over to my 3 year old nephew. So progress whilst slow, is moving forward. Onwards and upwards comrades!

It’s coming down by the bucket load here, for a change. Outdoor work is suspended for the moment. Plants – watered. And then some. Now we have to decide whether it is better to sit and wait out the rains here, or go somewhere else to kill time. I do have paid work to do at some point today. A good three or so hours worth to make my Sunday productive. I’ll have to check the radar to see if this is going to be an all day thing, or just a lost morning in the garlic patches.

It was yet another hot one today. I got through two full rows before I needed to call it a day. Took a dip in the pool to cool off, going to have some lunch, then I’ll be back into my office to work on my latest report. It’s a varied life, and a good one at that. Pitch fork comes in handy on the soft soil after the rains finally came down to the farm fields. Still has a tonne of bugs, and the weed mitigations failed — again. Spend more time fighting the weeds than pulling up & cleaning off the garlic bulbs. Going to do some outdoor drying this year, on a mesh bed trailer. See if the increased air flow does us any favours. Until tomorrow, when we do it all again. Early morning farm run, swim, then paid day job. Happy Saturday!

Oh how sweet it is to be loved by you, by you! Friday is here, the weather is sunny and warm, but not excessively so. We had a pretty good cloud burst rain yesterday that dropped an inch and a half of water in the farm for the first time in quite a while. My grass is still somewhat green, while lots of patches up north are straw coloured already. Which is odd because we had two, if not more rain showers while we were away last week, but it must not have been enough to revive the grass above Peterborough. It has been exceptionally hot as of late, so I don’t blame our yards for folding early, and calling it quits about a month ahead of schedule. Just don’t drop any cigarettes, or matches anywhere otherwise we will all have a pretty major fire to concern ourselves with. Be safe. Have more water on hand than you would usually think you’d need to tend to your camp/bon fires. They’ll take off on you in these conditions. Ask me how I know.

Garlic harvesting season is upon us, and my wife, and my eldest daughter are both dutifully digging up bulbs (if they can get them out of the ground that is). Weeks of drying might have left the patch as a hard packed cement block. Plus yesterday’s rains might have turned the top most layer into a quagmire. Double whammy! Sticky, slippery, and tough all in one weed filled tract of land. Fun times.

I think my week of notoriety has passed, as I am back to semi-regular numbers now. Not a bad thing. It takes quite some doing to get to 3,000 views (nearly) 11 to 15 views at a time, with an occasional count up into the thirties if I write something catchy, or more entertaining than usual. It’s a long slow climb, but we will get there eventually. If I sell one more penny worth of ads served I’ll get paid fifteen whole cents, the absolute minimum viable amount. Well that’s what it was when I signed up, but it’s probably a different number by now. Ha. Luckily I am diversified, and not looking to the ad dollars to keep us afloat! I think I’d have to frame a cheque worth fifteen cents, just because it is so ridiculous. I once got paid seventy two cents by Amazon for the one and only book sale I’ve made in the UK.

Speaking of which I have about 50 downloads for both books here, and more for the audio version of one specific story I did. Accent was muddled, and all over the place, but it was fun to try. Not to mention my reading of One Fish, Two Fish gets fairly regular downloads too. Which is nice, gotta do things for the little ones too you know.

Besides blog posts I haven’t had much desire to write anything creative in a really long time. I was trying with the idea of going back to a setting for a short I liked, only to realize I wrote that on June 1st, 2022! Here I thought I did that maybe last year. I’ve been slacking! Seems I have been out of practice for a really long time. Oh well. It comes in spits, and spurts. I’m sure I’ll catch the writing bug again. I do like short stories a great deal. I like interconnected shorts even more. Give it time.

I haven’t touched my resin model kit, nor my illustrated children’s book in a really long time either. I haven’t sculpted much since I started my Hell Boy months, and months ago. I scroll YouTube a lot. I should just do my own stuff instead. Like building in the revitalized wood shop. Or artistic things in my studio/office space. Instead I watch machining videos from Australia, and watch other people clean, and organize their shop spaces. It’s infrastructure week!

https://wp.me/p2tI8K-yg

Did a number of hours worth of driving yesterday, between Bancroft, Apsley, the cottage by the lake, and home. My hip is pretty stiff, and I feel very tired. Good to be home though. I am happy we drove in the evening instead of during the day today. Not much traffic, and all the bridge construction was pretty quiet, and easy going after eight pm last evening. Had a great night’s sleep in my own bed for a change. I currently have two, count them, two dehumidifiers going downstairs now that we are back. They fill up really quickly in all this soupy humidity, so they don’t run long when gone. I don’t keep one going positioned in or near a sink, because I fear it shifting, or the lines popping off spontaneously and flooding the entire lower floor. I’d rather just run two once home, then cut it down to one once the levels are under control, and it feels more manageable. A quirk of mine.

There must have been rain here while we were driving, but we missed every single drop of rain while driving. The storm clouds must have been pushing south west, because I could see clouds glowing in the western distances, but it was at no point directly overhead of us. We followed in its wake once we got as far south as highway seven. We totally forgot that the eastern stretch of the 407 was free now, and didn’t come as far down the 115 to get on it and haul ass home yesterday. Never even crossed my mind as an option. Even though we took it up (I wasn’t driving at that point, my wife was). I just feel like the time saved on the lateral travel across the highway is eaten up by having to go so much lower south to get on it from here, and the added trek back north to get to the junction we normally would use. We never really time things, and if you add in food stops or toilet breaks for the kids the whole timing issue dissolves anyway. We aren’t very scientific about it. Just vibes, and gut feelings at this point.

So what is next? Home now, so lawn care is a must, check the mail box, look around for any damage or build up from storms,and hazardous weather patterns the house encountered while we were away. There will be farm walks, and garlic bulbs to harvest, sort, and dry for sale at the inlaws to deal with if I’m not mistaken. I still have work on the books coming my way – eventually.

I feel tired, and groggy. I should go get some groceries before we get too far into our day. Hope you are all having a wonderfully adequate Thursday in July of the year 2025. I’m still seeing higher than average numbers from our of Germany, that’s four or five days in a row. You lot have really made my week! Thank you very much (danke shcön) . Much appreciated.

The Sodalite mine to be exact. Looking for quality specimens this go round, instead of the usual quantity. Our rooms are full of poor quality gem stones, and fancy rock samples. I think we should get just the best of what we find this time. The bugs out here are less than ideal. I hate mosquitoes.

Uncle Fred and Great Grandma have both passed fairly recently. Fred in 2024, and Great Grandma only a few weeks ago, but now we need to turn our attention towards the state of what was left behind. Their homes, belongings, cottages, and all of their hoarded waste. It is a non trivial matter just how much cardboard, and empty containers they both kept for no apparent reason. It is going to be a slow moving, and concerted effort to get the farm house, stone house, and middle cottage into a place where they are either usable, or need to have their interiors taken back to the studs, and exposed sub floor. Because, I mean, Yikes! Moulds, mildew, and musty odours abound. Going to need a respirator, goggles, gloves, boots, and a shower afterwards to tackle some of these issues. I think carpets, drywall, and ceilings as being unpleasant jobs, once you get the furniture, and general junk out of the living spaces. Yellow pages? Trash. Empty boxes, fire pit, clothes, donation boxes, busted tech, to the dump. It’ll be a long, protracted, and expensive exercise with not much upside. A dedicated week at each site might get you something you can then begin to clean for use. The cleaning step alone will be back breaking. So much bleach, and soapy water. Rinse & repeat. Walls, floors, tubs, toilets… Might be easier to yank those items, and replace them. Ugh.

Tuesday is here, so the kids have summer programming at the Library, and tomorrow they go back to flag football. A couple weeks later they start up swimming lessons again. Looking like a full, and busy summer ahead.

Three days in and I am still seeing a heightened response to my archives coming out of Germany. Which is cool. Problem with that initial jolt is that these newer sustained numbers seem weak, even though just four days ago they would have constituted the single best days this blog had even seen. The meteoric rise and fall sort of dampens the joy from the sustainable level where you end up afterwards. Glad it was just the one day, as that kind of attention could easily go to your head, and make you nutty! The glimpse was enough to make that readily apparent. Chasing the high of increasing numbers would taint your experience of anything that doesn’t meet or exceed those high water marks. Guess we know where all that depression comes from (or a portion of it at least). But what do I know, one day a fairly mid sized school’s worth of people checked out my blog, and now a fully rostered football team comes by. I hardly know if that which I speak (fame, or anything adjacent to it for that matter). Just an observation given how I have reacted internally given one sudden jump in numbers, followed by a level I would have previously jumped for joy at, now feels blasé. Didn’t take long. So I’m going to be very grateful for whatever numbers I get, as I have had many zeros, and ones, and will do my best to feel like normal once we get back to that level of anonymity again. I am more than the yearly viewership of my blog posts!

Happy Tuesday. Yesterday was Domestic Duties Monday wherein I cleaned, and did laundry for the family. It was not very satisfying. Life moves forward. Which reminds me, I have a bunch of paint, and old broken tech in the basement which I need to take to their appropriate dump sites. I need to look up the times, locations, and costs associated with both. I might get to know by way of cleaning up after Uncle Fred and Great Grandma anyway. We will see.

Ciao Bella!