Attack of the tent caterpillars

Yay, internet! Not that I don't have internet in Lost Bay, but I can't upload or download anything. So today, I'm posting my 4th entry about life in the woods in southern Ontario. Since I haven't written in a while, this entry covers the period from May 18th to June 7th. Today was my last day on the little farm, and I already miss it.

Here's a typical day on the farm:

The day starts at 7 am when the cat (Maeve) dramatically throws herself against my door and demands food. Across from my room is Emily and Cameron's bedroom, where the dog (Zelda) also sleeps. Maeve and Zelda tolerate each other, but Maeve would never throw herself against the bedroom door. So I have to get up and make breakfast for the cat, which she then only eats half of before going out to chase chipmunks in the garden. After that, I go to the horses, clean their stables, and call them to eat since they graze somewhere on the 50-hectare (!) property. Actually, I just shout their names and eventually they come galloping and run into the stable for their food. Emily then comes with the chicken feed and calls the chickens in such a high-pitched voice that it gives the dog a headache. The chickens run through the chicken tunnel and make joyful clucking sounds. I made a little video of that, but unfortunately, I can't upload it here. If you still want to see it, you can write to me and I'll send you a Dropbox link. It's very funny. Once all the animals are fed and happy, it's breakfast time for the other house residents. Then we put on our rubber boots and stomp around the garden. Meanwhile, Emily talks non-stop, even when I'm not next to her, and usually she's excited about how well everything is growing. Emily loves all animals and plants. Driving with Emily is not easy. I always double-check if I'm really buckled up because Emily has a car sticker that says 'I brake for turtles' and she means it. Thanks to one of these emergency stops, we saved this snapper: 

After we've planted carrots, potatoes, and sauerkraut, and done about a thousand other things, it's lunchtime. After lunch, we have a little break, and then I usually go into the woods for 1-2 hours and get bitten by mosquitoes. I already have 11 bites on my left hand and 42 on my right leg, let's not even talk about the other leg and arms... In addition to that, I do conservation work and remove an invasive plant called 'Garlic Mustard,' which doesn't smell or look like garlic or mustard. Our clever European ancestors thought it would be great to have really good pesto again, so they introduced this plant for that purpose. However, they didn't consider that this damn plant would spread like crazy, absorb nutrients from the soil, prevent other plants from growing, and not be particularly tasty to any animal. So, if you ever come to Canada or are already here, please remove it!

While I sit in the forest and pull out plants, I pass the time with the best audiobook ever recorded. It's called 'Last Chance to See' by Douglas Adams, narrated by Marieke and Nils. In this book, Douglas Adams (yes, the one who wrote 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy') and the zoologist Mark (something?) travel to the most remote places in the world to search for species on the verge of extinction. It sounds sad at first, and it is. Fortunately, they usually find these animals, and Douglas Adams' writing style is, as always, amusing and self-deprecating. But that's not the best part about this audiobook. The fantastic thing about it is that Marieke and Nils personally recorded it for me, so I often burst out laughing while sitting in the forest pulling out plants. Here's an excerpt: Marieke is reading to me about how Adams and Mark search for the last 22 white rhinos in Uganda, and Adams writes that the largest rhino horn ever measured was supposedly 1.80 meters long. Marieke's comment afterwards: 'Wow, Lea, 1.80 meters, that's taller than you!' Then there's a pause and laughter in the background. I want to thank Marieke and Nils for the best audiobook I've ever listened to, which even disses me. ❤️ Not to forget the bonus material: burps! I love it!

Where was I? Oh right, the afternoon. When I finish pulling out plants, I enjoy my well-deserved free time, which in recent weeks has consisted of swimming in the lake. Yes, swimming in May. I don't even do that at home so early. Here's proof for everyone who said to me, 'Canada? Won't it be too cold for you?'

After that, we have dinner, and before or after that, all the animals are fed again, eggs are collected, and asparagus is picked.
I usually read in the evenings, but by half past ten at the latest, my eyes start to close.
That was a day in my life in paradise.

Now let's talk about irregular days when Emily has plans in the evening or something else comes up. Here's the chronological order: On Sunday (May 20th), we were invited to Alvin and James' place. It was Sunday because the next day was a public holiday, Queen Victoria's birthday, and the retirees celebrated from Sunday to Monday. Hehe. I haven't talked to anyone under 60 in so long that it's almost normal for me that everywhere we go, everyone has gray or white hair, and I've even started to adapt: last week, I had a stiff neck, this week, a sore throat. There's always something to talk about. Here's the invitation to the celebration that I received:

Alvin and James didn't buy a cottage like everyone else here in Canada, they bought an old church and converted it into an oversized living room. The kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom are in the old rectory behind it.

You can see James on the left and Alvyn on the right at the back.

The party was great, and I had a long conversation with the son of an 'enemy alien.' This is the name given to German scientists who were kidnapped to the USA during World War II. His father was a rocket scientist, and he himself also worked in that field for some time. His German was very good, but peppered with funny old-fashioned words. He is very modest about his family history, but his wife is not. She repeatedly assured me of how much she loves Germans, until I eventually apologized to look at Alvin's sweater photo album. Alvin knitted a sweater and wanted to prove to his 14-year-old nephew that the sweater is totally cool and doesn't stand out. So he made a whole photo album with pictures of the sweater in various places, clearly showing how much it stands out: 

While we were having dinner, Emily picked up a new woofer. Yeah, someone under 60! Wohoo. May is 20 and comes from Hamburg... Well, at least now I have someone to swim and canoe with :) I'm now May's dictionary when she can't remember English words, and she helps me pick garlic mustard. Now we can both complain about the mosquitoes and the caterpillar rain. In Canada, we have the so-called 'tent caterpillars.' They also exist in Europe, but I haven't seen them yet. At first, you think caterpillars are cute, but you don't think that anymore when they're everywhere. Really everywhere. They spin these big nests where they cuddle together when it's cold, and when it's warm, they start eating the trees bare.

You can see how all the leaves are missing from the surrounding branches.

When they can't find anything else to eat on the tree, they simply drop to the ground, and that's why it's constantly raining caterpillars. When we're done picking plants, we pick the caterpillars off each other's clothes and hair.
A few days ago, I even saw a snake with caterpillars crawling on it, and the snake didn't care. May found one in her bed when she woke up.

'Everywhere' is not an exaggeration! Now I prefer to see them like this:

On the 21st, there was the old ladies' book club, and me. A friend of Emily's chose the book (Lullabies for Little Criminals) and prepared a little presentation about it. I was really looking forward to the discussion when 3! out of the 9 attendees said they hadn't read the book because it was too heavy for them. It's about the life of a 12-year-old girl growing up in Montreal with her 26-year-old heroin-addicted father. One of them even brought another book by the same author and told us about it instead?! Well, the discussion with those who had read the book was still pretty good, and in the end, several old ladies invited me to their cottages. So, I have a date next Monday. Yeah. On Wednesday, I got to go to the choir again.

This time it was dress rehearsal because there's a concert on Sunday. Many people asked if I would also sing at the concert. Haha. Better not, after only 2 rehearsals, I can't sing a complete Gershwin medley yet. On Saturday, May and I had the day off and went canoeing on 'our' lake.

On Sunday, there was the concert, and everyone was running around the house trying to find things that were clean and suitable for a concert. The concert was great and I really enjoyed it. I even recorded a few pieces and complimented the old ladies on their glittery dresses. On Monday, I was invited to Chris and Carol's (from the book club) place and got to see their castle-like estate. The view!

Carol was a bit embarrassed about the house tour because, I mean, who needs three living rooms?! Well, Chris is an avid canoeist and invited me to go canoeing in Lost Bay on Wednesday. They also call the lake Gananoque Lake because it has an inlet to the Gananoque River. Canoeing was very nice. Chris is one of those people who doesn't talk unless you ask him something. So I asked a lot. For example, which turtles those were: 

Whether it's always this quiet here (we only saw one other boat). Whether there are loons here too (birds that sound like wolves, there's a recording in the Dropbox), and whether he can tell me more about the Canadian Shield even though Cameron talks about it every other day, and about the diversity in southern Ontario, where the four different plant species from all four directions meet.
On Thursday, we cleaned the little house by the lake because nature conservationists are coming this weekend to count turtles. Unfortunately, all four turtle species found in the wetlands in Ontario are endangered, especially because of roads. The turtles like to lay their eggs in loose soil, such as the gravel at the sides of roads. Eggs are often dug up by foxes or raccoons, and of all the eggs a snapper turtle lays in 45 years, only one egg survives to become an adult turtle.

This post is getting endless. I hope you can still read it.
There are many other amphibians besides the turtles, such as snakes, frogs, and lizards. Beavers are very important for these animals because they hibernate in the drained areas created by the beavers' dams. There's a road near us that crosses such an area, and because the beavers built the dam directly in the pipe under the road, the road was flooded. The authorities wanted to remove the dam, but it was winter and the flooding would have killed all the amphibians on the dry side. This included an estimated 4,000 turtles. So the authorities had to leave the dam and find another way to remove the water. But the mayor said the dam had to be removed in the spring because the danger to the road still existed. That's why Emily and Cameron, who are part of a nature conservation organization themselves, tried to find a solution with neighbors and the authorities. The dam was removed in the spring, but Cameron, after this discussion, built a new dam himself using wooden posts, mud, and brush for 7 weeks. The dam had to be further away from the road than the old one. Every day, Cameron wore his fishing pants and built a beaver dam while the mayor occasionally drove by and shook his head. After 7 weeks, Cameron was done, but the dam had holes in it, and then the beavers took over Cameron's dam and showed him how it's done properly :D

After this little detour, let's talk about my 10 km hike in Charleston Lake Park last Sunday. I really enjoyed the hike because I didn't meet anyone else while hiking, except for 3 funny Canadians when I took a break. One of them was a bit short and asked questions, and he dried his T-shirt over an open fire?! The second one told stories all the time, for example that he doesn't like plain water and only drinks soft drinks because of that, and he showed me with a grin that he's missing his two front teeth. The third one didn't say anything and ignored me. They invited me to walk with them, but I politely declined. 

I thought I would see all the animals in the area while hiking, but the only thing I saw were a bunch of chipmunks fighting. Oh, and of course, mosquitoes. I don't even know how many times I sprayed myself with mosquito repellent. But as soon as I stopped, I was immediately surrounded by a cloud of mosquitoes. Those were very quick 10 km. Most of the animals I actually saw in Emily's garden. Here's a selection: 

Tuesday evening, we went to a flamenco concert by Emily's English student Tony. Tony is a guitar teacher in Ottawa and originally from Syria. It was a really good concert, and you could tell that Tony was very happy about his English teacher coming to visit him. He mainly sang in Spanish. 

That and much more is what I've experienced, heard, and seen in the last 3 weeks. There's still a lot more, and I always welcome questions and calls. So if anyone wants to see some of the videos or hear the story of Emily's legendary flamingo parties, feel free to call me :)

See you soon
Lea

*Bonus material*