I am still slowly dealing with debris from long-ago storms Fiona and Dorian. Most of the downed trees, hundreds of them on the 23 acres we occupy, will never be “cleaned up”. It’s too big of a job for me, the tangle of toppled 60-year-old spruce trees impenetrable in many places. I did a walk a couple of hundred feet from our house the other day and had to haul myself over trees piled four or five feet high, a brief panic of wondering if I was suddenly too old for such exertions followed by the relief that I am still quite physically strong.
Visitors comment on the destruction, on the fire hazard I’m allowing to remain. Yes, it’s true, it is all a fire hazard, but living in a forest full of conifers is a fire hazard anyway, dead or alive, so I’m used to it, and as a full-time caregiver I can’t do much more about it than I have. There are endless opportunities to worry about risks real and imagined, as I was reminded of at an emergency measures training I took many years ago.
We were to list what possible disasters could befall our municipalities, and we ticked off all types of natural disasters and possible human-caused chaos. The instructor, knowing exactly where my house is, said, “What about you, Thelma, what’s overhead all the time where you live?” Fuel-filled jets heading from North America to Europe, that’s what, and they could crash in Portage, he said, causing the western end of PEI to be cut off and straining the resources of our local emergency crews to deal with a disaster of such magnitude. Wide-eyed, we nervously laughed at this, thinking it so unlikely, but internally my younger self, who listened to the planes flying overhead on summer nights in our uninsulated cottage, wondering if some of them might be Russian missiles headed to the US, didn’t think it so far-fetched.
So I pick away at the fire hazard in the forest, my only real goal to reestablish walking paths that were there before Dorian in 2019 or, more likely, make new paths where an easier way through is evident. There is a lot to be said for taking the easy way, especially in nature. Nature just wants us to leave it alone to do its thing, to recognize that constantly trying to bend and shape it to our needs is futile and counterproductive. When you get comfortable with the mess of nature, less anxious to constantly clean everything up, the mess of life becomes more bearable. My Mary Oliver poem this morning certainly agrees:
BACKYARD I had not time to haul out all the dead stuff so it hung, limp or dry, wherever the wind swung it
over or down or across. All summer it stayed that way, untrimmed, and thickened. The paths grew damp and uncomfortable and mossy until nobody could get through but a mouse or a
shadow. Blackberries, ferns, leaves, litter totally without direction management supervision. The birds loved it.
I once read about an exercise where you imagine an object you desire or cherish being broken so your attachment to it isn’t so strong that you are disappointed if it breaks; of course it is broken, it was always broken, you will sagely say when your new car gets a ding in a parking lot. Sounds Buddhist, but I’ve read so much wooology it could be from just about any practice but, yes, probably Buddhist.
I have just started my third 10-year journal. I was sorry to say goodbye to the second one from Because Time Flies as it had become a powerful tool for recording things that matter to me, but the fellow who published it seems to have disappeared.
So I bought a fancy Midori one instead, smaller and beautifully designed, and I know I will make it work for me. I don’t have lovely penmanship, so this isn’t an Instagrammable pursuit. It’s a lovely book, but I’ll be using it in a utilitarian fashion, and that’s ok.
When I sat down this morning to record the events of yesterday, I automatically started writing on the page opposite yesterday’s entry, as I had for the past 10 years with the other larger book that had room for 10 years of each date per page. But this is a smaller book, and the two-page spread is for one date, so I had entered the minutiae of January 2, 2025 in January 1, 2030’s spot.
I hadn’t imagined this lovely Japanese book as already broken, but now it was, and I was happy to have that behind me, and continued on.
On one of my first jaunts as I was learning to ride and getting ready to go for my motorcycle licence in 2006, I met a couple of motorcycles. As they passed, they put their left hands out and down, index and middle finger pointing outwards in a sort of casual peace sign. I hadn’t heard of the motorcycle wave, so wasn’t ready to respond, and they whizzed by without any acknowledgement from me. They were on chonky Honda Gold Wings and I was on my teeny, slow 49cc Yamaha scooter, so I just barely counted as a biker, but I had suddenly joined a club I hadn’t known existed.
The next time I met a motorcycle, I was ready and stuck my gloved hand out, receiving the low-rider’s salute in return. I was tickled to be considered a biker, even by someone with scary looking patches on their jacket!
I drove my scooter every fine day there wasn’t snow on the ground for four years while I worked at my neighbour’s dairy farm. After milking cows on a hot, humid summer evening, there was nothing nicer than peeling off my smelly overalls and rubber boots and scooting home, the wind cooling me off immediately, my sweaty t-shirt billowing from my back.
My scooter is gone, one of the many things I have put aside, for now, as a full-time caregiver (and it had a filthy 2-stroke engine, so it really wasn’t an environmentally responsible mode of transportation no matter how little gas it used). I can’t afford to dump a scooter and end up with an injury, because my mother needs me to be well and fully functioning. I’ve never been a reckless kind of person, so my risk aversion is not a new thing, but I’m now incredibly careful on stairs and ladders, on ice, on wet surfaces.
Early this morning I had the occasion to take another slow drive, 20 minutes down the road, on my little Kubota tractor, to help a friend with a landscaping project. There’s no speedometer on my tractor, so I’m not sure how fast I was going, but it’s certainly not a zippy rig. I enjoyed the slow ride, even with the diesel fumes (I will be glad to someday trade in for an electric tractor).
Neighbours waved from their yards as I passed, as did people in cars and other tractors. The smell of the briny Foxley River gave way to the pong of freshly-spread manure, then further along came the odour of sweet silage that had just been cut. White phlox that had long ago escaped from a flower garden nodded at me from a ditch, their strong lilac scent overwhelming the diesel, and that’s quite a feat.
I crossed from Foxley River to the next community, Freeland, where my mother was born and raised, where my parents had a store with our house next to it, the community where seven generations (and counting) of our family have lived. As I reached our old store, our former neighbour was out for her morning walk, and she laughed when I told her where I was headed and what my plans were. I passed the yard where my great-grandparent’s house had stood for over 125 years until it was torn down last fall. My cousin is going to have a big barn built there to hold his fishing gear. The grass is growing well over the old house site, and they have planted fruit trees in memory of our ancestors.
A couple of hours of digging and levelling and the uprooting of a couple of rotten stumps (one with a wasp nest – yikes!) and I was tootling home again. Next to the Anglican cemetery where my namesake grandmother Thelma (Hutchinson) Hardy has rested since 1927, nestled next to many other relatives, I admired the bumper crop of choke cherries growing on the side of the road in this extraordinarily good growing year.
Choke cherries
I stopped to take a photo of one of my favourite trees, a round white birch on the edge of a field, with a couple of ancient linden trees far in the background that were said to have been grown from cuttings brought from Ireland in the 1830s.
The solitary white
I’ve made so many trips along this road in my 57 years, in every kind of conveyance: car, truck, tractor, horse and sleigh, bicycle, scooter, snowmobile, school bus. I still see something new on each trip, especially a slow one. I was content and calm and exactly where I was supposed to be, moving slowly and part of everything I saw.
Our house is hidden far in the woods on the far side of Foxley River.
Like many on PEI have already done, we are having a heat pump installed next week. My mother has a 900 square foot apartment at the end of our house, and we want the unit for the air conditioning feature in the summer. It’s something we’ve resisted, mostly because we’ve never needed air conditioning here in the past and it seemed like an environmentally-unfriendly extravagance, but the heat and humidity we experience regularly in the summer now takes its toll on her at age 101 and it’s time to give in.
I was hoping the installation would have been done earlier in the year, but backordered units and a busy installer (I have learned to beware the tradesperson who is quickly available!) delayed things, so I hauled out a portable air conditioning unit today to give my mother some comfort in this latest heat wave.
I bought the a/c unit a year ago when my mother started to feel unwell during another heat wave (there are so many now). In my haste to help her to feel better, I didn’t do much research before buying and then realised when I got the unit home that the crank-out casement windows we have were a problem as the insert to hook the exhaust hose to the window were made for hung or sliding windows only. There are lots of janky looking contraptions available online to solve this problem, but I needed some way to hook it up quickly.
My first attempt, a panicked corrugated-cardboard/dollar-store-duct-tape affair, collapsed in the middle of the night and allowed swarms of insects into her bathroom, so I searched for a better solution. I found a few hacks using a piece of plexiglass to fit the window opening and cutting a hole for the hose, but I know from experience that plexiglass can be tricky to cut, especially a circle, and it’s expensive to experiment on, so that was out.
Then I thought of corrugated plastic sheets, the same stuff that is used for signs and packaging. The closest place that had any in stock was Home Depot in Charlottetown, so I ordered for pickup two of the thickest pieces they had (two in case I screwed up the first one!) and some good quality duct tape. I bundled my mother into the car for the 200 km roundtrip to give her both an outing and the benefit of the a/c in the car, a nice salesperson brought the goods out to us, and we boomeranged home so I could hack away.
A/C hackorama 2023
I was surprised by how well my setup worked last summer. It isn’t a pretty solution, but was sturdy, relatively inexpensive and reusable. Most importantly, my mother felt better as the humidity in her apartment decreased.
Here are my tips if you find yourself in the same casement window conundrum:
Cut the plastic sheet a couple of millimetres larger than your window opening. You can pare it down to make it fit tightly, but you can’t add onto it if it’s too small, and unless you have perfect measuring and cutting skills, the plastic is tricky to cut exactly straight, and windows aren’t always perfectly straight either.
Once I had the plastic sheet fitted snugly in the window, I removed it and used the insert as a template to draw a hole at the bottom for the duct to vent through. The plastic is easy to cut, but take your time and use the smallest knife blade you have, like a #2 exacto.
I put the plastic sheet back in the window and then placed the window insert in front, and the hose hooked to that. At first I thought I could just insert the hose to the plastic sheet, but the hose is heavy and I feared the weight of it could pull the sheet away from the window. There was no way to keep the loosely-fitting insert in place without taping it to the window frame on the right side of my setup and the plastic sheet on the left, so that’s what I did.
As added support, I used a spring-loaded curtain rod to add additional support to keep the plastic sheet in place as it bowed out a bit in the heat. If I had been able to get thicker plastic, this might not have been necessary, and I’m starting this year without putting it up.
Although the plastic sheet was tight enough to stay in place on its own, I finished the setup by running duct tape around the entire window to both keep the sheet and insert in place and keep insects out.
The duct tape I used was made by 3M and though it was sticky enough to stay on all summer, it came off quite cleanly, with only a bit of cleanup. No insects came in, which is a miracle in our mosquito-filled location. Good quality duct tape is worth the extra money.
It took me an hour or so to get this fitted for the first time last year, but this year I had everything up and running in about 10 minutes.
I am unhappy we need air conditioning at all, and am conflicted by having to use precious resources such as electricity and plastics and metals in this way. It seems a step backward, and I’m thinking what I can do to make up for this. The heat pump is supposed to be more efficient to run than the portable air conditioner, and will also provide heat in colder months that will make us less dependent on heating oil. Swings and roundabouts.
A total solar eclipse last month and a spectacular aurora borealis show on the night of May 10th have both luckily occurred during that sweet spot on PEI when the snow has disappeared but the biting insects haven’t yet emerged, when being outside is a pleasure.
I have seen the aurora on the northern horizon before, but between 11pm and midnight they danced and flickered dimly overhead and all around, something I’ve never experienced. We don’t live in a completely dark-sky environment, as there are a few yard and street lights dotted around, and the glow from the lights in the town of Alberton to the north can sometimes be detected, but it’s pretty close, and I got some nice photos.
To the south
To the north
It was only 4C on Friday night and I hadn’t dressed appropriately for the cold, damp weather, but I stretched out on the grass anyway to watch the show. Last night I was better prepared for another cool night, donning long underwear, heavy sweater, gloves, hat, winter boots and splash pants.
Alas, the northern lights stayed undetectable except in long exposure photos, just a glow on the horizon. So my careful preparation wouldn’t totally have been in vain, I recruited Steven to join me in a gimmicky shot to commemorate our month of celestial awe, but now looking at it, I think it also captured how we have moved through our life together over these past 25 years: arm in arm, heads up, finding each other in an infinite and beautiful universe, walking through the darkness toward the light.
The audio that accompanies this article in The Guardian broke my heart, and I’m still thinking about it, especially when I hear a new seasonal visitor has returned to nest in the forest near our house. I’m not sure why we humans are continuing to ignore warnings that we have very little time to change how we live to ensure future generations of humans and other species can have a livable planet.
I think part of the problem is that the people who wield the most power in the world live in large cities. Some of them possibly have country homes as well, but they do not have a healthy relationship with nature and therefore don’t care about it beyond what it can give them; they try to control it, bend it to their will, extract from the natural world things that will make them more and more money. It is difficult to care about what you can’t see.
When I lived for a brief time in London in the mid-80s, I knew a young woman who had just moved to the UK from the Cayman Islands. Maria and I both shared much of the excitement and challenges of coming from a small place and living in a massive city, but she had a physical challenge I didn’t have: she was often uncomfortable because she had never worn shoes for any long period of time. She grew up walking on bare feet in sand, not because they were poor, because they weren’t, but because they didn’t need shoes. She found the cobbles and pavement of London hard and noisy, wearing shoes and socks constricting.
She said couldn’t get the sense of the land, couldn’t feel a part of the place without her feet in the sand, in the soil. She was homesick in part because she missed her family, but just as much because of the loss of a connection to the land and the freedom of living so closely with the natural world. To be honest, I didn’t know what she was talking about. Who wanted to live in a backwards rural setting any more? I certainly didn’t. Give me history and theatre and art and Oxford Street and pubs and life!
I lost touch with Maria, but I would bet she returned to her home, and so did I.
I just got back from feeding the hens their supper. When I stepped outside, there it was: a weird smell, like lard, faint but clear. There is no obvious source for this, no nearby rendering plant, food processing or food disposal. I only remember smelling it a few times in my life, always faint, always brief.
This happened at about 4:00 pm. The temperature was +2C and the barometric pressure falling. There was a strong wind from the east, which the old timers always said was where the rain came from, and there is indeed rain and snow forecast for this evening. We had 27 cm of snow fall four days ago on what had been almost bare ground. The river is still completely frozen over.
I’m putting this here so the next time I smell that strange odour I can check to see if it is under similar conditions. I realise I may have just tipped over into “old timer predicts the weather” category.
Our internet connection was upgraded from dial-up to 1.5 Mbps at the very end of 2009, and we could finally stream audio and video. I immediately moved my radio listening habit from CBC to BBC, mostly Radio 4 and Radio 2.
I was doing the dishes at the kitchen sink one night in January 2010, listening to a BBC Radio 2 music show. The host was reading out messages from listeners across the UK, and it was thrilling magic to be able to hear this live from so far away.
I looked at the window in front of me, my own reflection staring back in the black window, blurry in the steamed-up window. There are no outside lights or houses close enough to see, so at night there is only inky darkness beyond.
For a few seconds, I was the me who had stayed in England, who never returned to Canada after I lived in London for a while in the mid-1980s. That version of me wasn’t any clearer than that, just as murky and dark as the view out that nighttime window, but she was there, somewhere in England, doing the dishes, listening to the BBC. And then she was gone, and I was where I was.
It wasn’t a sad or happy feeling, more a neutral “hello, you” acknowledgment of the choice I had made to return to Canada, the alternative path I hadn’t taken. I went on to move many more times around Canada, making new friends, living new lives, looking out new windows, until now finding myself back exactly where I started.
The “what if” game is almost always a dangerous and pointless pursuit, and I used to do it a lot. If I edge toward it now, I try to look back and see my younger self moving through the world, equipped only with the information I had at the time, and marvel that I made as many good decisions as I did. I have become kinder to past me than I used to be, and that is freeing.
Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past.
(Origin of quote unclear, and attributed to nearly everyone on the internet.)
I’ve spent the past few days immersed in the history of Cedar Lodge, the log cabin that sits next to our house. The man who had it built, Senator Creelman MacArthur, marked the grand opening 90 years ago today with a big party.
Someone put the date on the outhouse wall!
Almost everything I’ve been reading, including the newspaper report of the opening I’ll add to this post, talked almost exclusively about men: the various owners of the land, those who built the cabin, those who participated in the opening day event.
To be fair, a rustic log cabin designed to be a hunting and fishing lodge had manliness baked into it. I’m not sure what furnishings and decorations were in Cedar Lodge on August 30, 1933, but when my parents acquired it there was a stuffed moose and deer head leering down from the wall, rifles and fishing rods on racks in the corner. The pine floor was pretty beaten up by the time I came along 33 years later, so it probably had become a fair target to spit tobacco juice on during the years it was rented out to hunters and fishers. The huge stone fireplace was a perfect spot to gather around and tell tall tales, kerosene or gas lamps pushing out moody, flickering light. A man cave for men in flannel and rubber boots and wool caps.
The Cedar Lodge grand opening activities had been scheduled to kick off at 3 pm with the ladies from nearby St. Peter’s Anglican church catering a tea. Had my mother’s mother, Thelma Hardy, lived a few more years, she would have been one of those ladies, and no doubt my 11-year-old mother, Vivian, would have been there, but that wasn’t to be.
So at about a quarter to three this afternoon, my mother and I talked what would have been going on in the kitchen 90 years ago. We imagined the efficient bustle of the women who would be pumping water, stoking the wood burning range, moving dishes and setting up tables. We guessed they served sandwiches and sweets, rather than a meal, but can’t really know.
One thing I would bet money on is that just before 3:00 there would have been a pause in the preparations. A big pot or urn, filled to the brim with the sweet water that came out of the hand-dug well, would have been the first thing placed on the stove when the women had arrived and started the fire in the stove. Once boiled, it would have received a homemade cotton bag filled with loose black tea.
When it had steeped for a while, one of the women would have ladled a bit of tea into a china cup, and the women would have stopped what they were doing and gathered around to look in the cup.
Is it too weak? Too strong? Opinions would be offered, and if it looked okay, a dash of milk would have been added and the cup reexamined to see how the brew held up to the milk. If thought to be the right colour, the woman holding the cup would have had a sip, declare it to be fine, and the tea bags promptly pulled from the pot.
How can I be certain of this one detail, as sure as if I’d been sitting in the corner watching this take place? Because every church supper, tea or reception I’ve ever helped with in my 56 years has had the same ritual. It is a holy rite, an echo of the eucharist, the priestess drinking the remaining tea with a tip of her head, washing the cup, wiping it dry to use for the main event.
So hooray for Cedar Lodge, and the men who built it. My family have enjoyed taking care of this unique structure for 67 years, and have made so many lovely memories sheltered within its cosy walls. I’m in it now, typing by candlelight, as heavy rain pours loudly onto the uninsulated roof while the thunder roars.
And hooray for the unnamed women who fed the crowd that day, who were quietly in the kitchen performing secret, holy rites.
Three of our friends doing dishes after a party in the Cedar Lodge kitchen, 1965
From The Charlottetown Guardian September 7, 1933, page 2
The historical old home of Hon. James Warburton at Freeland, Lot 11, was the scene of a happy gathering on Wednesday afternoon and evening for the opening of Senator Creelman MacArthur’s new Lodge.
This beautiful estate once the scene of great activity in the old shipping days once more rang with the laughter of a happy care free throng enjoying the many pleasures provided by the Senator.
In the old days when ships would be launched at the very spot where the Senator has his Lodge, no doubt the villagers enjoyed themselves in just such a fashion.
One old gentleman, Mr. Thomas L. Murphy, recalled that on one occasion, when Charles McKinnon, a large shipbuilder, was in such a hurry to get a ship named Silver finished and ready for its ocean voyage to the old country, that he had her full rigged on land and when the ice broke and she was launched, she proved to be top heavy and toppled over and about a hundred people were nearly drowned. This was a three masted schooner, one of many schooners built at Foxley River in those days, rigged on sea and loaded with produce for England. Upon their arrival in the old country they were sold. Many old tales were told, by the old inhabitants of the district, of the activities in those days. The old store kept by Michael Kilbride in 1843, which was later moved down the ice to John Yeo’s place at Port Hill, and which is still standing in the yard of Roy Ing’s, was mentioned. Records in the books of the store have the names of many of the first settlers of that vicinity. Among the records is an account of articles purchased for the Officers Mess of the Rifle Brigade of P.E.I. amounting to £4, 7. 4 1-2.
Mrs. William Palmer, daughter of Alexander McKay who ran the mill on the Warburton estate, is the only person now living who was born on the estate. She told how when a little girl she would sit on the shore and herd the cattle for her father.
This old place presented a pretty scene at twilight with the sun setting over the water and the Lodge, decorated with spruce and fir, lit up with many coloured lanterns.
At seven o’clock a dance officially opened the lodge and the visitors to the strains of a fox trot enjoyed the hospitality of Senator McArthur and his daughters, who extended a cordial greeting to all. During the afternoon the visitors strolled about enjoying and admiring the beautiful scenery. Many took advantage of the boats placed at their disposal, and went for a sail on the river.
The ladies of St. Peter’s Anglican Church served tea on the grounds.
After the opening dance at seven, Mr. James McLean, of Freeland, the Senator’s right hand man, called for speeches.
Among those speaking was Mrs. Oscar W. McCallum, of Saskatoon, daughter of the late Donald Nicholson of Charlottetown, who said it was a great pleasure for her to be asked to speak at this historical place, one of the beauty spots of her native land.
Other speakers were Mr. Herman Bryan, former owner of the property; Mr. A.. E. McLean, MP.; Mr. A. J. Matheson, O’Leary; Judge Inman, Judge of the County Court of Prince County; Mr. J. F. Arnett, Summerside; Mr. A. A. Ramsay, a native of Freeland; Mr. Reginal Bell of Charlottetown, and Mr. Thomas L. Murphy of Freeland.
All spoke of the generosity of Senator McArthur, who had shown a very cosmopolitan spirit in throwing open their lovely grounds to the public; which in these times of depression is the right example to set, to any one who has the means and opportunity to do so.
Senator McArthur in response to the three cheers and tiger that went up from the crowd when he came forward, said that he had purchased the property for the benefit of the community and not for any commercial gain.
He intended to stock the waters with trout so that trout fishing could once more be enjoyed as in days gone by.
The grounds would be at the disposal of any community or church of any denomination to hold picnics and social gathering at any time. He wanted all his neighbours in Freeland to feel that they could come and enjoy the quiet walks and bathe or dig clams whenever they chose, and he added, that he especially wanted the mothers and children to come and spend many happy afternoons in his spacious grounds.
This concluded the formal part of the program.
A huge bonfire was now set on fire which lighted up the country side for miles around.
The crowd then gave themselves up to the entertainment of the evening and dancing in the lodge was in full swing.
About 11 o’clock when the harvest moon was shining over the waters, another bonfire built like a haystack in the stream was set going and made a never to be forgotten sight. The dancers paused as if fascinated, the moon on the water with the reflection from the fire lighting up the woods in the background, making an enchanting scene. The merriment was kept up until quite late and closed with singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”
Besides the people of the surrounding districts, friends from Charlottetown and Summerside were among the visitors. —S.
Sunset view on the shore next to Cedar Lodge, August 28, 2023
Flapping sounds coming from a chimney usually means trouble for both the flapper and the homeowner. I heard a faint rustling noise near our fireplace two days ago, but it seemed to stop. Yesterday I heard it again, and decided to investigate.
A starling once came down the chimney, but then thankfully managed to get out on its own. A pair of them had been scouting out a nearby maple tree as a nesting spot, but I hadn’t seen them in a couple of days, so I guessed that might be our visitor.
First I hung an old bed sheet from the mantel to cover the fireplace opening because our two indoor cats would be of little help if a bird started flying around inside the house. There is a draft stopper in the fireplace to help make it less of an energy suck, so I removed that and then unscrewed the damper. It only opened a small way, and there was more fluttering, but no vocalization. I put a light in the fireplace and walked away for a while.
I returned a few minutes later and looked up inside. I could see a small beak, a rounded beak, unlike pointy song bird beaks. Could it be a small duck? A SMALL DUCK?!
The little duck seemed to be breathing hard, almost sighing, so I didn’t want to crank the damper more to see if I could open it enough to pull the duck out. The damper would have to be removed, though I had no idea if that was possible.
Turns out disassembling a screw-type damper is a pretty simple operation, with the most difficult part getting a large cotter pin unbent and removed. After I got the door free, a lot of dirt and bits of mortar and some fresh moss (for the duck nest, I assume) came raining down on me. My headlamp and gloves were quickly joined by a face mask and goggles as I tried to figure out how to get the door out of the way to grab the duck. I could now see her white stomach and tiny little webbed feet. She was wedged in.
Knowing a duck wouldn’t be able to fly much in the house, I took the sheet down and out of the way. She moved to one side of the chimney and I was able to turn the door enough to bring it down, and the duck dropped out. Before I could grab her, she took off, flying toward a window. She stopped, flew a bit further and landed on the kitchen counter. I scooped her up, quickly took her outside and she flew into the woods. I didn’t even get a photo as I just wanted her out of the house. Avian influenza is a possibility with wild birds, especially waterfowl, so I didn’t want to hang out with her.
Lots of sanitizing and bagging up of debris followed. Before reassembling the damper, I gave the opening a really good vacuuming to remove all the gritty bits, put the door back, attached the the worm gear and damper rod. It worked!
Our fireplace was a dud from the start, always producing slow, smoky fires. I asked the mason back soon after the house was built to check it out, but he said it must be the wood, must we the way we were making the fires, must be the air exchange unit, the house being too tight, and on and on. We had a fireplace and wood stove in our old cottage and I was pretty good at setting and lighting a fire, so felt confident I knew what I was doing. After a few messy and unsuccessful attempts at a crackling fire, it has mostly just sat unused.
As I tested the damper, I was surprised to find it now opens all the way where it used to only open about half way. So the smoky fires probably weren’t due to my lack of skill or wet wood or the house after all. It was poor workmanship. I think it just needed to be cleaned and the rod correctly aligned. Thanks to the wayward duck, we might be able to have proper fires!
If you haven’t seen wood ducklings jumping from their tree-cavity nest to the ground, search for a video. It’s pretty cute. Ducks are easily my favourite birds, but I never want to see one in my chimney ever again.
