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By Sadie, October 31, 2010 9:09 am

In honor of my favorite holiday, here’s a picture that I took a couple of weeks ago of my car at a vintage gas station. Nothing says “Halloween” like a vintage hearse.

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By Sadie, October 29, 2010 6:43 pm

If you’re laying out on the rocks late at night, you can sometimes see planes flying by at a really high altitude. Even on a silent night, they’re so high up that you usually can’t hear them. I always wondered where they were headed. Who knew that Parry Sound was under the direct flight path from Chicago to Paris. Thanks to the roommate for discovering this. The mystery is solved.

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By Sadie, October 27, 2010 3:39 pm

Now that I’m back in Ohio for the school year, my kayaking options have definitely changed. Unless I head up to Lake Erie, there’s no really big water here – especially not twenty feet from my front door. There’s some decent sized lakes in some of the state parks, but they are a bit of a drive to get to and they just don’t feel quite like Georgian Bay. Work and the iffy fall weather gets in the way of my kayaking too. The good news is that the river isn’t too far away, so I’ve started kayaking there. It’s different than the big water for sure, but it’s still fun. It also may not always be as picturesque in a nature-like way, but I’m appreciating urban kayaking nonetheless.

Under a nearby bridge:

Near one of the parks:

Even though this isn’t Georgian Bay, this is still gorgeous:

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By Sadie, October 25, 2010 1:33 am

One of our neighbors went over to Action Island and couple of weeks ago and noticed that we lost a huge tree pretty recently. I thought that the tree that hit the cottage two winters ago was pretty bad, but never mind. This one is HUGE!!! I am amazed that it didn’t do more damage. It seriously was less than a half inch away from taking out a whole corner of the cottage. Anyway, on to the pictures!

Our neighbor said that this roots structure was probably over 15 feet tall. Being that the tree was growing on a giant rock of an island, the roots never were able to dig in and hold on to the ground.

Covering the front door:

Who needs a front yard anyway?

The tree just grazed the corner beam. Our neighbor said that he probably wouldn’t even be able to get a piece of paper between the corner of the cottage and the tree – they are that close to each other.

Other than some broken screens, this is our only damage.

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By Sadie, October 23, 2010 2:47 pm

After having the summer of solar at Action Island, I am amazed how much of a difference solar powered lights make. We only have two of them still, but they definitely throw a lot more light than the old school kerosene lamps that I use in the rest of the house. Both help when you’re trying to see in the dark, but the solar definitely is brighter and it can be nice to just flick on a light switch and get light. Plus, the fact that we didn’t have to get a power line run out to the island for $100k is quite awesome. The sun is magic.

Here’s the brightly lit kitchen with the new solar light above the stove:

And for comparison, here is my bedroom all lit up with a kerosene lamp:

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By Sadie, October 22, 2010 8:37 am

I found this really weird stuff on our alder bushes on the beach. I figured it was best not to touch the furry mystery item, but I’m guessing that it was soft because the particles of it were moving around with the wind. Has anyone ever seen anything like this? I’m curious as to what it is.

EDIT:
Before posting this I decided to try to Google it. I wasn’t quite sure how to search for something that I didn’t know how exactly to describe, but after looking up “alder spores”, I solved the mystery. It turns out this is a group of wooly alder aphids! Yes, these are actually bugs! They are definitely some of the weirdest bugs that I have ever seen.

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By Sadie, October 20, 2010 6:36 pm

Now that I’ve announced the passing of the Pants, I have some catching up to do on this blog thing. There’s stuff from closing time that I still haven’t shared and other random news.

Between the time that I left Action Island in late August to go back to work and came back to close over Labor Day, the island saw a few storms. The weather was pretty terrible closing weekend with high winds and ridiculous waves. Most people’s docks went missing or became damaged. Our cottagers’ association dock on the mainland was more of a swimming platform than a dock, as we had to go through waist high water to even get to it and even the heavy duty anchoring chains on the municipal dock had broken. Though our dock looks bad, at least we didn’t have any of those issues.

It’s usually not this crooked…

and it’s normally flat. I have no idea how it got like this.

Here are some of the waves that I’m talking about.

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By Sadie, October 18, 2010 12:25 am

It’s been a long time since I wrote for IslandGirlTalk. As much as I hate saying it, I’ve somewhat been avoiding it because I really didn’t have good news to share. As some of you know, Pants had been really starting to show his age this summer. His arthritis had been getting worse and worse. We kept having to up his pain meds and his mobility wasn’t what it used to be at all. After Pants left the cottage the last week of August, he really took a turn for the worse. Even with his really heavy duty meds, he wasn’t able to get up on his own anymore or do stairs. We knew that his time was coming soon, but we weren’t sure when. Our vet said that Pants would tell us when it was time. When husbandman and I went to Action Island to close the cottage, Colleen and our roommate babysat the Pants. While we were gone, Pants began his hunger strike. It continued when we got back and we then knew it was time. Pants was telling us that it was time. A couple of days later, Pants passed away. He is missed – big time. We have all been trying to get back to normal in our lives, only to realize that we need to make a new normal. New normal doesn’t feel completely normal yet, but we are getting there. We still really miss him though.

Here’s Pants’ new resting place at our house. Our vet sent us Pants’ paw prints. We need to figure out something neat to do with them. Also, here’s my favorite Pants portrait of the summer.