Just thought I would quickly add this one to the blog. From our recent trip to England and Scotland, it’s a cottage listed in Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds.
This one is not a waterfront cottage, but it is 17th century stone, has a thatched roof and is beautiful to look at.
Catharine checking out a property – even on holidays!
It’s £1,365,000, that’s approx $2,100,000.
It is surprisingly poor from an energy efficiency standpoint, coming in at 2nd from the bottom on the scale used in the UK; it isn’t broken down but I suspect that the thatch is equally as poor as the stone.
The circa 1600 exposed beams/rafters are rather unusual by Muskoka standards. See below…
Up to Tasso Lake off Limberlost Rd. for a home (cottage) inspection early this morning.
We had 12 degrees C yesterday, back to a more seasonal -12 degrees C tonight. But have a look at how beautiful Tasso Lake is on a winter morning before freeze-up.
Tasso Lake, soon to ice over.
Tasso Lake is only about 2 kilometres from Algonquin Park.
As we have mentioned before, information about the water quality of lakes in Muskoka is available on the Muskoka Water Web; here’s the page for Tasso Lake.
We are happy to say that there will be a new family on Muldrew Lake. Particularly exciting to us is that this family is new to Canada, has never cottaged before, but really want to live a “classic Canadian lifestyle,” and they decided, what better way than to cottage in Muskoka.
I’m sure the Bonnet Chest isn’t only a Canadian phenomenon. But, if you Google it, you will get lots of Canadian, and only a few US links. Even Wikipedia doesn’t know about them; searching for bonnet chest there will get you nothing. They are not mentioned in the otherwise excellent: The Heritage of Upper Canadian Furniture by Howard Pain. It seems that they may have been a Mennonite piece designed, of course, to protect bonnets. The design made its way into Canada from Pennsylvania and seemed to have become more popular here.
I have always liked their shape. Especially the ones with the upper section projecting out a few inches (chest on chest), highlighting the oversize drawers; makes me want to pull one open and look inside. There’s just something about the lines and the substantial size. So, a bonnet chest has been on my list of things to make for a long time. Recently I saw a fairly good example of what was once a lovely chestnut piece at a cottage we sold. Unfortunately our seller was keeping it, and it moved away.
Now recently, in that case, was more than two years ago. I went out the same week and bought some 4/4 curly maple. It took a couple of weeks a bit at a time to process the rough sawn wood into useable boards. But, it took over a year to build it. Not just because furniture making is done in my spare time. It’s because I was designing my bonnet chest based on ones I liked, while looking at pieces for sale on the local Kijiji and Craigslist.
And while looking, I saw one that I had to buy in Beeton. Over the years it had been pretty much reduced to a pile of water-stained boards, it was 90% apart, had had some type of birds (chickens maybe) living in the lower drawers and all the upper drawers and backsplash were gone – years ago and nobody knew where. But, it was only a hundred bucks or so, what was left was all made of butternut, and the money went to support Beeton hockey so I bought the pile of parts, headed to a sawmill and bought some rough-sawn butternut to replace the missing pieces and took it all home.
It was winter so we weren’t too busy with cottages and within a week or so it was done.
I feel great about saving this one; it could go on for another century or more, rather than rotting away.
Original (mostly) Bonnet Chest
We are VERY busy in the summer, and pretty busy the rest of the year, so I got back to the new chest only from time to time. I am fairly slow with carcass pieces to begin with. In addition to turning some 8/4 maple on the lathe for the legs, which took some time to get around to, I knew I wanted to hand-cut dovetails, front and back in all the drawers. This turned out to be 100 dovetails in all, which makes the piece cool in the builders mind, but added a couple of months to the project in “eked out” time.
Anyway, the bonnet chest is complete now, just as the summer is drawing to a close. We don’t have any bonnets, so we keep dog-leashes in one of the bonnet drawers of the old one, and not much at all yet in the new one.
Now, 10 days or so into fall, we are still completely busy with real estate, almost. I was able to get out sailing today from 3 till dusk.
With the sun setting before seven now, and me still used to long summer evenings, dusk seemed to come quickly along with cold winds. Three in the afternoon was t-shirt weather, then a sweatshirt on top by five, and a foul weather jacket by six.
Sailing south on Lake Muskoka between Browning Island and the mainland.Flying the colours of the catboat Swell: the Ontario flag and the Catboat Association burgee.
The winds were our prevailing northwesterlies, and in the afternoon at 15 knots with gusts required a reefed sail. By evening they were a nice steady 8 or so so the reef was blown out and I sailed back north.
The evening sail was wonderful; once set, the boat stayed on track without any input from me. I was able sit back and take in the beautiful evening colours as the setting sun accompanied the boat back to Pine Island.
Once I rounded Pine Island, the wind, blocked by the mainland, slackened and I dropped the sail and watched the following sun set to the west.
The idea behind Muskoka Minutes is to show work being done by scientists and others in the field here in Muskoka on the Muskoka Watershed Council’s YouTube Channel. More details are here on the day spent tracking Blanding’s turtles, a species at risk in Ontario. My thanks to Jeremy, Kelsey, Mike and also Glenda.
Blanding’s Turtle
They used to have a much larger range in Ontario and were much more common in Muskoka – see below. They have many predators and like other turtle species have had their habitats carved up by roads.
I posted a few videos today. One is the 1st of a Muskoka Moments collection.
The idea of Muskoka Moments is to show people and places in Muskoka, but more importantly, to try to show the connection between the two.
Our first video Backyard Swamp, Bracebridge, is a perfect example to lead off. The star of the video, shows off his knowledge of the natural world around him and his excellent backyard! The video was created by a newbie to Final Cut Pro -nice work!
If anyone has a 1 or 2 minute video (or aspires to shoot some) that shows the connection between people and our beautiful environment here in Muskoka, let me know.
A fascinating presentation by Thomas Lovejoy of George Mason University, this is the evening keynote lecture from the biennial Muskoka Summit on the Environment . On June 6th and 7th I recorded the presentations over the two day summit. Broadcast, in part, by CBC Radio’s Ideas with Paul Kennedy, (search for Buying Into Biodiversity), these were world-class lectures, presented here in Muskoka. I am delighted to be able to ensure these are available to the world.
Advisor to Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, Dr. Lovejoy discusses implications and complications of climate change from many interesting perspectives, but, also offers workable solutions.
Planetary engineering to lower atmospheric carbon.
Dr. Michelle Palmer discusses how recent climatic warming, changes in acidic deposition, and human-related activities such as road salting and the accidental spread of invasive species have altered the water quality of our lakes in Muskoka, with a focus on changes in lake temperatures and water chemistry since the 1980s.
At the end there is an extensive Question & Answer session.
On June 6th and 7th I recorded the presentations over the two day summit. Broadcast, in part, by CBC Radio’s Ideas with Paul Kennedy, (search for Buying Into Biodiversity), these were world-class lectures, presented here in Muskoka. I am delighted to be able to ensure these are available to the world.
In this straightforward and important talk, Steve gives us an acronym to help understand threats to biodiversity, speaks of the need to link Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, and talks about the Strategic Biodiversity Plan for Ontario.
