Getting Ready for September

I have been patiently waiting all week for my rose bushes to bloom.

Yes, I understand how silly that may seem to many of you, but I'm certain I'm not the only one who feels this way! 

In a garden, there is always something exciting we anticipate that passes all too quickly - the blossoming of the fruit trees. the first fragrant Spring Lilacs, the changing of the leaves... 

Lately, this has been the case for my roses. I have waited for the buds to unfurl for days. With us getting ready to leave for the cottage, I couldn't help but feel as though they would bloom while we were away, and all that would be left would be a sprinkling of petals when we returned.

Fortunately, most of them have opened in the past few days.

They have a delicate frangrance to them - sweet, but more musky than perfumy. It's hard to believe that soon we will begin to put the garden to bed for the winter.

We've also been getting ready for school to begin in just over a week. Today Willen was registered at a new school, and we discovered that he will now be riding a school bus to school - something he's very excited for.

We borrowed a few back to school favourites from the library for our trip. We're really looking forward to one last week at the lake before the summer comes to an end.

Something that I need to keep me organized was a day planner. I'm quite pleased with this Kate Spade one I picked up at Chapters. I love that it's actually a 16 month planner that begins in August. 

I really just like it's simple design.

It's also become quite helpful in keeping track of appointments with contractors, something that has become a big part of our life.

We've recently run into delay in our living room renovation. When the installers arrived for the fireplace, they were completely unconfident in drilling through the stone wall. This of course made us nervous, and quite frustrated. It takes weeks to get an appointment for an installation and after a promising initial inspection (and us making it perfectly clear what kind of exterior wall they would be dealing with), we were so exccited for this huge part of the room to be completed. There are many other little details that can't really be done until the fireplace is installed. However, that being said, we were thankful the installers cared enough to voice their concerns.

Their biggest worry was that once they began chiselling a stone out for the 9" hole (for the rear vent), other stones that are behind the first would be staggered, and therefore more than one would need to be removed, and so on. This could mean that what started off as one stone, could end up actually being a large hole by the time they were finished. And then what do you do to cover up that hole - a hole that is very visible from the outside.

We decided it was best for us to try and contact a historical mason who would have the best knowledge on the type of stone used (Limestone), and who would be familiar with the kind of mortyr.

Luckily, we found a local one, and though he was booked solid for the next half a year, he recommended a corer who could core out a hole. The man he recommended was very confident that this would be perfectly okay for the wall (and old windows!) and that it would provide the installers with the necessary hole they needed to do their install.

Fingers crossed, the coring will be finished this week sometime, and the installation a few days after that. Then it's onto the mantel, finishing the trim, painting and finally, furnishing.

There are some exciting things in the near future that I need our renovations to be finished for, so the pressure is on.