If there’s an icon for cottage life it should not be a pine tree against the sky or a loon, it shoul

One day in a recent summer. All day long it has threatened to rain. The wind keeps telling us so. The warm wet air whistles through the screens, and around the eaves. Wait, we did have sun and calm for a couple of hours first thing this morning and we took a boat cruise to get the paper and circle another part of the lake of many passages. Heavy wet clouds slid in over our heads while we were out and the rising breeze chased us home again. I’ve spent these two weeks running from weather, hiding from weather, getting out of the weather and I’m starting to feel under the weather. Okay, enough complaints. Dusk is two hours early as the storm moves in; we can hear the thunder booming beyond the ridge North of here. Sky is a pale lavender and the wind is dropping, prelude to a storm. The wind always drops and shifts before a good thunderstorm. This was a day of little achievements. I finally removed a pile of brush to the pile on the point. Took seven trips carrying armloads of matted sticks and pine needles shoving back and forth through the alders tripping me and tearing at my shirt. But the pile had been growing for two years and it was time. Then I serviced the bio-mass. That’s a simple chore with a big price to be paid if you let it slide. The drum must be fed peat, one handful per person per day every three or four days and it must be rotated several times to mix well. Do this and the bacteria will reward you with rich loamy compost, which I can’t get Annie to use anywhere, or even go near. Don’t do it and prepare to hold your nose. The old two-seated Muskoka bench, which is falling apart got some additional patching to keep some rotting slats attached for one more season. Its days are numbered so it’s been banished from the deck, and set out on a shore under some pine boughs to spend the rest of its years looking East into the sunrise. I also attacked the spider webs on the outhouse. The outhouse is pretty well neglected now that the Swedish alternative works so well, but some of our guests seem to like using it so I went at it with a broom. Hard to believe how much web and pine needle can accumulate in just two years. These sticky white cottony things were all over, very hard to sweep off. But the job is done and one more thing is off the list for the season.

Now for the sweeping.

If there’s an icon for cottage life it should not be a pine tree against the sky or a loon, it should be a broom. Where there are walls there are spiders, and where there are spiders there are white sticky things that catch pine needles and grit and they need constant sweeping. There are decks. And paths. And floors. Show me a day that doesn’t involve a broom and I’ll show you some neglected chores. Sweeping is not a chore to avoid, but a pleasant meditative activity. You begin at one end of the deck and you dance with your broom, swaying rhythmically to your own inner beat as you advance in a line sweeping all before you. Gradually, you come to the edge of the deck and over the side it goes. While you sweep you can think, or not think, just hum a little tune in your head, tune in to the birdsong about you. Soon you are done. It’s pouring rain now. The thunder has stayed away but you can barely see the near shore. We are shrouded in a soft grey curtain of rain coming straight down. The temperature has dropped; rats, at least it was warm before.