Conquered and Hung

Have you ever really wanted to do something but fear held you back?  Does your perfectionism hinder you?  I used to be proud of being a perfectionist, but the reality is that setting high subjective standards for yourself and others can lead to all sorts of problems - pride, when you believe that you have attained your goal, and depression, when you fall short of your expectations.  The fear of  failure will often steer a perfectionist away from trying new or challenging things. 

old dining room window shade

Rolled up and secured with a chip clip

Fear can be such a nasty thing, and I desire to conquer it.  Maybe that is why Yahweh gave me an unexpected opportunity a few weeks ago.  No, I did not jump out of an air plane or throw myself off a mountain.  Thankfully Jesus is full of grace and mercy and usually gives us small lessons before the big ones come.


Actually the rope on the dining room window shade heaved its last load.  It was some early version of a pleated shade with no insulation and almost paper thin.  It did help tone down the hot glaring sun rays that stream through our window, but it was on its last thread.

I don't know about you, but I think that replacing window treatments is an inconvenience.  New window dressings always make a huge impact in a room, but that is why it is so stressful to pick our the right covering, and it is often expensive unless you make your own curtain, shade, or blind thingy.


I should also mention that I have been an admirer of roman shades for a very long time.  I have read books, blogs, and websites on how to make my own roman shade.  I should be an expert by now except for the fact that I had never actually made a shade.  Several years ago I bought fabric to make two shades for my kitchen but chickened out and found someone to make them for me.  They turned out o.k.  After waiting four weeks and slapping down $300 I decided that the next time I would make my own!

My first Roman shade

So I embraced the moment and set my mind to the task at hand.  I decided that I would find inexpensive fabric and accept the results of my humble endeavor to cover my window.  JoAnn's had upholstery fabric on sale for $6.99 so I bought 4 yards.  Because my window width including the trim is 63" I had to make two side seams.  Matching the fabric pattern took some time, but I am happy with the results.

ta-da, a fully functioning roman shade!

It took two days to measure, cut, and sew the fabric and lining, and it would have taken only one day to attach the hardware and hang the shade if we had not had company coming for diner.  I have not calculated the total cost, but I know it is less than $100.




I am still not an expert, but I am more than just a dreamer, and fear did not hold me back.  Thank you Lord for the opportunity! 

Here are two very helpful Internet resources if you need a little encouragement to fight your fear and make a Roman shade:
I found this blog on Pinterest, Alissa from 33 Shades of Grey does a great job of showing the basic process.
Blog tutorial

The following link leads to actual video footage from a business website.  Sailrite sells fabric and hardware.  I watched this video several times!  It is very thorough.
How-to-Make-a-Roman-Shade-Video

Summer Garden Progress

first harvest - peppery radish

After July Fourth, summer finally arrived.  Temperatures began to hit the high nineties.  Through most of July I could sit outside in a skirt and sandals and not feel cold.  At the beginning of August it became too hot to eat lunch outside on the deck, but cool enough to enjoy our evening meal Al fresco.

beets, carrots, radish, beans, lettuce & spinach

Higher temperatures mean garden growth - yeah!  I have been able to harvest lettuce, spinach and radish from my seed garden.  Surrounding the seed beds with chicken wire did prevent the chickens from scratching all six beds up.

I managed to surround most of my squash plants with various assortments of wire fencing to deter total poultry invasion.  Now that the tomato vines and pepper plants have fruit on them we had to decide to keep setting up makeshift plant enclosures, or just put up a fence that completely surrounds the entire garden.  Since time and money are limited we decided on a temporary fence that encompasses the entire garden plot.  So far 3 foot high wire fencing and wooden stakes are working just fine.  The chickens seem a bit disconcerted that they can no longer take dirt baths right next to my cabbage plant or peck away at my tomato vines.

cucumber and squash 

I have been able to harvest zucchini, and crooked neck squash should be ready this week.  We also managed to make an asparagus bed right in front of the cucumber trellis.  Hopefully, if the warm weather holds, we will get a decent tomato and pepper harvest now that the chickens can't get to them.

gooseberry, squash, tomato & pepper plants

Right now my tomatoes are the size of marbles, but maybe in two months they will be ready to eat.  I planted three squash plants that self-seeded from my compost pile.  I think that at least one of them is a butternut squash plant.  

Sometimes it is fun to be surprised! One year we had cantaloupe plants grow from compost seeds and they produced small but yummy melons.  We saved the seeds and grew them for several years at our last garden.

pots on the back patio

I purchased the geranium plant in the above photo last summer at Ace Hardware for $1.  It along with its two sisters survived the winter in a sunny window.  The hummingbirds just love these geraniums.  I stood just about a foot from this plant and watched a hummingbird insert its long, narrow beak in several of the blossoms.

Last summer I planted those red geraniums on this shelf pictured above which graces our front deck.  The hummingbirds were just crazy about those red blooms.  This summer I planted sweet potato vine, coleus, and fuchsia on the front deck shelf.  I just love this combination but the hummingbirds aren't attracted to it.  Next year I will try to satisfy my love for stimulating container plants and please the hummingbirds too.

Transplanted

We seven Ankenys have been living in our house for a whole year!   I am so thankful for what we have been able to accomplish in twelve months.  In fact, while I was perusing through my poetry journal, I found a poem that I wrote while we were in the process of getting ready to sell our house back in March 2017.  This poem helped me to reconcile all the emotions that I was feeling while we prepared to make a new start.  We did not now if or when our house would sell and where we would eventually end up.

Uprooting
by Racheal Ankeny 

Fifteen years and more,
Here we live,
Roots plunging deeper, children sprouting taller
Blossoms abound. 

Planted, watered, fertilized
Are we.
Fathers, Mothers, Brothers, Sisters, Cousins
Surround us like a forest with outstretched branches. 

Here we have grown.
Celebrations and happiness we have known,
Also suffering, sadness, and grief. 

To this house our wee ones we brought,
All healthy and vibrant with life.
Five seedlings carefully sheltered
Beneath 523 S. Elder Street's eaves. 

Can roots grown too deep?
Ours feel dry.
They're likely to shrivel,
Only different soil will satisfy. 

We seven have waited,
Praying for Yahweh's direction,
Hoping to find a way. 

It's time to uproot!
Carefully we dig and pull.
Painfully, excitedly separating,
Choosing what to leave.

To our Lord we look,
And set our gaze North.
Full of hope, anticipating adventure,
Anxious to venture from the encircling leaves. 

By Him the future is held,
The soil he has predestined for us,
To be planted, watered, and fed
All over again.

Cherry Pie - from tree to table

Esther took this photo of Lillia wearing Eleanor's sweater that I knitted 😊

Up until July 4th it felt like spring up here.  It was breezy, but mostly warm with scattered showers.  The cherry trees gave us our first fruit of the season.  We have two small cherry trees at the bottom of our hill.  Last year, when we moved in, the cherries were full of worms, but this year we harvested them before the annelid invasion.

Lillia and Eleanor picking cherries for pie.

I don't know what variety of cherry we have, but they are on the sour side; which is perfect if you want to make pie.  I picked up a cherry pitter at Ace Hardware, which was disconcerting because I am pretty sure that I gave the exact same contraption away right before we moved.  How was I supposed to know that my very own cherry tree was waiting for me?

Doesn't it usually seem like the ripest ones are just a bit out of reach?

The girls gathered together to start the process of making homemade cherry pie. 

We ended up with about  eight cups of cherries.

While the girls picked, I looked up cherry pie filling recipes on Pinterest.  I found a recipe that called for lemon juice, cornstarch, sugar, butter, and almond extract.  I did not have corn starch so I substituted arrowroot starch and the filling was too watery, so I threw it in the fridge and wrote 'corn starch' on my shopping list.  Then I found my pate brisee recipe and blended the flour, water, butter, and sugar together to make that fabulous concoction called pastry.

I was able to thicken the filling with corn starch and I even threw in some tapioca pearls for good measure (who wants a runny pie?).  I rolled out the the chilled dough and remembered how lovely it is to work with gluten.  After assembling the pastry and filling in my glass pie dish I placed the pie in the oven.  After about fifty-five minutes - voila, beautiful, buttery cherry pie.

A rustic and rewarding Lordsday treat

 At the beginning of July cherries and service berries were ripe and ready to be picked.  We found plentiful amounts of service berries just down the hill from our property.  We picked several pounds.  They were juicy and sweet, almost like blueberries, but with seeds. 

patriotic berry tart

A service berry and cherry tart seemed like a natural outcome to all our berry picking.  Lillia made the tart crust and I made the filling.  It turned out to be the perfect patriotic treat on the Fourth of July.

Plants, Planting and Planted

Shady bed under the oak tree

The title of this post aptly describes the condition of my outdoor space. It seems as though we may have displaced one quarter of the rocks on our property to rebuild flower bed borders and make pathways. I added this rock wall to our shady plant bed next to the house.  It helps to define the flower bed, but unfortunately creates a rather sharp corner for the avid roller-bladers that fly down the sidewalk.  There have been several roller blade accidents.
Esther and Eleanor helped me transplant 'vinca' and 'snow-in-summer' to this bed for ground cover.  I also transplanted some ferns but the dogs have pretty much annihilated those lacy beauties.  Clive's new name is "Fern-smasher".  Doesn't it sound like a name from Roald Dahl's The BFG?

Cluster of peony, day lilies, iris, and ground cover
above the shady bed

I carefully crept down to the dark woods on our property to find delightful green fronds.  I stabilized my footing between rocks and fallen branches on a slope and gingerly slid my spade into the forest floor to snatch a few ferns.  Once I filled my shallow bucket I laboriously skirted through the bracken up the hill making sure not to disturb the clumps of soil and pine needles that anchored each fern.

When I found my way back into the sunshine I giddily began to plant my botanical treasures.  I checked on my transplants throughout the day and they looked healthy, but the next morning when I woke up my heart sank.  Two plants out of the five still looked like they had a chance but the other ferns were just a pile of broken stems.  My sadness turned to anger, "Why do Corey's dogs (FYI: I usually refer to Clive and Willa as Corey's dogs when they are naughty)  have to lay in my flower bed?"  GRRRRRR!  My animosity did abate as the day withered, but Corey did hear about Fern-smasher when he got home.

Corey worked with the dogs that evening to try to get them to understand "get off" and they are starting to figure out that "get off" means remove your doggie body from the patch of dirt that you are standing on.  That will be an ongoing process and will require much patience as well as some fences.

We remade this rock border in front of the deck.  Two huge orange poppy
 clumps are happily growing here.  I sowed wildflower seeds between them.

Here's a peek at my garden

Corey rented a rototiller and worked for two hours on this grass covered swathe of earth.  As you can see there are a lot of grass roots in the soil.  We will have a lot of hoeing to do to eradicate all the grass.  We were able to transplant raspberry starts and I planted all the veggies that I had started from seed this winter.  Hopefully, Lord-willing, we will be able to harvest tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash, melons, cabbage, carrots, radish, lettuce, beans, and scallions after the weather warms up.  I have really low self-esteem as a gardener because of several years of failed attempts to bring new life into my neighbor's empty lot, but that is a different story.

This chicken wire fence is protecting my seed beds from chicken and dog invaders.

Corey has been trying to keep my spirits up.  He says that the soil is so fertile here that he could cut of his foot, plant it, and regrow another one.  Hmphhh, I am not so sure about that, but his humor did bring a smile to my face.

Fern-smasher the Terrible -  who knows what he is sitting on right now?

The Hen is in the House... and so are the Roosters

Agnes is eating in peace.

May was a busy month here at Haefen.  Corey was able to finish the chicken coop so now our hens and roosters are safe and dry.  It took them a couple of weeks to figure out that they could walk up and down the ladder to enter and exit the roost. Once most of the cluckers solved that puzzle we started letting them explore our property.  Now they are definitely free range chickens.  They scratch, roll in the dirt, and find shady nooks to rest in.  Once the sun begins to disappear they make their way back to the roost to settle in for the night.

Before Corey could finish the roof a rain storm blew through and the chickens got a bit wet.

This is the roost with the perch removed for cleaning.

The roost opens on the outside of the run for accessible cleaning.  We just installed composting stalls along the garden shed wall right next to the roost which is very convenient.  Corey made a removable perch so that the kids could easily remove all the soiled pine shavings.  Eleanor can efficiently accomplish clearing out the roost by herself.

the finished chicken house - 21 chickens are safe and dry.

In addition to settling the chickens we also saw a lot of baseball games and even traveled to St. Marie’s and Pinehurst to watch some little league baseball.  All of our children increased their knowledge about the Great American Sport, and they play together at the bottom of our hill.  Isaac enjoyed hanging out with the other boys, and says that he will miss playing games.  Over all it was a great experience and we will probably sign up next spring.

We also were blessed to have two visits from the Grandpas and Grandmas.  My parents arrived during the middle of April and Corey’s parents showed up towards the end of the month, with about five days in between my parents’ departure and Bruce’s and Greta’s appearance.  We were able to visit, watch baseball games, trim trees, chip wood, sew doll dresses, and hem clothing.  A very enjoyable and productive time.  May was a great month here at Haefen.

Frank and the hens are enjoying some scratch time in the newly chipped wood.

Birthdays and Baseball

We were unable to fully participate in the April Birthday Extravaganza this year, but it still seemed like a busy month.  Since our extended families have seven birthday celebrations in April the pocket book can feel a bit tight, but the social schedule usually abounds with activity.  We celebrated Asa's, Eleanor's, and Lillia's birthdays by dining in restaurants of their choosing, and enjoying scrumptious home-made confections at home. 

Carrot cake with a scenic buffalo motif made by Lillia

ice box cookie log made by Lillia

cheesecake by Mom 

the handsomest Hawk, Red Wing, Iron Bird on the field

Along with three birthday celebrations we have also been enjoying little league baseball games.  Right now Isaac's team, The Hawks - oops, I mean the Red Wings, no wait, now their the Iron Birds  have won 4 games and lost 3.  They have been on a winning streak.  Isaac is one of the few boys who have not played before, so some of the boys are pretty good.  Isaac, Asa, and Corey have been able to take pleasure in some baseball bonding time while Isaac gets some extra practice.

Sunny Days and Rocky Borders

Daffodils and purple wildflowers make a springy combination.

Drizzle, drizzle, drip-drop, down-pour, and bright sunny days... This describes spring thus far up here in the North.  We had several weeks of rain in April and then patches of warm sunny days including days with 80* temperatures.  The kids and I were ready to dig in on those sunny days and our first project was the landing flower bed.

This bed was filled with weeds and spots of flowers.  The kids and I tore out the weeds and saved what plants we could.  We ripped out the decayed logs that used to be a retaining wall and made a stone ledge.  We hunted for smooth flat rocks and brought them to this site.  Our property is filled with rocks so we decided to put them to good use.

Frittilaria imperialis "William Rex" (Crown Imperial Lilly)

Here is a fun surprise - fritilleria!  I thought that these bushy stalks would produce lilies, but these orange, bell-shaped flowers emerged instead, and it turns out that this flower is related to the lily.  These beauties are in the landing flower bed and I transplanted lavender, daylillies, peonies, phlox, hollyhock, tulips, and daffodils into this bed as well.  I keep finding new flowers throughout our property to transplant.  Yesterday I found for-get-me-nots and creeping phlox - yahoo!

The grand plan is to de-weed all the flower beds and transplant the flowers that I keep discovering into the fresh beds.

patio flower bed

Here is another example of a spruced up bed.  This flower bed is next to our back patio.  We yanked, dug up, and clipped the grass, suckers, and random rocks and terraced this sloped patch of dirt with large and medium rocks.  Again, I dug up recognizable plants from around the property and planted them in this flower bed.

Although it seems like we have barely made a dent in our wilderness, we have begun the process of subduing it.  We have trimmed back a lot of the scrub brush and found evidence of retaining walls with bulbs and perennials randomly dispersed among the weeds and bracken.  I think that Vic and Olga loved this place, but sadly were unable to keep it up.  Although Olga and I do not share similar interior decorating taste, I think that our common bond is gardening.  Hooray for daffodils, rocks, and fritillaria!

Phase One Phase Out

I am pleased to announce that our major Phase One remodel projects have been tackled and we have painted, sawed, sanded, drilled, scrubbed, and nailed our way to victory.

Here's our spiffy new bathroom!

✔️ Wood Paneling painted or removed
✔️ Chandeliers updated and clicking fan replaced
✔️ Master bedroom painted and open closet installed
✔️ Kitchen painted and backsplash wall paper removed and stenciled.
✔️ Bathroom renovated - new walls, floor, tile, tub, sink, toilet, fixtures, and trim

Corey took a ten day vacation and completed quite a few Phase One projects.  It is invigorating to draw lines through so many jobs on our list.  He made a big push since spring has arrived - Phase Two is upon us whether we are ready or not.

Phase Two activities will mostly focus on outdoor developments.  The most pressing matter at hand is  building a chicken coop since the hens are growing, stinking up the garage, and needing more space.  Corey drew up some coop plans last weekend and bought supplies yesterday, so Phase Two has begun.

I found this mirror on Craigslist.  It was a medicine cabinet.
I am still considering painting the shelf black.  Any
suggestions?

As spring and summer progress we will also be starting a garden, revamping our grey water basin, establishing a new bee hive, landscaping, breeding dogs, and hopefully building a permanent outdoor shower.  I did promise the girls that we would spruce up their bedroom this summer too.

The Phase Two docket is full, but in the midst of all our outdoor enterprises we are looking forward to little league baseball games and forest exploration through hiking and canoeing.

This curtain was woven by Greta, Corey's Mom.  The pattern is called Huck Lace and she made it with tea bag strings!  I love it and it looks just perfect with my pretty bathroom.

This is a photo of my kitchen.  I am thrilled with how clean the gray wall turned out.  It is actually really dark wood paneling that I had to cover with four coats of primer.  We lived with the primer until last month.  I finished painting the trim while Corey was home from work.  The shelf is an old drawer that Corey and the boys found in the garden shed.  I jazzed it up with a painting technique that I learned from a furniture painting class that I took a few weeks ago.  We picked up the table at a garage sale right before we moved from our rental house.  I think I paid $10 for it.  It works great for storing easily accessed pantry items.  I just love re-purposing old junk!

I sanded this drawer to clean it up a bit, then brushed liming wax on it.
The last step was to dry-brush a robin's egg chalk paint on top. 

Expectations of Spring

These pansies were under all the snow.

The snow is melting, the temperatures are rising, and hopeful expectations are burbling, yet not quite ready to surface, but anticipating the perfect moment.  The day when the soil breaks open with the help of a shovel and tiny seeds or a green leafy seedling is gingerly placed in the new crevice designed to house a plant.

Some narcissus are emerging next to the garage.

As you can see we do have some botanical activity to be excited about.  On warm days, after my walk with Willa, I will explore my property, looking for signs of life.  I study the various sprouts of green emerging from the brown dirt trying to identify what miracle of  spring beauty I have to look forward to.  So far I see oriental poppies, narcissus, peonies, crocus, and iris.


I found my old seeds from 2016 and decided to start my vegetable garden now.  My planting schedule is not much different than when I lived in Southern Idaho.  As you can see peppers, cabbage, lettuce, and basil are beginning to grow - yeah!  I will start tomatoes next week.

These sprouts sit in front of my balcony door.

Corey bought the book, The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener by Niki Jabbour for my birthday.  I am gleaning a lot of information about using cold frames and poly-tunnels to extend the growing season, and even harvest during the winter months.

This is the our garden plot.  It is about 25'x25', and it needs alot of attention.

 Speaking of my birthday, I have to share this beautiful coconut cake that Lillia made for me.  She used a gluten free flour blend from Namaste to make the batter, and it turned extremely dense.  When I made Corey a German chocolate cake last month for his birthday (he turned forty-three) I used the same flour, and it was dense but more like a brownie.  Lillia ended up baking four cake rounds because the first two rounds shrunk so much after cooling.  Lillia presented  me with a four-layer coconut cake frosted in a coconut-flavored butter cream frosting for my forty-second birthday- yum, what a special treat!

I tried to get Lillia to be in the picture with me, but she decided to take the photo instead.

I asked Corey if he liked being 42, and he said that it was great because he was able to move to Northern Idaho, and because he found another Irish Terrier.  I have decided that I will also enjoy being 42 because I will get to make my new house in Northern Idaho a home.  I am looking forward to my first spring at Haefen.

Winter Projects

Greetings!
Although I did not post anything during the month of February there has been a lot of activity filling our days.  Most of it has been ho-hum, such as math and phonics lessons, taking the garbage out, washing dishes, keeping the fire in the wood stove ablaze, and shoveling the sidewalks.

We did have some branches freeze and break off this winter

We have also been busy making plans for spring.  All the snow melted off in February and we enjoyed some warm weather, but towards the end of the month another storm blew through and it's gift of another foot of snow is just starting to melt off now.

Greta, Corey's Mom came for a visit during the last week of February. There was a count down for her arrival. We did some exploring while she was here and found a copious and reasonably priced pottery shop in Spirit Lake and an eclectic home decor/gift shop as well.  Since we were unable to go to Sandpoint because of a snowstorm we decided to check out a recommended pizza restaurant in Hauser.  It was awesome; they cook the pizza in a brick oven, and since we sat at the bar we were able to watch the whole process.  We plan to return as the weather warms up to enjoy the outdoor dining patio right across from the lake.  We were also able to spend some time in Spokane as well.  We finally made it to Natural Grocers so that Greta and I could buy some herbal coffee that is amazing!  Even Corey, the coffee connoisseur appreciated the flavor.  He said that it like a weak, but good quality coffee.

Our home school co-op is in full swing and the kids are back in the rhythm of Monday Morning Madness.  They seem to like their classes and are able to engage in subject matter that I do not have time to explore with them.  I am teaching from a book called Geography Through Art  that is going well.  I really appreciate the kids in my class and am pleased with their creativity.

We ended up having two Mondays in a row off from co-op so I was inspired to paint.  I decided to tackle the kitchen wall and back splash.  As you can see below, the back splash was covered with wallpaper - not ugly, but outdated and starting to peel.  Esther and Lillia removed the wallpaper this summer while I painted the dining room.  Underneath the melon-colored flower motif was dirty-pink painted particle board.  We lived with the particle board, but it was starting to wear on me this winter.  It just made the kitchen look dreary.

Before picture.

Current state of the back splash - the new microwave really helps!

I primed the back splash after Corey used Spackle to smooth out the gaps and grooves, then I painted the back splash Valspar's Forest Moss.  Corey thinks it is dark grey, Greta thought it more of a brown, and I think it is green so let's just say it is brownish, greenish, grey.  I painted the one wall in the kitchen a light grey (Valspar -Secluded Beach) and used the leftover paint to apply this star tile stencil that I found online.  It took a while to get the hang of stenciling.  The key is to use hardly any paint!  I really like the ease of stenciling, when you get tired just recap the paint, wash out the brush, and continue when you feel like it.  Also, if you mess up, just paint over and start again - no problem!

bathroom sneak peak

I know that I said that I would not show pictures of our one and only bathroom until it was finished, but Corey is in the process of installing the wood trim, and he is almost done.  I just had to post a sneak peak.  The trim around the doorway has not been added yet, but I just love how the sink and light fixture look together along with the oblong mirror.

Check out my post, Phase One Bathroom Remodel if you can't remember how this space used to look.  I just revisited that post, and I feel assured that there a no more weeds growing between my walls!

Several weeks ago our shipment of chicks arrived.  Unfortunately the weather temperatures dropped below 10 degrees, and the baby chickens were in transit for three days - eek!  A bad combination that led to what felt like a chicken death camp!  For forty-eight hours after they arrived the kids and I worked hard at saving the weak, little buggers.  We would bring the downtrodden and droopy chicks inside and feed them sugar water with eye-droppers and let them rest by the wood stove.  We ended up losing eleven chicks out of the twenty-six, some of which the kids had especially picked out themselves.  Fortunately we did receive a credit from the hatchery, but losing so many was very disheartening.

Eleanor with Agnes and Asa with Poppy

Corey and the kids went down to our local feed store and found some more chicks to replace some of the breeds we had lost.  They are all very healthy and active.  Their breed feathers are starting to show and it is fun watching their different personalities emerge.  The kids have even named a few: Agnes (Eleanor's Leghorn), Poppy (the silver-laced Polish), Mayonnaise (Asa's Whiting Blue) and Cleopatra and Hatsepsut (the Ameraucanas).  Corey has decided to name his rooster Frank.  Right now they are in the garage, but when it warms up we will put them outside.

Which one is the puppy?

Speaking of healthy, Clive is now bigger than Willa.  He is seven months old and is much thicker than Willa.  He is super sweet and has been easier to train than Willa was.  He is also quite rambunctious.  I have started to take Clive on my walks with Willa.  I have to hold their leashes in separate hands otherwise Clive just wants to jump and chew on Willa.  He loves being outside and  doesn't seem to mind water, so maybe he will be Corey's canoe dog.  I guess we will find out this summer 😎