Turtle Lake Cottage

Turtle Lake Cottage
It is official - LEED PLATINUM CERTIFIED!!

Thursday, June 16, 2011

TERRAPIN STATION Update - Early June 2011

I apologize for being sloooow in writing. Here is the lastest update on our cottage:

First of all, we have settled on a name because it seems all cottages have names:  Terrapin Station.  Jack and I spent hours trying to decide on a name.  In Spanish turtle means la torruga, Old Irish: seilce, Gaelic: turtar, Portuguese tartargua or cagado.  None of those sounded right.  One day  right before Memorial Day, Jack was driving and listening to his third favorite XM/Sirrius radio station: The Grateful Dead station,  and he heard their version of "Terrapin Station" and wola, we have a name!  Terrapin is a another term for turtle.

We put our house up for sale in Algoma Township the beginning of May and we still own it :(.  Mostly, we are living here full-time with Jack going "down state" to make sure everything is in order and be sure our local haunts haven't gone out of business.

There were terrible rains (5 1/2 inches in 2 hours) in early May.  It was exactly one day after the excavators completed their work which proceeded to wash away in less than an hour.  You can see by the pictures that we installed a silt fence (it is the black one) and ended up terracing the side of the house in order to keep the hill from washing into the lake.  We bought native trees and shrubs and planted 2 flats of native Columbine and Lupine along with 1 oz of Little Blue Stem native seed which has an ginormous root system.

My brother, Richard and his wife Marilyn joined us for Memorial Day.  It started out rather cool but turned out great.  We had a small planned party with our neighbors who are the only other ones building, Sandra and Dennis along with their daughter who was visiting from Chicago, Kathryn.  We were later joined by Jeff and Debra who were camping on their lot down the street.  Also, on Friday the couple who own the lot next to Dennis and Sandra stopped by, Keith and Lynn.  At first blush, we have very nice neighbors, with varied interests, but all seem to be totally aware of our obligation to the land and be good stewards of this beautiful area we have been entrusted with for a short time.

Hope you enjoy the pictures.

1 comment:

  1. CONGRATULATIONS Barbara and Jack on the completion of your new cottage!!! It looks great.

    We had met you quite a while ago at Eric Hughes' office when we first started our cottage plans with Eric.

    Unfortunately, Eric totally lost touch with us, Joel, our time line and worst yet our budget! The quote came in at twice our budget. And after waiting 10 months - we felt ripped off.

    Sorry for the rant.

    Wishing YOU BOTH the best!!!

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