We finally retired our old air conditioner last week, along with our furnace. The furnace had to be as old as the house, which was built in 1972, and my guess is that the air conditioner was just as old.
It acted like it was, grinding away for hours during the heat of a Cache Creek afternoon while making barely any difference at all in the ambient room temperature. In fact, there was more than a million occasions when I stepped out onto the deck and found it cooler outside than in.
I grew up in southern Ontario without air conditioning. Believe me, it gets even hotter there. You don’t miss what you don’t have and you make due with what you do.
Still, I have to admit, the new heat pump makes it quite pleasant. Maybe I’m just getting old and menopausal.
But I still prefer being outside in the fresh air, even if the deck is still without a roof. It’s almost been a year since a windstorm blew much of it into the neighbour’s yard, but we’re getting closer. The roof material is sitting in the yard, along with the new deck railings, etc. After 11 years in our house, we’re giving the old gal some major TLC this year.
I don’t know why this is the year, but we figure that if we’re going to enjoy another 40 years in it, we needed to do some work.
Andwe do enjoy the deck - even more when it has a roof to keep off the rain and snow and direct sunshine.
The hummingbirds love it too, which is one of the reasons that we love it. On the cover of this year’s Connector, the local phone book we produce at The Journal, there’s a picture of Little Red Fred at the feeder on my deck.
The other day as we were watching the hummingbird battles, we were nearly forced into defending ourselves against another teeny tiny warrior whom we dubbed Teeny Weeny Meanie!
Watching the hummers trying to get past him to the feeders was priceless.
Even when the hummingbirds aren’t performing, the view and the pungent smell of the sage-covered hill on the other side of our back fence is just one of those things that money can’t buy.
Wendy Coomber is the editor of the Ashcroft-Cache Creek Journal