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Go for the painted version – sell your cottage fast, and it may help with those typos too.

Go for the painted version – sell your cottage fast, and it may help with those typos too.

August 2, 2012

Perhaps because Muskoka experienced more cottage sales in March, April and May 2012 than 2011, more cottages were listed, building something of a buyer’s market here.

Monthly Sales 3 Years (Muskoka Haliburton Association of Realtors)

Although the best way to sell a cottage quickly is to properly price it, there are additional things that can help: improve its condition, de-clutter, keep up with the maintenance, add staging and of course, market it well. There’s one more, ahem … “proven” … tactic that I didn’t know until we were sent a photo from a client of ours.

The Procedure

You can call on some divine intervention for help, but apparently “you have to believe.” As a seller you need to bury a statue of St. Joseph upside-down in the front lawn. Some detail on this at snopes.com.

Wow! In looking into this it’s unbelievable, at least to me, there’s even a st-josephstatue.com where you can buy a St Joseph Home Selling Kit, AND they’re all on sale at the moment – at either a “discount price” or a “super discount price” – how lucky is that?!

St Joseph Home Selling Kit (“nice” version)

A quote from the $9.47 unpainted statue description: “This product is a litle(sic) cheaper than the painted version, but always remember that the help from St Joseph has only to do with your faith in the saint, not what type of items you choose.” Ok, so good for them; there’s little in the way of hard pressure for the up-sell.

St. Joseph may not be the patron saint of spelling – or web typos – but hey, if you spend $3.00 more for the “nice painted statue” at a “super discount price,” it can’t hurt – right?

It’s not too late to catch the MWC lecture tonight.

July 26, 2012

Admission is by donation to the Muskoka Watershed Council. Just head for the Port Carling Community Centre at 7:00pm.

Our Lakes: How they have changed over the last 25 years.

Dr. Michelle Palmer will discuss how recent climatic warming, changes in acidic deposition, and human-related activities such as road salting and the accidental spread of invasive species have altered the water quality of our lakes in south-central Ontario, with a focus on changes in lake temperatures and water chemistry since the 1980s.

Emerging challenges and converging responses: Challenges and opportunities for conservation in an era of global change.

July 25, 2012

Engagingly presented by Jeremy Kerr of the University of Ottawa, this is the 2nd lecture from the biennial Muskoka Summit on the Environment . On June 6th and 7th I recorded the presentations over the two day summit. Broadcast, in part, by CBC Radio’s Ideas with Paul Kennedy, (search for Buying Into Biodiversity), these were world-class lectures, presented here in Muskoka. I am delighted to be able to ensure these are available to the world.

This lecture is now available at the following link on Muskoka Watershed Council’s YouTube channel: Emerging challenges and converging responses: Challenges and opportunities for conservation in an era of global change.

Against the backdrop of difficult times, where governments are in fact, no longer relevant in the development of much necessary research and solutions, Jeremy presents some opportunities: “What if citizen scientists could fill part of the data gap left by federal purges of scientific and environmental capacity?”

Lake Rosseau “escape”

July 20, 2012

We had another cottage closing for great people who, if you knew how much helping people is the essence of their “career life,” you’d really know that only Muskoka can truly offer them the serenity for the “escape” they’ve earned.

The request: was to look like Muskoka, need no renovation, be level, be peaceful, be private and be a good deal. We found them all this on Lake Rosseau!

Dusk view to the west.

Hot, but breezy

July 16, 2012

We had a couple of hours available after a pre-closing cottage walk-through on Lake Rosseau, and before a cottage showing on Lake Muskoka, so we got out sailing.

Wind was primarily from the north west, gusting to 15 knots + at times; to the extent we had to tie in 2 reefs in the sail.
Lake Muskoka’s south bay was loaded up with whitecaps. Despite the double reef, or thanks to it, we had great control and the 18′ catboat reached the theoretical maximum hullspeed often – exhilarating!

The Segwun in the background under the reefed sail, bugging-out around Eleanor Island in Lake Muskoka

The Segwun was out for a while, then shot back toward the Narrows from Eleanor Island– either the cruise was overdue or the forecast was not good. We were pretty much headed back by then.
Muskoka does need the rain.

Bliss on Lake Muskoka

July 15, 2012

Last night we had dinner with wonderful clients who bought their cottage last year – after 4 years of searching with Catharine’s help.

Evening on Lake Muskoka

They report this beautiful, beautiful property and cottage is enhancing their lives even more than they imagined it could. And, perhaps not surprisingly they took a long time to choose outdoor furniture. Looks like they got it right again.

Gravenhurst Triathlon

July 14, 2012

Hey! Chris completed the Olympic distance triathlon this morning in Gravenhurst; 1500m Swim | 40km Bike | 10km Run. It’s definitely the coolest of any triathlon because all competitors are taken out on the Segwun and the Wenonah II to begin the swim!

I was preparing to catch Chris ride by on his bike when I snapped a photo of the guy, who managed to catch one of the pylons with the bikes on his bikerack. He must’ve been heading for the auditions for Canada’s Worst Driver, or I’m sure he would have stopped and picked it up.

Oops!

Here’s Chris with just a couple of blocks to go to Muskoka Wharf and the dismount for a 10k run.

Energy left for the run? Not so much.

Chris said he may have walked 85% of the run, but he saved some energy for an impressive final kick: [wpvideo M9x9Opp3]

Mothers, don’t let your babies grow up to be biologists!

July 13, 2012

I am working on a project currently named the “Muskoka Minute”; after today we may have to revise the title. Today was quite a week.

Biologists track reptiles, fish, birds etc. – everybody knows that. I always thought that if they weren’t sitting in their office/lab chair looking at streams of perfect data, sent wirelessly from a creatures gizmo, they were tracking them. And tracking meant turning on the telemetry device and walking right up to a critter basking on a rock, picking it up and making some notes – then having lunch.

Working on communications for the Muskoka Watershed Council we are trying to enhance our own outreach and by extension that of scientists working in the field. We think that a quick, hopefully entertaining, look into what actually goes on in the field could be fun. We thought the goal should be to shoot and edit down to a minute or so, here and there in the field.

So today, thanks to Glenda Clayton (our Troubled Times for Our Turtles presenter), from the Georgian Bay Biosphere Reserve, I was able to join in on a day with three others from the MNR tracking a species at risk: Blanding’s turtles.

There is a lot of editing to do to distill down to a minute – or a few. For the record though tracking involved, in this case, hours of beating through deer-fly soaked woods and wetland in 30+ degree heat, only to then slog through chest deep bogs hoping to get a signal strong enough for just long enough to reach down and hope to feel the turtle and nothing … else.

I’ll add a link to this weblog when I do the 1st Muskoka Minute, but in the meantime here’s a couple of short clips:

[wpvideo fFwX1VPL] [wpvideo xTLHcbXk]

NOW SOLD. Newly-built cottage on Sparrow Lake plus Boathouse listed at only $379,000!

July 13, 2012

This is an excellent way to start, or continue cottaging in Muskoka. There is simply no other property in all of Muskoka that comes close in terms of value for money.

View from the large sundeck on the boathouse

If you search MLS for a cottage and single-slip boathouse in Muskoka, you’ll discover prices range from $300,000 to well over $3,000,000. Of the properties available in the $300k range, this is the only one that is: not water access only, not on a river and not a tear down. This property is on Sparrow Lake, the closest of Muskoka’s lakes to Toronto, has south exposure, a single-slip wet boathouse with a sundeck on top AND a newly built cottage.

Brand new cottage, built by French’s.

Sparrow Lake connects via the Trent-Severn Waterway from Lake Ontario to Georgian Bay. The lake’s water, due to this waterway, is constantly flushed  – lake data here. Boating, swimming, fishing, water skiing and just enjoying the water are all fabulous.  The views on Sparrow are wonderful.

Once you become a Sparrow Lake cottager, one of the best activities for the many visitors you’ll have is to take them on an afternoon boat ride west, past some of the most beautiful rock and pine shores to Swift Rapids. The appeal after the gorgeous boat ride is the lock itself; the largest in the entire Trent-Severn system – looking down as boats enter the lock is a real crowd pleaser!

Joining the Sparrow Lake Association is a must. In addition to helping with the great work of the association, joining will quickly get you into the swing with a picnic, regatta and a great way to meet your fellow cottagers.

More photo’s of this property are below. Here’s the detailed listing, please contact us to see it.

Single-slip boathouse

Loss of biodiversity, is it important if we don’t see it?

July 12, 2012

As a volunteer, as well as being on the executive of the Muskoka Watershed Council, I am the videographer. This gives me a great opportunity to ensure that truly wonderful ideas and presentations are not lost after the words are spoken and the video projector is turned off. I record, edit and post to YouTube, lectures and presentations at Muskoka Watershed Council events.

A most important event is the biennial Muskoka Summit on the Environment. On June 6th and 7th I recorded the presentations over the two day summit. Broadcast, in part, by CBC Radio’s Ideas with Paul Kennedy, (search for Buying Into Biodiversity), these were world-class lectures, presented here in Muskoka. I am delighted to be able to ensure these are available to the world.

The first is now available at the following link on Muskoka Watershed Council’s YouTube channel: Loss of biodiversity, is it important if we don’t see it?

It was presented by Justina C. Ray Ph.D. of the Wildlife Conservation Society, Canada. Justina raises some of the most important questions and current thinking on biodiversity and explores how our thinking has shifted over time, making biodiversity loss less apparent to us.