The log cabin needed some breathing room behind it, to the east, where it nestled into a fairly steep hill.  A little terrace there would keep it high and dry in winter, and allow a walk-about around the exterior.

But I had used up the best stone on the first terrace. It now propped up the cabin’s entrance area. I would have to dig deep for more stone.

Many years ago, when our young family had moved into our home on Fulton Avenue in Toronto, the contractor had recommended “tavern-grade” oak for a reno on the main floor. “The B-grade stuff is half the price but actually looks nicer with the variations in grain and colour,” he had told us. Sold!

So my task now was to build a pretty and functional retaining wall out of the remaining B-grade stone. This one would be a book-end to the first terrace, with a straight stretch tracking parallel to the cabin wall, and a freelance curve ending next to a tree.

Working with gravity and gnarly stone

I got the area excavated with a spade, and put down some gravel.  With my old wheelbarrow and the benefit of gravity, I trucked the stone downhill to the job site.

The stone was local Gneiss, which had been washed by glaciers here thousands of years ago. The B-grade stone was gnarly, generally less straight than the first batch I had picked, and with rougher edges that sometimes needed to be knocked off with a chisel.  Its colours were motley, ranging from pink to dark blue-grey. But as I got the stone sorted, and a straight and level line put in as my guide, the wall started to come together.

Cross-cultural fun

Our younger daughter Colleen had arrived, with her boyfriend Tim, and his family from France. Tim and Colleen stayed in the log cabin, getting a nice view of the lake each morning through the trees. The two families enjoyed some cross-cultural fine dining, both with home-cooked meals and at some nearby eateries.

We also took advantage of a great stretch of weather to swim, canoe and kayak in Minden Lake, and walk to nearby rapids. One day, the gang swam about an hour down the Gull River — an annual tradition known as “floating your hull down the Gull.” We treated ourselves to some Kawartha Dairy ice cream as a reward — gazing at dozens of flavours and their mouth-watering descriptions as we stood in line outside the dairy. Muskoka Mocha, Death by Chocolate, Moose Tracks — there were way too many choices.

Flexing to the flora

The following week, I kept at the stone-walling, building up the second terrace course by course, and packing it with heart-stones. The wall behind the cabin was interrupted by two conjoined trees and their large root-ball — I walled around it rather than remove the trees and roots.  They gave the cabin some privacy from the neighbor to the east.

A big old Beech tree had been taken down nearby due to disease, and Nadine suggested some flower pots to go on the tree stumps. We kept it simple, with colourful and shade-tolerant impatiens — by mid-summer they had come into their prime.

I still had some nice heavy capstones left to crown stone terrace number two.  The little terrace curved to end at the foot of a young maple tree, which was growing fast. It would add to the forest colour around the cabin, especially in fall.

From B-grade stone had come a cute and functional little A-grade terrace!