I spent the weekend at my mom's place at what I call the farm.

It's the place where I grew up, sort of. The house my mom lives in now is one my dad built in 2013, and they moved in there together. My sister lives in the main farmhouse, the one I actually grew up in. So the geography of the whole thing has shifted around me over the years, but the pull is exactly the same.

That's the thing about the farm. It has a hook in me. There's a piece of my heart that is always there.

We had a couple of scotches, my mom and I. Nothing fancy about it, just sitting and talking the way you do when there's no schedule and nowhere else to be.

My sister has built this incredible garage man cave. She shed? Whatever we're calling it, it's hers, and she and her husband and their family have turned it into something really special. There's a wooden kayak hanging on the wall, a barbell, a treadmill, and a projector throwing the Jays game onto a screen the size of the whole end of the garage. I'm proud of everything she's done out there. She also runs marathons, which is wild to me.

And there are the dogs, Luna and Nova, who are very much part of the deal.

We also went out to see the new Spider-Man at the Cineplex in Peterborough. Brand New Day. On the way in we joked that she wasn't allowed to cry, because come on, it's Spider-Man, how emotional could it possibly get.

Turns out: VERY. And I may have had a few tears of my own.

I split some wood, because of course I did.

Then there's the quiet.

I walked the lane past the old apple tree, the one that's still loaded down every single year like it has something to prove.

The sky did the thing it does out there, the whole west end going orange while the rest of it stayed blue.

And there was a deer standing out in the beans. It watched me the entire way past. Didn't run, didn't flinch, just followed me with its eyes like I was the one who needed explaining.

At night the sounds were exactly what they've always been. Iconic is probably the wrong word, but it's the one that keeps coming to mind. You don't realize how much of a place lives in your ears until you go back and hear it again.

It was just a great weekend.