Going on vacation

Halifax Public Gardens (I visited after the hospital which is nearby)

This will be my last post for a while, I am going away and not taking the computer with me so I will probably not be posting anything until some time after I get back. I'd like to say "as soon as I get back" but invariably I have to hit the ground running when I return home with various things left undone while I was away, not to mention putting away travel things and such.

Hapi will stay here, I have a young friend who will house- and dog-sit for the duration. He says he is grateful for a whole house for a whole month all to himself (and Hapi). Not something he is used to.

I've been very busy getting ready to go. One last visit with my friend in the hospital yesterday. She is much better than she was the last time I saw her, not loopy at all but quite lucid and present. Since the last time I saw her she had all of her family visiting which was quite a treat for her. She's in isolation because of the antibiotic-resistant infection, so she can only see her grandchildren via FaceTime on her iPad. Adults can visit provided they gown up and wear gloves.

I called my friend before going into the city to see her. She asked for a sandwich wrap and a pound of butter. I picked up those things before going to the hospital; I also brought a container to store the butter in. She has no appetite for hospital food, the sandwich wrap came in two parts, one she ate while I was there and the other she saved for supper. Not sure what she wanted the butter for, maybe because the hospital gives her margarine with bread.

We yakked about the great visit she had with her family and about grandchildren. Then we FaceTimed her sister in Toronto, who was in the midst of cleaning behind her frigerator on a very hot humid day; she was in her underwear. She said she was doing this because a friend told her that she (the friend) did it every two weeks, and since she (the sister) had never done it she was feeling guilty and thought she ought to be doing this. On a hot humid day. I've never cleaned behind my fridge either and I'm not going to start now, it's probably totally disgusting back there.

So my friend in the hospital may or may not be there when I get back. She may or may not get out of the hospital and into the nursing home bed reserved for her when the infection is deemed cured.

My trip involves five flights, stopping in two places in British Columbia, one in Alberta and one in Ontario. I will be seeing my new grandchild, three sons, multiple old friends and one or two brothers, depending on whether one of the brothers can find the time. I was able to schedule myself for the family and friends out west but closer to me (Ontario) not so much. The theory being that the ones in Ontario could always try to visit me here. The trip is complicated enough, it would be impossible to do it to everyone else's schedule.

Since last I posted I went on a little road trip with a friend to a rock concert and someone's cottage in Pictou County. We camped out the night of the concert. The concert was great, the headliners that night were Matt Andersen and Alan Doyle.

Matt Andersen (there was a screen as well as the stage)

Alan whipped up the audience something fierce. The concert was outdoors and most people were standing (my friend and I had bleacher seats). Most all of them knew all the words from when Alan was with Great Big Sea, so there was a lot of singing along and waving of arms and cell phone flash lights. According to Alan, Great Big Sea got their first exposure to mainland Canada in Pictou County so for him it was like a second home.

Alan Doyle and the Beautiful Gypsies, stirring up the crowd

The friend's cottage was an amazing place, but so infested with (really aggressive vicious) mosquitoes that you could not step outdoors. We could look at the waterfront but not actually go to it. So we sat inside and had a great supper and lots of gin and tonics. Would have been nicer without the mosquitoes.

My friend's dog loves me because he knows I own Hapi, his favourite female dog. He followed me everywhere. When I went outside to back the car closer to the cottage he came too and I had to pick him up and put him in the car so I wouldn't back over him; he's not a bright dog.

Public Gardens commemorative bed

Cottages

Just back from a day and a night at a lakeside cottage, before that two nights at a seaside cottage.

The seaside cottage was the more primitive, but quite comfy and in a lovely setting. Its only downside was the terrible infestation of mosquitoes.

During the daytime with sun and a brisk breeze it was OK, but as soon as the sun dipped and the wind died, the bugs rose. We stayed indoors in the evenings, but there was no escape, they plastered themselves to every screen and when anyone went in or out, they scooted right in.

The owner of the cottage--Jean--is immune to mosquitoes, their bites cause no discomfort to her. She is mildly irritated by their buzzing around her, but that's it. Her sons seem to have inherited her immunity, but the rest of us suffered.

Anyway, it was a good time. We swam and paddled and sailed, and sat around gazing out to sea in the sun. In the evening we ate and drank ourselves silly.

Jean is 80 and still paddles her kayak regularly. She used to go to the cottage for 5-6 months every year, but now she is down to 3 months, the cold weather bothers her more. She has a paddling buddy and they regularly paddle back and forth between their cottages on opposite sides of the island. Her cottage is on a small island linked to the mainland by a causeway.

The outing to the lakeside cottage was a get-together of seven women, and the 13-year-old daughter of one of them and her friend, for nine in total. But the cottage was large and spacious with beds for all.

We noticed that all of our vehicles were red.

The lake was blessedly free of biting insects. Not entirely but a great deal better than the seaside location. There was a thunderstorm in the middle of the afternoon that we watched from indoors, but it passed and the sun came out again.

More paddling and more swimming. I love swimming in a lake. Nova Scotia lakes are very tannic which makes the water very dark. You can't see a thing when you go underwater.

I wanted to get the kayak into the lake to wash off the salt from the ocean. Three women paddled one canoe, and the two girls took the other canoe. We went down to the end of the lake and back, not very far.

We had a potluck supper the evening of the day we all arrived, and seven women can produce enough food to feed an army.

Our host was in a mood for mixed drinks, so we sampled her pina coladas, crantinis and watermelon-vodka slushes. Drums appeared and several women drummed away for an hour or so. I am not a huge fan of drums but whatever, to each his own.

There were loons calling in the evening.

Breakfast was interesting. Our host provided little 4-inch pastry shells and bowls. We each got two eggs and there were trays of chopped veggies and bacon. You mixed up your eggs and whichever chopped veggies you wanted, added a little cream and then poured it into your pastry shell. The little pies were collected on baking sheets and baked in the oven to produce individual breakfast quiches. With unlimited coffee and jugs of fruit juice, we ate our quiches and sliced cantaloupe on the screened deck.

As the sun warmed up we washed our dishes and moved to beach chairs by the lake. Chatted and swam and took group photos.

Eventually we all tore ourselves away to return to civilization. We were only a half hour drive out of town.

Isn't summer grand?

Free trip to wherever

[Dobby and the grandsons on a beach in PEI, last month]

The next best thing---or maybe even a better thing---to owning a summer cottage is having friends and family who invite you to theirs. I am off to a friend's cottage today and another friend's cottage in a few days. One on the ocean and t'other on a lake.

Having grown up with a cottage on a lake I prefer a lake for swimming in, but oceans have their special charms too. And invites to summer cottages are like winning a free trip to wherever. Yay!

Sunglasses, swimsuit, booze, hamburgler buns... check!

Cottage life in Petite

I've been away the last few days, visiting a friend at a cottage in Petite Riviere (pronounced Ptee Reveer). Wonderful hot weather, but the ocean was a bit cold. Nevertheless I managed to go swimming every day. My friend was taking some vacation time to spend at the family cottage with her parents, Mary and Neil. Mary will be 90 this fall, Neil is 93. They are frail and Mary has dementia, but Neil is very bright, gentle and humourous. He said, Don't look forward to being my age. If you get to be my age, deal with it, but don't look forward to it.

Actually, I wish I had had a notebook to write down some of the things Neil said, he was full of smart comments on a variety of topics.

The first couple of days I was there Neil was hard at work on his computer, drafting an article about a book he is reading and very much likes, The Pagan Christ by Tom Harpur.

(the kite propped up by the chair is to reduce glare on his computer screen)

Neil is a retired Baptist minister and I suppose it is a good thing he is retired otherwise I am sure they would kick him out for heresy. He has very radical views on faith and religion. Among other things he advises that it is not necessarily a good thing to have a strong faith. If you do, he says, hang on to it, but doubt is a good thing too. It's always good to question your faith. He says he went to Divinity College when he heard the call as a young lawyer, but in retrospect he thinks he should have waited until he was more mature. His faith has changed over the years.

Every morning he would come out of his bedroom singing Oh What a Beautiful Morning! and we would all join him for a chorus. What a great way to start the day! Other times, if he was working on something by himself, you could hear him singing to himself a mix of hymns and popular songs.

One of Neil's daughters is a doctor and when she catches him on the computer, which is always, she has a list of chores and projects she wants him to work on that involve physical activity and turning the computer off. She says he is not getting enough exercise and so she comes up with chores that will get him moving instead of sitting in one place all day, hunched over his computer. One evening she explained to him exactly why she wanted him to move, why he needs to exercise in order to combat pain. It was very interesting, her specialty is sports medicine and she understands very well what happens when you don't exercise enough. I was kind of surprised but also not surprised when she said that the best thing to do for the pain of arthritis is exercise to strengthen the muscles around the area of pain. Kind of hard to do though.

One day we went on a long walk from Petite Riviere to Broad Cove along the shore.


The trail we followed went through different terrains, sometimes we walked on pavement, sometimes on dirt roads, sometimes on sand, sometimes on rounded beach rocks and sometimes on sharp pointy rocks.

The views varied as well, we passed several rocky or sandy coves, little lakes, fields, forest and little cottages.

In one place we were walking on smooth rounded rocks, easy on the feet, but through very sharp salt grass, I even got a cut on my knee from a grass blade!


At the end of the two-hour hike we reached Broad Cove, and stopped for drinks and food at a local cafe. We had planned ahead and left one car in Broad Cove so that we did not have to walk back afterwards.

On another day we went for an evening sail on the doctor's sailboat moored in a nearby estuary. That was very pleasant, we watched the sun set from the boat.

My friend and I also spent one evening on the cottage deck watching for shooting stars. In spite of being almost a week past the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, we still managed to see several of them. My friend also pointed out Mars, which is very bright now and will not be this close to the Earth again in our lifetimes.

Neil and Mary have owned this property for over fifty years. They built the small cottage and spent most summers while their family was growing up there. Now the grandchildren spend their summers there. It's a very simple place but very comfortable. Their kids have made some improvements, enlarging the deck and the kitchen, and installing an outdoor shower for washing off sand and salt before coming into the cottage.

I have to say the outdoor shower is completely wonderful. But I also enjoyed the pile of old National Geographics, a must for any cottage!

The area is full of small cottages similar to theirs, and many families have summered there over the past half century. One of the nice things about Nova Scotia is that many people have small cottages and cabins along the seashore and inland along the many small lakes. These cottages are relatively inexpensive, most are simple and entirely adequate for summer living on the lake or seashore. Nova Scotia being so small also means that they are very accessible too. Most people can get to their cabin or cottage within an hour. Just about everyone I know either owns one or has access to one owned by a friend or relative.

We went to the local store in Petite a few times, each time we asked about the latest news on Hurricane Bill. It is almost certain that Nova Scotia will be affected in some way by this hurricane, but it is as yet unclear what it's path will be and how severe the effect will be. There was general agreement though that there would be spectacular waves on Sunday, accompanied by varying amounts of wind and rain. The last I heard is that it will pass by out to sea, making landfall on the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland, but Nova Scotia would see high winds and over 100 mm of rain. That's a lot of rain!

I enjoyed the three days I spent in Petite very much, great scenery, "refreshing" swimming, good hiking, great conversations, and lots of sun. I do believe I have acquired a bit of a sunburn!