Lions and tigers and bears oh my, or, how my son went to sea

I took my son and grandson to the airport yesterday, we made a day trip out of it by going into Halifax a little early and strolling the waterfront to see the International Buskers Festival. My son tells me it is one of the best in the world. We stopped to watch a couple of performers, my grandson requested a balloon creation of a dragon from a ten foot tall man in a red suit and top hat (he was on stilts I think), and we had potstickers, egg rolls and naan rolls at the Farmers Market.

We happened to see the HMCS Sackville moored at a dock with a big sign saying it was free to tour ("by donation"). It is a decommissioned corvette veteran of three wars. My son said it was similar to a ship he served on when he was in the naval reserves. So we went on board and my son gave us the tour. He explained in detail how everything worked, showed us the sailors quarters, the engine room, the helm, the guns and a host of other things. Since my son was the helmsman on his ship when he was on board (in the reserves he did "contracts" of four weeks or so out at sea) he was able to explain in great detail how it all worked. Everything was mechanical, almost no electronics or electrical components at all. They communicated with each other via bells and speaking tubes.

He told us that they did duty in four hour shifts and the shift from 12AM to 4AM was known as "mids". When he was on mids he would sleep leaning on the wheel. The compass ticked whenever it changed direction by a degree, the ticking woke him up and he would adjust the course of the ship. He said he was very good at it and every time he went to sea they always put him on the helm. He sailed up and down the east coast of North America from Labrador to the Caribbean. He said he felt privileged to have had that experience.

In this ship the sleeping quarters and the mess were the same rooms. There were racks for hanging hammocks from the ceiling and below the racks were tables and benches for meals. The hammocks were very narrow and each rack held four hammocks in a space of about six feet in width. Pretty tight! My son said that on his ship they had bunks not hammocks, and the bunks were in a separate room from the mess. But it was still pretty crowded.

Before that we spent some time in Prince Edward Island at a cottage that belongs to my son's inlaws, near a beach. The whole area is mosquito infested, you pretty much had to stay indoors or be thoroughly bug-doped-up to go outside. At the beach were deer fly. The water was warm and the beach quite shallow for a long way with a series of sandbars that you could swim to. Some people sat on the beach in the sun and never went in the water. I quickly found out why: if you went in the water and came out covered in salt, the deer fly zeroed in on you. It was impossible to sit still once you got wet, the deer fly saw to that.

I took Hapi there with me and she quite enjoyed the beach. She went out as deep as she could while still keeping her feet on the bottom, then wandered up and down the beach to check out all the people and kids in the water. She kept a close eye on me and when I went out in the deep water she tried to follow. She did actually swim a bit but mostly she walked on her front legs and dogpaddled her rear legs. The kids at the beach quite enjoyed her.

After a few days of that I was thoroughly insect-bitten and just wanted to go home. Hapi does not travel well and she was glad to go home too. We spent a couple of hours cleaning up the cottage before leaving, one of the owners arrived the day after we left and was impressed at how clean and tidy we left the place. Back in Nova Scotia we mostly just hung out. My son is training for a marathon in the fall so he did some running, we took Hapi to the Reservoir every day and on one day we went to the zoo. It is a really nice zoo, just the right size for an hour or two of walking around looking at the creatures without burning out on too much zoo.

It is a private zoo, run mainly by one family who live on the premises. All the animals have names and little placards saying when they were born and how long they have been with the zoo. Every year they sell off some of their animals. Last year when I went they were selling guinea pigs and pygmy ponies, this year it is piglets. The llamas are in a large pen that you can walk into and pet them. Last year they let the peacocks run free but this year they are penned; someone said it was probably because they were losing them to local coyotes.

There's a resident bald eagle who is injured and can only hop-fly. There used to be two bears now there is only one; the jaguar, siberian tiger and half a dozen lions were all sleeping. One lion slept on his back with his legs in the air! Lots of gibbons and macaques, fallow deer and goats, and one very noisy cockatoo. Of course there was a corn feed dispenser for hand feeding various creatures whose pens clustered around the dispensers. Two huge pythons slept entwined with each other in the reptile house.

Today is my first day of getting caught up on chores and whatnot since the boys left yesterday. Pulled up all my garlic, picked and froze a bunch of green beans, pulled up all the pea stalks and weeded, weeded, weeded. Cleaned out the shed in readiness for stacking the firewood which is currently piled in the driveway. With cold and wet in May and June and then a heat wave for most of July, the garden is not doing so well. Two packets of basil seeds planted and none survived, cucumbers barely surviving, peas so-so and half the potato plants look ill. The blueberries did not do as well as last year and I've been lazy about picking them so the birds are doing it for me. The birds also planted sunflowers all over the yard and they are not doing well but they are flowering. The daylilies are happy though.

Now that the garlic is done I'm thinking about planting carrots and a fall crop of peas. My beans take a breather and then produce a second crop later in the summer. I used to replant them but I don't think I will this year. The tomatoes reseed themselves, I just transplant all the ones I like into one garden bed and pull up the rest as weeds. My strawberry bed has had the biscuit and hardly any of them came up this year, however tomatoes have taken over the strawberry bed so I just let them be.

TBD...

My weaving project and other stories

The duck that lost her nest and her two bodyguards left the Reservoir for a few days after the nest was destroyed but they are back now. Looks like the threesome are a thing now, tragedy has cemented their relationship. There are lots of fish nests all around the edges of both ponds with fishes guarding them. I'd love to get a photo of a fish guarding its nest but they see me coming and move away from the nest before I can snap a picture.

The parks people lower the water level on one pond in order to put a string of buoys around the beach swimming area, but over the years we dogwalkers have protested this action because it puts the fish nests in jeopardy. Some of us have gone so far as to volunteer to put in the line of buoys ourselves without lowering the water level, but I guess the town is not up for the risk of a bunch of seniors doing the work of paid staff. This year the guy who puts in the buoys did it without lowering the water level so far as to destroy the nests. He's a nice guy with a great sense of humour. We are always complaining to him about town policy with regards to the Reservoir and he passes on our complaints because as he says, it's job security for himself. As long as we complain he has enough work to remediate the park to our specifications for the foreseeable future.

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The warp...

My weaving course ended last Wednesday but none of us completed our projects. Our work has to be off the looms before the 24th because the looms are needed over the summer. Our instructor says this has never happened before and it seems to be the result of the Centre reducing the length of the course from 10 weeks to 8 and each of us having to take evenings off for personal reasons (funeral, wedding, writing competition, etc). So now I have to go into the city every other day for a week in order to finish. Road work season has started and there is now a half hour wait on the highway for that so my commute time is now two hours each way. And, I have to get a dogsitter for Hapi because it is now too warm to leave her in the car while I am in class.

...and the weft

In addition to all that, I had previously committed to doing some volunteer ushering this weekend for a show put on by one of the local high schools. So this is the weekend from hell, non-stop busyness. That's my idea of hell, busyness. By the time my project is finished I am going to be a basket case.

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Last Wednesday I took advantage of having to get a dogsitter by going into the city a little early to stroll the harbourfront boardwalk. The Bluenose II happens to be in town for a couple of days before decamping to Ontario for the summer. That ship is pretty controversial, being a classic example of a hole in the water to pour money into. However it is very beautiful and I feel like I have a personal connection to it because I once met its original builder at his boatyard just outside of Lunenburg, and back in the '80s I took my kids for a cruise around the harbour on it.

Another time I was taking the ferry from Chester to Tancook Island (see story here) and the Bluenose II happened to be in Chester then. Our ferryboat captain, as a joke, pretended to ram the ship. At the last minute he veered off, to the great relief of the Bluenose II crew lined up on deck and all of us passengers on the ferryboat.

Saturday August 15, 1998 - Nova Scotia

Halifax - humid, sunny and hot.

More puttering. I bought dogfood at Cornwallis Vets in Kentville and drove back through New Minas. Carolyn and I had a late lunch at the Ivy Deck Bistro. It was very good--chicken panini and salad and cheesecake—but it left me still hungry.

I drove to Halifax to visit a friend, Mel. Mel is restoring her several-hundred-year-old house in downtown Halifax. While she finished sanding her floor and cleaning up I wandered around Barrington and Spring Garden Road. We went for beer and pub food for supper at a place on Spring Garden Road, then met a friend of hers at another pub. We walked there and back, getting back to Mel's place just after midnight. I stayed over, having left Yohan in Wolfville.

A day in the city

I finished the weaving project on my loom at home a few days ago. Took it off the loom, knotted the fringe and cleaned up the loose ends. The loom is empty and ready for a new project. I'm thinking another rug, wider but maybe not as long, not sure yet. I can use at least two more rugs in the house, one for the bathroom and one for the hallway. This one I think will go on the floor of the loom room. And if there is still yarn left, then maybe another one for the bedside in the basement (true confessions: I sleep in the basement because it is dark and cool and it is my dog's preferred sleeping room).

Yesterday I went to the Big City to do some weaving. I realized that I was not going to complete my project by the end of the last class (next Wednesday) and was going to have to come in another day to do that, but parking is only free weekends and evenings and all my weekends in December are spoken for, so that meant I either had to come in the evening or this weekend. I hate driving home late at night, it is the one thing I loathe about going to the city for this class. And Sunday (today) the weather was supposed to be bad, so by process of elimination I had to go yesterday, on Saturday.

I took Hapi with me. She had to stay in the car while I did my weaving, which took about three hours, by the time that I got a snack at the Farmers' Market next door and waited for the centre's doors to open at 11.00 am (the website said 10.00 am so I arrived at 10.30). I got enough weaving done that I think I will be able to finish my project on Wednesday. If not, then I don't know whether I will find time to finish before 2017.

After I completed the weaving I took Hapi for a walk through the city downtown to the NSCAD art supply store to see if they had yarn I could use for weaving at a good price. Specifically, I was looking for 2/8 cotton thread. They did indeed have it but in a limited range of colours. I bought seven half-pound spools.

Hapi pranced regally the whole way, garnering lots of stares. She is a large proud dog, beautiful and she knows it. We returned to the car via the waterfront walkway. Then I drove to Point Pleasant Park, a very large park on a peninsula with views of the harbour and out to sea. The interior of the park is wooded with lots of off-leash trails. In fact, the only place dogs are required to be on leash is the trail along the shore of the park, the rest is pretty much an off leash area. It is wonderful, in my opinion as a dog owner. Dogs run around free and there are many of them of all shapes and sizes. Hapi had never been there and was I think quite amazed. So many dogs, so little time! They all have to check each other out and Hapi was zigzagging from one dog to the next. Lots of garbage bins for disposing of doggie-do, which makes the walk so civilized for owners. Dogs off leash are happy and the whole space has such a joyful air. I can appreciate that non-dog-lovers might not appreciate this but I do.

Finally, to complete the Big City trip, I stopped at the Lebanese Bakery to pick up some food items available only there. The aroma of spices that greets you when you first open the door is wonderful, I browse the shelves slowly to enjoy the scent as long as possible. Since it was late in the day some of the items I wanted were sold out but I expected that. Will have to go back another time, not a hardship. Across the street from the bakery is a Latin cafe that sells Mexican food in a tiny grocery attached to the restaurant. I picked up two packages of frozen corn tortillas, one for me and one for a friend (if she doesn't want the package then I will have to eat them myself, also not a hardship).

I got everything done that I wanted, and I think I made it up to Hapi for having to sit in the car for three hours with a prance through downtown and a social outing in the park. I went home and had pizza and beer to cap off a perfect day.

Visiting friends in the big city of Halifax

Spent time in Halifax, visited the Mary Black gallery to see rug hooking by Laura Kenney and the Halifax Farmers Market next door. After lunch we strolled the Public Gardens.

Georges Island, seen from the rooftop of the Halifax Farmers Market. That's a colourful moss rooftop garden in the foreground.

The Halifax Farmers Market rooftop garden, on the harbourfront. My camera doesn't do justice to the bright colours of the mosses and small flowering plants.

We sat on a park bench facing the pond at the Public Gardens, while a lovely group of musicians played big band music at the Bandstand behind us. Fine thing to do on a sunny Sunday afternoon in the city.

The Peony Rule and a Host of other things

Last night I went to a friend's place to play Carcassonne, I took a couple of peony flowers from my garden with me. I don't have my peonies properly propped up and I am told that the Rule of Peonies is, don't let them touch the ground, cut them and bring them indoors. I have four blooms in my living room that smell up the whole house, I can't bring any more in or I will have to say "stink up" the whole house. I love flower scents, but I find them a bit overwhelming indoors, so I am happy to leave them outdoors. But I was informed by a friend of the Peony Rule, so I am trying to conform.

My friend won the game, a first for her. It was getting boring always winning and a bit of a change to get soundly trounced. My excuse is that it was well past my usual bedtime. I like Carcassonne, and I am not usually a fan of board games. But "the board" in Carcassonne is always different, and you never really know who wins until you count up the points at the end. My friend was sure that I had won yet again until we actually counted up all our points. She left me in the dust.

Hapi and I were in the Kentville Ravine yesterday morning, she had such a great time. We ran into a young yellow lab who wanted to romp with Hapi in the brook, and then later two more labs, a yellow and a chocolate, showed up to join the fun. It was a lab fest. The four dogs, Hapi as honourary lab, ran in circles in and out of the water and around our legs. There are fish in the brook, they stayed clear of all the doglegs.

Hapi and I go "fishing" almost every evening at the goldfish pond in the nearby woods. I think the fish see Hapi better than she sees them, at least they always manage to be on the opposite side of the pond from her. She can see them if they move suddenly close to the surface, but if they move slowly or sink to the bottom she has a hard time finding them.

There are a tonne of trout in the old Wolfville reservoir, and they seem to be quite tame. I stand in an opening in the trees near the bank and when one swims by, it pauses to look at me, often swimming in closer for a better look. Is someone feeding them? I've even seen them approach Hapi, although they think better of that soon enough.

On Tuesday I went into the city with a friend to have lunch with another friend who lives there. Our City Friend is in declining health, she moved to the city for medical care and does not know many people there. She lives a rather isolated life as she has mobility issues. If not for the phone she would be very isolated indeed.

We picked her up at her apartment building and drove to an upscale Italian restaurant well beyond the budget of the two of us from the country, and way too noisy to carry on conversation. But City Friend doesn't get out much and we could hardly say No to her request. So for two hours we yelled at each other across the table. Not quite two hours, the din did die down in the last half hour or so.

It was kind of funny, both of my friends are blind and I serve as their seeing eye dog and chauffeur, but I do not know the city that well so I have to ask directions from my blind companions. They rely on their memories to tell me where to go, and sometimes their memories do not quite match up with current realities of road repair, relocated businesses, newly created one way streets, disappeared parking lots. Plus I have a disability of my own, I cannot tell left from right. Shouting Turn Right! in my ear does little more than put me into a panic.

After our leisurely bank-breaking lunch I asked City Friend if she had had enough and she said Not, I asked if there was anything else she wanted to do and she had no suggestions.

I said, Then in that case I would like to go to the Lebanese Bakery to buy some pistachio halvah, and she quickly agreed that that would be fun.

The Lebanese Bakery is truly a lot of fun, so much to look at, so many things to sample, and the staff are very friendly and funny. One young man had a smile to die for, we vied with each other to make him laugh and smile some more.

We bought pistachio halvah and chocolate halvah, grenadine molasses, pita bread, Bulgarian sheep feta, I forget what kind of olives, several different kinds of some savoury pastry (fatayer?), and a small container of tabouli. The young man with the smile gave us samples of the different fetas, in the process managed to hit his funny bone and danced around for a few minutes shaking his arm and grinning painfully.

Afterward we crossed the street (I took the arms of my two blind friends and we strode across waving white canes at the cars) to the Mexican grocery store. The lady who runs that tiny shop is the personality opposite of the Lebanese Bakery people, she sits behind the counter looking very bored and impatient with her gringo customers.

We oohed and ahhed over the many kinds of mole and salsa, I don't know if she actually rolled her eyes but I imagine that she wanted to. A few purchases there and then we crossed back to our parked car with more cane waving at the cars.

By this time rush hour was beginning so our drive back to City Friend's apartment was slow and tortuous, due to traffic and to my unfamiliarity with the city and frequent panics (Turn Right! Turn Left! No you're going the wrong way!).

We had a half hour to kill before picking Country Friend's Husband up at his place of work, so we went to the Black Market. Hardly had I parked when I heard a thump and looked up to see a young skateboarder grinning down at me. He ran into our parked car! No harm done, his board hit the tire.

He skated off and we headed into Market. It's a throwback to hippie days, incense wafting out and bright coloured intricate paint designs all over. Inside creaking old wooden floors, and tonnes and tonnes of beads and multi-coloured skirts and silver jewelry. I don't know what the music was that was playing, but it was quite pleasant. I mused about making Country Friend's Husband walk over so we could stay a little longer.

Note to self, longer visit to the Black Market next time.

Country Friend bought a freshwater pearl mala (a kind of bracelet) and I contemplated genie pants made from a recycled sari.

After picking up Husband we stopped at Costco on the way out of the city, I bought dogfood and they bought pizzas and Clif bars. We were in and out in less than half an hour, the quickest visit to Costco I've ever been on.