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...

Friday August 7, 1998 - Nova Scotia

On a PEI clay road

Wolfville - sunny and warm.

Today was a kind of mixed up day. Cindy had to go to town in the morning and no one knew when Karl would arrive home. As it turned out Karl couldn't get in until late so Cindy decided to come home instead of waiting for him in Charlottetown. Cindy's oldest son Justin had left two trout on the counter for me. Nicholas showed me how to clean them, he did one and I did the other. Later Justin woke up and I asked him about fish flies and so forth (he makes his own). He said there were lots of fish and he really "hammered" them, but only caught two little ones. After looking in cookbooks, which weren't much help, I finally floured and fried them with lemon juice. After picking out the backbone and ribs they weren't bad.

Harris church

Another church

PEI potato field

When Cindy got home we went through her garden and she picked some stuff for me, cucumbers, cabbage, beets and broccoli. I eventually packed up and left the farm around 3.00 pm. I didn't take the ferry because there were line-ups for that, instead I took the coast road to the bridge and got there around 5.00 pm. I took a few photos of churches and red clay roads along the way.

Across the bridge there was a short trip through New Brunswick to the border of Nova Scotia. In Nova Scotia I took the coast road through Spring Hill, Parrsboro and Bass River (where they make Bass River chairs) because I had never been in that part of the province before. In Parrsboro there was a little geological/dinosaur museum and the Kipawo, the old steamship that used to run through the Minas Basin between Kingsport, Parrsboro and Wolfville (Ki-Pa-Wo). Jack Sheriff of Wolfville mounted a big fundraising campaign to bring the old boat back to Wolfville; he envisaged using it as a kind of floating theatre in the tiny Wolfville Harbour. However, one thing and another, it ended up in Parrsboro. It looked terrible, all covered up in tarps, but apparently they are using it for theatrical productions.

Just outside of Truro I called Fritz and Carolyn who I will be staying with and they recommended coming through the Rawden Hills, Highway 236 via Maitland and Kennetcook. Which I did, arriving in Wolfville around 10.30 pm. Fritz stayed up a bit after I arrived there, Carolyn and I were up till 2.00 am.

Thursday August 6, 1998 - PEI

Fanningbrook - sunny and warm.

Cindy went into town in the morning to deliver a letter and pick up my camera film. Karl called about arranging to get together with the family before his next delivery.

Mark in the garden

In the afternoon we toured Orwell Corners Historic Village and had tea and pudding at Macphail Woods historic house and nursery. Cindy told me about her family relationship to Lady Fanning, the wife of a former PEI lieutenant-governor, and the namesake of Fanningbrook where Cindy and her family live. We saw goats there and Mark fell in love with the kid goats. Yohan touched noses with one of them. Cindy bought two small trees, a willow and a witchhazel.

We drove there along a route which took us on a narrow dirt road through the woods. Very pretty except for the section that was recently clearcut. She said that there was no local gravel so most of the dirt roads have no gravel on them. They call them clay roads.

Island clay is the red dusty soil everywhere. There's a bike trail being built along the old railway lines. We were goint to bike along one but there wasn't enough time and besides it was too hot. PEI is having a heat wave.

In the evening we took Mark to soccer in Cardigan and afterwards went to Basinhead Beach. There are two parallel wharfs, a bridge between them and a strong current in the water between them. Kids jump in and drift in the current either into the basin behind or out to sea depending on the direction of the tide. Mark jumped off the wharf three times and swam to shore behind the wharf. We just had peanut butter, crackers and cheese for supper.

We visited a couple more churches around Souris, a wooden one built in 1812 and stone and pink-coloured wood one built in 1904. The newer church was probably a Harris church.

Another Harris church

Yohan got lots of leftover steak and mouldy roast beef to eat today.

Wednesday August 5, 1998 - PEI

In Charlottetown.

Fanningbrook - sunny and hot.

Today Cindy had to go to town for a meeting and I needed to buy dogfood and get some camera film developed, so we drove to Charlottetown in my truck, leaving Yohan at the farm. I walked around downtown Charlottetown, which is kind of a miniature Halfiax. Province House is so small! We did our errands and went back to the farmand this time had an early supper of steak and potatoes. The steaks were from their own cows.

Causeway to Panmure Island.

After supper we (Cindy, Mark, Yohan and I) drove to Panmure Island which is a little island joined to the main island by a causeway. We got ice cream cones at the beach. I talked to an older couple on mopeds for awhile and then we toured a lighthouse. The couple were from New York, had driven the Dempster when it was still under construction, and have come to PEI every summer for the past 20 years. they asked about Haida Gwaii, which is the only Canadian place they have not yet visited (but want to). They strongly recommended visiting Newfoundland and Labrador.

Panmure lighthouse.

View from the lighthouse.

The lighthouse was six-sided and still in use but automated. We went up all the way to the light while Cindy and the lady giving the tour talked about all kinds of local events. We asked whether she knew of any Harris churches and she directed us to one near Sturgeon. Harris churches were all designed by William Harris, a nineteenth century architec who designed many churches in PEI and Nova Scotia.

Wooden Harris church.

The first Harris church we saw was on the way to Cabot Beach, a large black and white wooden church. The one in Sturgeon (St. Paul's) was half sandstone and half white painted wood, built in 1888. I took photos but I think it might have been too dark. We drove back to the farm in the dark.

Mark and friend.

Tuesday August 4, 1998 - PEI

Fanningbrook - sunny and hot.

Mark and Cindy and I went to Cabot Beach Park on the northwest side of the island, to see the outdoor sets for "Emily" (TV show) and go to the beach. We toured around the sets—different buildings with no insides, except for the school and general store.

The "Disappointed House" is built overlooking the beach to appear as a collapsed house sunk halfway into the sand. So Mark and Cindy call any abandoned house or barn a "disappointed" house/barn.

The tour guide was very bored with her job and just wanted to go to the beach but couldn't. She said she had 20 more days to go of leading tours. It was supposed to be a 25-minute tour but we ended up taking an hour. Both Cindy and I forgot our cameras which was really too bad, there was a lot to see.

After the tour we spent an hour or more at the beach. I went swimming and the water was very warm, warmer than the air it seemed like. Mark enjoyed taking Yohan on the beach everywhere, but I think Yohan just wanted to lie down in the shade.

On the way home we stopped to buy cod for dinner. We got home late and had another late supper of cod and garden vegetables.

Monday August 3, 1998 - PEI

Fanningbrook - sunny and warm.

I left Evergreen Acres fairly early and drove as much as possible along coast roads to Cape Tormentine. I was listening to the CBC radio station in Charlottetown, but PEI was too far away across the water to see it. The coast seemed typically Maritime, and like a lot of places on the Nova Scotia coasts. Shediac is a busy tourist town. I drove past the turnoff for the Confederation Bridge to PEI to go to Cape Tormentine to see the old ferry port. It is a very quiet town with a big abandoned ferry terminal. You could drive around the line-up areas and I took some photos of the bridge from there. It looks pretty amazing, you can only the see the part extending out from the New Brunswick shore, and then it just disappears into the distance. You can't see the other end of the bridge.

Around noon I crossed the bridge, it is 13 km (8 miles) long and takes about 10 minutes to cross. First you climb and climb and then you go down down down to PEI. On the New Brunswick side is nothing except signs saying No Stopping. The sides of the bridge are too high to see over so there is nothing to see except the road and other cars. On the PEI side is Gateway Village, a very elaborate Visitors' Centre with all kinds of displays and tourist shops. It was packed. There were even line-ups just to speak to someone at the Visitor Information desks and to get maps and tourist brochures. When I left I saw the line-up of cars leaving the island.

The drive to Charlottetown is less than an hour through farmland: potatoes, grain and clover. In Charlottetown I tried calling Cindy's work number from a payphone in a mall, but I just got an answering machine. She works at a daycare centre. So I looked up the name of the daycare centre in the Yellow Pages at the payphone and found the address, then tried to find a map with street names. Finally I found one in a grocery store and I memorized the location and drove out there. It was close by where the payphone was located, but I couldn't find the street number. There was a church in roughly the right location so I went in and asked a man in an office if this was the correct address. He said it was and that the daycare was in the basement. Cindy was on the phone in the daycare office.

Cindy said she had to go to the dentist before going home and she thought it would take no more than 40 minutes. She said I could just wait at the church. I parked in the church parking lot and had some lunch. I fed Yohan and took him for a walk. I waited a while and then finally pulled out some mending and did some sewing while I waited. She got back two and a half hours later.

Cindy started talking right away about her kids, just started right in as soon as we'd said Hello. Went on for awhile and then we went to pick up her youngest son Mark at a house across the street. She had a few errands to run in town and I got gas for the truck before we drove out to their farm. Mark rode with me in case I lost track of Cindy. The last stretch of driving was on a very dusty dirt road, I could not see Cindy's car right ahead of me, so it was a good thing I had Mark with me to tell me when we got to their driveway.

Their house is set way back off the road with a grove of trees behind it and lawn all around it. There's a trampoline on one side of the house. They have sold off most of the farm and kept only the house, barn and a couple of fields. It used to be 200 acres.

We had a very late dinner with Mark and Nicholas (middle son)—sausage and vegetables and salad from their garden.

Changes, minor and otherwise

A few mishaps, minor and not so minor. Exhaust system needed attention in PEI, one hour and $50 which is minor, I think. Uneventful trip from PEI to Toronto and a great visit in the city. I love the old neighbourhood and it was really nice to be back. Hapi was on her best behaviour, did really well with the dogs in the dog park. She had one brief set-to with Dobby, her host, but after that they got along fine.

I visited with some old friends, did a bit of shopping, saw a movie and hung out with the kids and grandkids.

Then today I was going to leave early to drive to Timmins. Hapi had a seizure. Out of the blue, never happened before, and scared the daylights out of me. I think it scared her pretty bad too.

So I decided to stay over one more day which meant I couldn't spare the time to see my brother in Timmins. Unfortunate but I just didn't feel good leaving not knowing what Hapi's health status was. Called a vet who said there really wasn't much to do, that generally they don't treat a single seizure because it is too hard to know what caused it.

Later in the day I spoke to a dog owner of an epileptic dog and she told me there was little point taking my dog to a vet unless she seized frequently.

By now I feel better about it and that I can probably handle this. Worst comes to worst and we'll change our travel plans but chances are good that nothing at all will happen. So I plan to leave first thing tomorrow. Hapi seems back to normal.

We have 4 days to get to Edmonton, it will be a bit tight.

My itinerary

May 3: Fanning Brook, PE
May 6: Toronto, ON
May 11: Timmins, ON
May 15: Edmonton, AB
May 17: Hay River, NT
May 23: Langley, BC

All assuming I get out the door today.

Packing seems endless. I am sure I will forget something important.

Dog is terribly nervous. She doesn't know she is coming with.

The approach of winter

This picture of Hapi was drawn on a smartphone by a young woman standing behind me in line for the local ATM. I can't believe she did this so quickly and on a cell phone! She texted me the picture. Amazing, eh?

Coming 'round to Christmas and it has been a while since I last posted.

Pottering around doing this 'n' that, nothing so time-consuming as to justify leaving off the blog, on the other hand nothing so exciting as to inspire a new post.

I've been going to an exercise class, Triple-A (Acadia Active Aging), which is OK but I can't say that I notice any kind of physical improvement. I had a student trainer who was supposed to be training me on the various machines and tracking my "improvement". Mostly we chatted about dogs and her life in northern Ontario, where she is from. And I got tendinitis in my arms. Not sure what caused that, could be coincidental or it could be the Triple-A stuff. In any case I am back on the waitlist for physiotherapy and after a month and a half I have my first appointment coming up. In the meantime the tendinitis is subsiding.

I also started skating with a friend in Triple-A. We try to go once a week but it is kind of boring as it is just a windowless indoor rink with no music and hardly any people. At times we have the entire rink of clean ice to ourselves. If I was a great skater I would be tickled pink at the opportunity to have all that ice to practice my skills on, but I am not. I am one step removed from hugging the boards for balance. I can sort of skate backwards and in circles but that is the limit of my amazing skills on ice.

I joined the Baptist Church choir. Mostly because a friend of mine is the choirmaster and every time she sees me she mentions that I can join any time and the last time she did that she caught me at a weak moment and I agreed. Her enticement was that the annual Christmas Cantata was going to be a medley of Celtic carols, complete with Celtic band. My choirmaster friend has her doctorate in music and teaches music therapy at the university, as well as numerous students in her home. So working with her is a bit of a privilege, but seeing as how organized church religion is never going to be my thing and this is the Baptist church no less, it does feel a bit strange to be hying myself off to church every Sunday. However to my surprise the singing part is actually sufficiently pleasurable that it makes up for the churchy part. There are some Acadia music students in the choir with amazing voices and it is good to be singing along with them. I can sing in tune if I am singing along with someone else who manages to be in tune, otherwise I am quite hopeless.

To round out my musical career and as somewhat of an antidote to the churchy Sundays, I also joined a ukulele group that meets on Sunday evenings in each other's homes. We bring along snacks and "something to drink", sit in a circle and strum our ukes and sing silly songs. The "something to drink" is usually a mason jar of some anonymous alcoholic beverage, so the songs get sillier as the evening progresses. There is some talk of going out carolling, with our ukuleles, in a couple of weeks. We are torn between announcing our plans in advance and not. On the one hand neighbours are likely to turn out their lights and lock their doors when they hear our ukes coming, on the other hand there might be "something to drink" on offer.

Last week I went to PEI. The grandboys were spending a couple of weeks there as their parents were overwhelmingly busy with work. I took a couple of early Christmas presents and the dog. The resident dog Fiona was not thrilled with Hapi's arrival so there was a bit of tension in the house over that. The climax was a grand dog fight over food that sent dogfood and water bowls flying all over the living room. The fight was over in a matter of seconds but the cleanup took a little longer. The dogs were sent outdoors to have it out, and they did. After that no more fighting. the occasional warning growl, but they appeared to have settled the main issues.

We have had our first snows here. Locally they forecasted snow flurries and we got a blizzard instead. Kerthump and there was a blanket of snow everywhere. While I was in PEI another snowfall to the delight of the boys. In addition there were a couple Canada World Youth fellows in the house, one of whom hailed from Indonesia. It was his first snow ever. He said that in his home town, they considered +20C (68F) cold, +40C was normal. His counterpart was from Calgary so he was pleased to see the snow and insisted on dragging the Indonesian youth outdoors for a snowball fight. The grandboys started to build a snowman but got distracted by the snow-covered trampoline.

I took the boys and the dogs to the beach where we found a patch of thin ice on the sand with no water underneath. They had great fun sliding on it and throwing sticks for the dogs. The dogs skittered and slid over the ice after the sticks. Only feet away great white-capped waves crashed on the shore.

My truck is now ready for winter. It has been painted and waterproofed and snowtires put on. My neighbour found two rims for the snowtires, he says he will keep an eye out for two more. That way I don't have to keep having the tires removed from the rims and replaced with whatever tire is suitable for the season. The waterproofing was largely successful but one leak remains that we don't know the exact location of. Nothing a small towel can't catch though.

I still have carrots, kale and mustard greens in the garden. I worried about the carrots the entire time I was in PEI because the temperature dropped below -10C at night. But I had left them covered in snow and plastic and apparently snow is almost as good an insulator as the pink fibreglass stuff. In any case even the mustard greens held up under the snow and plastic. I also have some green onions that are going on two years old and are huge. I had left them out because I didn't know what to do with them, the green parts are way too tough to use in salad. But it turns out the that the white part is very usable and since that part is now as big as leeks, I have a tonne of "green onions". And since they grew through last winter I hardly worry about them this winter. A fellow "Newcomer" gave me a recipe for kale mashed potatoes that calls for a large quantity of onion, so I have a good use for all the kale and onion still in the garden and the potatoes now stored in the basement.

Speaking of potatoes. I read a while ago about the nutritious value of potatoes. When potatoes were first brought into Europe, the Irish went for them in a big way. In fact they became the diet staple which ultimately led to the infamous Potato Famine. But before the famine, poor Irish peasants subsisted on a diet largely consisting of potatoes and a bit of milk, while poor peasants elsewhere in Europe had diets based on grains. And apparently the Irish peasants were far healthier than their counterparts anywhere else, because the potato is almost a complete food. In combination with milk it covers all the nutritional bases.

In my hippy days we eschewed anything white as being bad for you: white flour, white rice, homogenized milk, potatoes and such. To this day I associate the colour white with poor nutrition, and I even have trouble with cauliflour. But this is just wrong. White doesn't mean anything. And potatoes are actually a very healthy food. Which is good because I have always loved potatoes and felt terribly guilty eating them. No more.

Another thing about the Irish, this is about Irish Soda Bread. Back in the day firewood was at a premium in most of Europe because the nobility controlled all the forests and common people couldn't access them for fuel. Except in Ireland where the laws were different and everyone could go into the forest to gather firewood. As a result, most European villages had community bake ovens to conserve fuel and most people ate yeast-leavened bread because that was most suitable for a community bake oven. But in Ireland, common people could bake at home, they had the fuel for it, so community bake ovens were not so common. And soda bread is a quick bread that wouldn't do so well if you had to wait your turn at the community oven but is just fine if you have your very own oven for baking on your own schedule. So the Irish made soda bread while the rest of Europe made yeast or sourdough bread.

Reading. Well I just read another really great book, Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. Very long book, over 600 pages. I found it a bit overwhelming at first, the pace was, to my way of thinking, extremely slow. I'd say the first 150 pages are about the birth of the story's narrator. But once I settled into the pace I found the book extremely interesting and thoughtful. And along the way learned a bit of Ethiopian history.

Ethiopia is the one African country that did not succumb to European imperialism until the 1930s when Mussolini came along. But for the centuries and millenia before that it was an independent land never warped by colonialism. It also is home to some of the oldest Jewish and Christian communities. The Queen of Sheba was thought to have come from there, although that is disputed now.

Anyway, the book is set in modern times and the story is set against the Ethiopia of Haile Selassie but it is not about that. The story's narrator is a conjoined twin separated shortly after birth and raised by adoptive Indian parents. He becomes a surgeon and ultimately practices in New York. That is the bare bones of the story, there is of course much more to it which you will discover if you decide to take on this giant of a book. Along the way you will learn a bit of history of a very interesting country. And since the author is a surgeon himself, you will learn a bit about surgery as well. But Mr Verghese is a very thoughtful surgeon with a lot to say about life in general and the practice of medicine in particular. Very satisfying read.

OK, sorry about the long wait, if in fact you have been waiting for my next post. And I imagine some people who might have waited have given it up so my audience is no doubt considerably smaller. Although I have always assumed that it was small to begin with, now it is probably just that much smaller. Eventually it will dwindle to nothing, I will stop writing altogether and nobody will notice.

Sunday morning at the cottage

(Roddy at the beach)*

I am on holiday in Prince Edward Island, staying at a large cottage near an ocean beach. I have the cottage to myself and although I cannot see the ocean I can hear it. The cottage is in the woods facing a potato field, robins chirping nearby. The resident rabbits are getting their exercise evading my dog.

The purpose of this holiday is to visit with my grandsons who are staying at the nearby farm of their PEI grandparents. At this moment I am sitting on the screened-in deck (lots of mosquitoes and other biting insects here!) with my morning coffee, taking advantage of the cottage wifi. Shortly Hapi and I will take a stroll on the beach to see if there are any other dogs about to play with. Hapi had quite a vigourous workout last evening with two dogs she met there.

I arrived here on Friday afternoon after a near-6-hour drive. Google Maps told me it would be a 5-hour drive, but I am not a fast driver and we did stop at a nice picnic park half way for lunch and a romp in the brook (for Hapi).

Friday evening we (Grammy Cindy, Tristan, Phelan and I) went to the nearby town of Morell for the Morell River Festival Parade, a 15-minute affair involving decorated cars and a couple of firetrucks.

Yesterday we went to the Wood Islands Seaglass Festival---in Wood Islands of course---and the boys collected lots of shards of sea glass on the beach there.

They had a fellow who would toss a bucket full of sea glass shards onto the beach, then they'd set loose the kids who collected the glass and turned it in for prizes, the fellow collected back all the glass in his bucket and returned it to the beach when no one was looking, and there'd be another round of kids sent out to hunt for glass for prizes...

Grammy Cindy makes goat milk soap which she sells at local markets, fairs and festivals, she had a booth at the Seaglass Festival. Tristan is old enough to be a help at her booth, he went early to help her set up and minded the soaps while Grammy took bathroom breaks.

Phelan and a neighbour boy Roddy came to the festival later with me, we took some back roads to get there which was kind of fun. Back roads on the island are narrow red clay affairs through the woods, when another car came in the other direction we pulled way over to the side and drove through the overhanging branches of the trees. Roddy and Phelan loved the slapping tree branches on the windshield, they thought I should drive faster to see if we could break the branches. I declined, I thought it was a toss-up which would break faster, the branches or the truck.

My truck is turning the colour of PEI, a kind of ochre-red.

Last night on the beach I met a Russian couple from Connecticut with a little dog that played chase with Hapi. I told the couple that I inherited Hapi from my son, they pointed to their dog and said, We too! Tristan was collecting driftwood that he hoped to take back to Toronto to sell to a local pet store that uses it in their reptile terrariums, and Cindy collected Irish Moss that she uses in her soaps. I collected dog poops.

Later, back at the cottage, Grampa Karl sawed some logs while Grammy Cindy, Tristan and I played Blurt. Several times there were "showdowns" between Cindy and I, Tristan called it Granny Wars.

Later today we will go paddling on the Morell River and on Monday we hope to go cycling on the Confederation Trail for lunch in St Peters. I will head back to the mainland on Tuesday.

Can't tell you how idyllic it is here, a wonderful vacation spot. The couple from Connecticut said they came here at a friend's insistence, that normally they never would have considered going north for a vacation. Now they go nowhere else, they love it here. The ocean is warm here because it is a relatively shallow protected area in the Gulf of St Lawrence. Historically it has always been a kind of vacation spot, even the Miqm'ah used to come here from the mainland for summers of fishing, berrying and the odd bit of hunting.

On another note, my brother is still in hospital being treated for a serious infection. They will set him loose in just over a week, but he had intended to be spending this time on his own island vacation spot on the west coast. He is weak, bored and frustrated but getting better, we hope. Such are the vicissitudes of one's 60s.

* The photo is young Roddy getting ready to throw a rock into the sea.

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!

It's a dog life

Busy busy busy! That's my excuse here. Since the last post I have had family visitors, finished the fence, gone to PEI twice, and now have Sam and his two dogs Hapi and Hiro in residence.

The dogs are huge, hairy, smelly and do not play well with others. While Dobby the boxer and the Toronto branch of the family were here we had three major dog fights where Hapi and Hiro ganged up on Dobby and had him yelping in distress. Dobby is a big dog, 80 lbs big, but Hapi and Hiro dwarf him.

I was really happy to have Dobby here, he was glad to see me and I enjoy his affectionate nature. He is not hairy and not smelly. Seeing him take a beating from Hapi and Hiro did not sit well. I am sure he was very glad to leave here and get back home to his less aggressive dogpark buddies. He had war scars to show off.

Sam thinks that given time the three dogs would have worked things out and grown to be more friendly with each other. I think he may be right but Dobby was being seriously traumatized by the process. He did have a very good vacation in PEI though.

Taking Hapi and Hiro for walks is difficult, I cannot control the two of them alone and they are aggressive toward other dogs. I would like to be able to let them off the leash but there are no places around here that I can be assured that we will not encounter other dogs. I got haltis for them but as fast as I get them on the dogs the first dog has its halti off. I tried walking them separately but Hiro howls continuously when he is alone.

My current strategy is to get them used to short separate walks wearing the halti. Sam says he notices that after a couple of days of that he already notices that Hiro is more controllable on the leash. But I don't really know what to do about their aggression toward other dogs. I wonder if they were permanently separated whether they would be less confident and less aggressive, but Sam doesn't think it will make a difference.

Wilfred delivered two cords of wood to me and we shared a bit of Harbour gossip and chatted about the dogs. He suggested electronic collars for them. That might help, but I wonder if it would make any difference through their thick fur. Also I hate the idea of electric shocks. I suppose though that it might be better than the alternatives.

Sam and I are used to living alone, sharing this house is not easy. Not only are we trying to adjust to shared living accommodations but he is adjusting to a new job that he doesn't particularly like so far. He thought it would be better than it is turning out to be.

I went to Prince Edward Island the first time to visit Isaac and Gretel at the cottage they had the use of while on vacation. Gretel's parents live in PEI and her aunt purchased the cottage a couple of summers ago for the use of all of the family. Her Dad made some extensions on the cottage, three added bedrooms and a screened in deck. He operates a wood mill and was able to use mostly wood that he had milled himself.

The cottage is set in the woods a short walk from a sandy beach, you can't see the ocean but you can hear it. Mornings we would walk with Dobby and the kids along the beach, later in the day we would go swimming there. Gretel's stepmom organized a paddle trip down a local river one sunny afternoon, I brought my kayak along for that.

We all returned to Nova Scotia after a couple of days, meeting Sam and his dogs in Truro as he drove from his home in BC. Thanks to the wonders of cell phone texting, we were able to connect at a gas station and drive the rest of the way to my house together. It was a hectic short family visit with four adults, three giant dogs and two kids.

Unbeknownst to me Sam was expecting me to dogsit for three days while he went to a wedding in Cape Breton. I had previously agreed with Isaac and Gretel to take their oldest son Tristan back to PEI to spend a couple of weeks on his grandparents farm there, so the dogsitting job was not a welcome kink in my plans. We settled on my dogsitting for one day and putting the dogs in a kennel for the remainder of the time at Sam's expense.

The dogsitting day turned out to be a rainday in which we all stayed indoors. Isaac gave me access to his Netflix account so Tristan and I watched movies all day while the dogs moped.

My second trip to PEI was fun, this time I took my bike with the intention of doing some cycling on the Confederation Trail (aka Tip-to-Tip Trail). When the trains were retired on the island the provincial government turned the train tracks into a hiking and biking trail from one end of the island to the other, hundreds of kilometers of flat, gravelled trails through farms, woodlands, marshes, bogs, barrens and small towns. Lots of little B&Bs and cafes have sprung up along the trail, along with bike and canoe rental places, information rest stops, craft and gift shops and so forth. Really quite delightful.

The towns are close enough by that you can easily bike from one to the next in an hour or so, depending on speed. I planned only to bike the part of the trail in the vicinity of the cottage and the farm, but I saw lots of bikes loaded up with gear for longer trips. People from all over, I chatted with a man from Minnesota and a couple from the UK.

My first day of biking I planned to do a bit of grocery shopping and stop at the river we had previously paddled for a swim. The second day was cooler and windier, I biked another section of the trail that bordered the Gulf shore (Gulf of St. Laurence).

On the one rainy day of my PEI stay, Gretel's stepmom came over with Tristan and three neighbour boys to play a board game with me. On my last day there Fiona the boxer (Dobby's sister, living at the farm) had nine puppies to the great delight of the four boys. One of them described how one of the pups was born in a 'plastic bag' which Fiona licked off. They wondered about the logistics of eight nipples and nine pups.

Just before leaving the island I dropped by to see Fiona and her litter, she looked kind of shocked. Perhaps I am just projecting, but that's how I would feel in her place.

Now I am playing catch-up, taking care of all the stuff that was neglected while visiting PEI and with family. Two days spent weeding, harvesting and replanting my garden, some time working with the dogs, and catching up with neglected friends.

I stopped by the hardware store to pick up a new composter I had ordered, the fellow at the customer service desk asked me what I was up to now: every time I came in I was working on some project or another. I told him I had a list, I was making my way through it. He carried the composter out to the truck and I had to let the two dogs out of the back in order to get the composter in. I managed to shove the dogs back in after the composter. Hapi likes getting into vehicles, Hiro does not so he takes some coaxing and shoving.

I am thinking that I will probably keep one of the dogs, Hapi, and send the other one home with Sam. However Sam is now talking about going to college here, meaning that he might end up staying for several years. As things stand at the moment, I do not think having him live in my basement is realistic for either of us but I do not know where he can rent an affordable place for him and Hiro. Until we work that one out I am focussing on halti-training Hiro and somehow getting the two of them to either adjust to separation or be less aggressive with other dogs, or both.

My home is full of dog hair and dog smell. As luck would have it my own sense of smell has deteriorated with age so the smell is not so irksome as it might be, but I know that visitors react to it. The dogs have recently been groomed but you'd never know it, their fur is so thick!

The dogs poop in the back yard which attracts flies, I try to clean up the messes as quickly as possible but the dogs prefer to spend the night sleeping outdoors which means that in the morning the yard is full of flies. Sam says if I got into a regular dogwalking routine they wouldn't poop in the yard, but with all the problems of walking two giant aggressive dogs, that's not going to happen anytime soon.

The list of stuff to be done before winter is full. The firewood has been delivered and needs to be stacked. Places for stacking need to be cleared of other things which in turn need to be stored somewhere yet to be determined. The dogs need rain shelter other than my tiny living room. The kitchen faucet needs to be replaced. The decks need painting or something. The usual lawn mowing and gardening tasks. Several trees need pruning. I need to build four new garden frames for next year. The basement is a mess...

I got to two plays, Beowulf and Driving Miss Daisy, and hope to get to The Vigil and Shakespeare in the Park (Halifax). I managed to get to the Kempt Shore Music Festival and I have a ticket for the Deep Roots Festival, but I missed Stanfest and will (have already?) miss the Lunenburg Folk. Next year. One weekend planned this month at a friend's cottage with a bunch of women friends, the Labour Day weekend planned with a visit from an old Ottawa friend, a weaving workshop in September and hopefully a kayak camping trip in October and somehow a weekend at Milford Lakes Lodge (I have a Groupon I need to use there).

My life has just become a busy round of projects, culture and socializing, I kind of miss the old days of reading and knitting and long walks alone. The fact that my posting here has become so sporadic and that I am not getting near as many photos in is kind of indicative. No doubt this shall pass, but I do wonder when.

Post-vacation post

I was in PEI from the evening of July 15 (Tuesday) to the early morning of July 19 (Saturday).


Had a great time, except for the bugs. At times the mosquitoes and horseflies were so irritating that I just wanted to go home, right now. Phelan woke up wailing several times in the middle of one night, apparently not being able to handle the itching.

You weren't safe, even in the water, you had to keep your eye out for jellyfish and just when you thought you were safe a horsefly would buzz out of nowhere forcing you to dive underwater, jellyfish or no.




But aside from the bugs I had a wonderful time.






The weather was pretty perfect, the company terrific and the scenery marvelous.





We had beach bonfires and built sandcastles, ran the dogs on the beach, and just hung out.


There were five kids ranging in age from 2 to 12 years old and they all got along really well.



The odd bit of bickering over cards ("you cheated!" "did not," "yes you did!" "did not," etc.), an occasional tantrum over ice cream, but other than that they played pretty well together.

One evening the kids put on a play of Anne of Green Gables, directed by Cindy, their grandmother/aunt.










Isaac and Gretel's boxer Dobby got to play with his sister Fiona; his brother Boone was there but due to an injury was not allowed to play with his siblings.

Really too bad, we all felt very sorry for him, confined to the house and having to wear a cone around his neck, while his brother and sister romped along the beach.

On the day we were leaving PEI I asked Isaac and Gretel if I could take Dobby with me and they said Yes; however Tristan was not happy about that. After a bit of negotiating he resigned himself to life without his dog for a couple of weeks.

Found key

So this morning, while stepping outdoors to empty my chamberpot, I saw my key lying on the ground right by the door.

In plain view.

I find it extremely hard to believe I could have missed it yesterday, I searched the area thoroughly several times. Very odd.

I'm off to PEI today.

Planning a little holiday

Today was a lovely day, warm sunny and breezy. Mike thought a thunder storm was on its way though.

I spent several hours in the morning and afternoon sanding, epoxying and glassing various pieces for the kayak. I glassed the second sides of the upper coamings and the first sides of the hatch lips. I sanded any rough edges I could find.

Around 4.00pm I headed into town to phone Isaac and see Fritz and Carolyn. Isaac and Gretel are now in PEI on vacation and I am going to join them for a couple of days this week. Be good to see the kids.

I hung around for a few hours, looking at Carolyn's photos of her niece's wedding on Saturday and having supper of bison burgers and strawberries. The last of this season's strawberries are being sold off in the Farmer's Markets, and the first of the raspberries are now on sale. Maybe I'll take some raspberries to PEI with me.

I am going to drive to the ferry at Caribou, and Isaac and Gretel will meet me at the ferry terminal at Woods Island on Prince Edward Island. They have a cabin on the beach for a week at Savage Harbour on the north side of the island and Gretel says it is totally wonderful (and has a spare bed for me). Most folks take the fixed link, the Confederation Bridge in New Brunswick, to the Island now so the ferry shouldn't be crowded. If you were to draw a straight line from Baxter's Harbour to Savage Harbour, it would pass a lot closer to the ferry terminals than the fixed link. It costs the same whether you take the ferry or the bridge.

On the way home at night, my keychain fell open while trying to open the house door and I dropped all my keys on the ground. I managed to find all but one key, the door key to my truck. I have a spare but I sure hope I can find the key when it is light.