Magical Mystery! just down the road...

From CBC News website on Thursday February 6:

"Like Magic: The mystery behind Wolfville's makeshift outdoor rink"

And from the Wolfville Reservoir Ponds blog (see link on right side of this page):

"Thursday, 6 February 2020

Large Pond (whose name might be "Darlene")

We recommend against skating until the current weather 

system has passed.  Local ice enthusiasts might wish to 

assemble Saturday in Guy Fawkes or Salvador Dali masks to 

reassess tactics and hopefully free the track and rink from 

their crusty new overlord.  Once conditions allow, Mayor 

Cantwell, honourable members of Wolfville Town Council, and 

their robustly-taxed flock are (UNOFFICIALLY) invited to 

skate (AT THEIR OWN RISK) on this ghost of town water 

committees past, maintained on a skate-lace budget.

Small Pond

Deep and unstable; do not use!"

I might just have to go skating, despite back problems!


Ice storm overnight has left everything encased in ice, including my car. Unfortunately I cannot open the doors when they are icy so I just have to wait for warm temperatures again. Physiotherapy appointment this morning has unfortunately not been cancelled but just about everything else has.

December howls

Almost everyone I know around here was bleary-eyed with exhaustion yesterday, none of us could sleep with the wind howling through the night. After two days it finally died in the wee hours of this morning.

Can't speak for anyone else but I lay awake listening and imagining worst case scenarios with all that noise outside. Last night I did manage to go to sleep in confidence that the wind was slightly less howly.

The hot the cold the rain the snow, I can live with all that, but the wind, oh the wind...

Adventures with Dorian

By the light of a headlamp

Hurricane Dorian was here.

A day and a night of strong wind and heavy rain, the power went out just after supper time. Don't often see the world that dark. There was enough rain that the sump pump kicked in mid-afternoon but it stopped when the power went out. Note to self, get a generator to keep the sump pump going when it needs to.

On Sunday all was sunny and clear with a bit of a cool breeze. I went walking around town to see how things fared. No electricity anywhere, all the shops closed except one convenience store. I talked to the women who worked there, they got coffees from the Fire Department and kept the store open all day for anyone who could pay cash. I went to a friend's house and we walked through a ravine to the Reservoir with our dogs, we had to bushwack the trail because of so many downed trees. Between his bad hip and my bad knee it was kind of ludicrous, us clambering over and under and through the bushes. The dogs just traipsed on through, waiting for us up ahead on the trail. At the Reservoir it wasn't quite so bad, we ran into two groups of students having picnic breakfasts there.

On my way home I had to go around a tree blocking the road, another friend drove up and stopped to chat. I said how it was impossible to find coffee in this town and she said she had some, why didn't I come to her place. I had to take Hapi home first and then we drove to my friend C's place. I've known C a long time, we were both single parents back in the '80s in this town. She stayed, I left. Now she lives in a housing co-op for seniors. They have a generator, so in all the hallways are electric outlets powered by the generator. People were charging phones, running their fridges off long extension cords, and of course boiling water for coffee. C's apartment was small but really nice, she is very happy there. Even though the rent is very low she still has to work to afford to get by. We talked about that and I told her about my friend B, she told me about a mutual friend L who is also in dire straits. C has her health, she could probably get by without working if she didn't have a car, but the car is a lifeline for her.

Later C took me for a tour of the co-op. It consists of several buildings on a large campus, they have a vegetable garden and numerous flower gardens. In the main building is the Lounge (the common room) and two libraries, fiction and non-fiction. C is in charge of the libraries. There's a small gym, a craft room and a woodworking room. They have a rack of shared bicycles. When we stopped by the Lounge there were a bunch of people there, one of the residents had made a large pot of chicken soup and it was being shared. I had a little bit. There was a man visiting his Mom who lived there. He'd been evacuated out of his apartment building in Halifax because of Dorian. He recognized C, he went to school with C's son and used to come by their place all the time.

C was going to drive me home but something came up so I walked. Saw lots more trees down. Most of them were uprooted, the rain softened the ground and the wind whipped those trees right out. I saw one tree that was easily three feet in diameter on its side. I saw another tree that looked like it had been folded down. Lots of trucks and tree fellers out working, quite a few generators humming away. With the power down there was no reason to stay home so lots of people were out walking or driving around. I hear there's a shortage of gas now. A wheel bearing is out on my car so I don't want to drive it till it gets repaired. That was scheduled for tomorrow and with the power out I wasn't sure it was going to happen. But tonight I heard that the garage has power now and they're planning to fix my car tomorrow.

So 400,000 homes lost power all over the province, about 80% of the population. By Sunday night half those homes were back online and tonight well over 3/4 of them are back up. I'm on the same grid as the university and they were a high priority so I got my power back by noon on Sunday. People on the west side of town were next because there's a medical clinic and a bunch of nursing homes out that way. The east side was the last to get power.

Here's a funny thing. My brother on the west coast was diagnosed with liver cancer (not the funny thing) and he has been undergoing treatment, the second treatment was this past week and on Saturday during the hurricane I phoned him while I still had power. He was doing okay and was optimistic about his prospects. We talked about the hurricane and I told him about the online power outage map so he looked it up and saw how many places in this province were down. He watched the hurricane on windy.com, he could see it heading for Halifax (it made landfall about the time I lost power). On Sunday while I was at C's place I got a text from him saying that Acadia University had power, but he wasn't sure about my street. I texted back that I was going there to see. So I found out I had electric power from my brother on the west coast, that's the funny thing.

Today I went to the Reservoir and all the trees have been cleared off the trails. I met two friends, one with power and one without. the one without is in a building with an elevator that wasn't working. She's 93 so going up and down all the stairs to her 3rd floor condo can't have been easy. Plus her garage has an electric door so she had to find a tall man to open it for her manually. But she made it. She said she met a young person recently who asked if she could call her "a tough old bird" and she said she could. She was proud to be "a tough old bird".

In the afternoon I went to my needlework group that was meeting in a home that didn't have power but did have a generator. We all talked about our various states of electrification and how many trees we had down, et cetera. Our host told me about small generators you can buy just to run a sump pump (they have a sump pump too). One of the women in the group goes to the same church as my friend B so I spoke to her about B's situation. She told me she'd see what she could do, she was very concerned about B but hadn't seen or heard from her in a while.

"Why hasn't she asked us for help?"

"I don't know, she said something about the church being in trouble and she didn't want to disturb them."

Well they're going to try. Strictly speaking they're not supposed to because B lives outside their parish now, but it's a small church and everyone knows everyone and B has been a member there for a long time.

The rain and the ramifications of aging

The downpour last Friday was pretty significant, lots of flooding and washouts. 72 mm, which is a lot in one day around here. Damage to roads, flooded basements, so on and so forth. I heard that Main Street filled right up and overflowed the sidewalks onto adjacent lawns. But my basement stayed dry! All the work done two winters ago paid off. Of course the sump pump was very busy for a couple of days after that.

I just got email from a dear friend out west, she has been very sporadic about replying to my emails. She said there was a reason for that, the last couple of years have been awful for her. And now she knows why, she just got a diagnosis of Parkinson's. Apparently before any of the physical symptoms show up there is depression and anxiety. I remember that the last time I visited her (two years ago) she did seem uncommonly anxious, but I attributed it to recent events in her life. Which it may very well have been, but exacerbated by this other thing. We have a mutual friend who was diagnosed with Parkinson's around about the time I left BC, on subsequent visits I have watched his deterioration and the effect on his partner. Not good.

I was shocked by my friend's email and I was just headed out the door to a meeting. For the first half of the meeting I was kind of out of it. I did eventually get into things, but it was always there in my mind. Still is I guess.

My brother's birthday yesterday, I called to wish him Happy Birthday. We chatted about a bunch of things and he told me about our other brother's call, how other brother was quite upbeat about treatments for his liver cancer. I pointed out to my birthday brother that that may very well be, but other brother's prognosis is little more than a year without treatment, and a few months more than that with treatment. Birthday brother said he did not know that. Birthday brother is very busy right now and I said I hoped he could get everything done this year because next year we may be needing to travel out west …if not sooner.

The meeting I attended this week was a Green Party thing. First campaign meeting for the newly nominated Green Party candidate in my riding. Potluck and strategizing, very exciting. I met a very dynamic young woman in the committee I joined who kind of left all of us older folks gaping. Amazing energy and activism. WWW take note, she's headed your way, going to Memorial for first year university studying the ocean. Molly. We are sorry to lose her but she has left behind everything she can think of, all of her connections and history, for our candidate to use. Voting age is 18, which means high school grads, and I guess there's a lot of them wanting some meaningful change.

On another note, I went for an eye exam today. The local optometrist has quite a shop, employs a whole lot of people. I went to him back in the day when it was just him and his receptionist. Anyway, after the exam he sent me to talk to someone about prices for glasses. After a bit of a wait I talked to this woman who laid out all the options, ranging from the "cut rate deal" of $299 (just the lenses, frames extra) up to $869 (lenses only) for the super duper lenses that make you think you are not wearing glasses at all. We discussed coatings and angles and health benefits and she gave me a bunch of pamphlets and I noted down manufacturers' names and prices for turther investigation.

One of the things she told me about was this coating that is supposed to filter out "high energy blue" (or something to that effect). Used to be UV was bad, now it's creeping up the spectrum through blue.

So I went online to find out what the big deal about blue is. Turns out there is a lot of conflicting information. Blue is good/blue is bad. At my age, cataracts are starting, a number of my friends have already had the surgery. Cataracts cause your vision to yellow, blue is filtered out. One study says blue causes insomnia, another says blue cures insomnia. Cataracts protect against macular degeneration (caused by blue!). Cataracts good/cataracts bad.

Another thing I have been researching is lawn mowers. As noted previously, I can't start my gas-powered lawn mower, so I was looking into alternatives. My lawn is broken up with bushes and garden beds, there is a very dry area and a very wet area and a steep slope on one side. Not to mention all the holes that Hapi has dug either as hidey holes for precious bones or as cool nests to sleep in. A corded electric is out of the question, too many twists and turns. Self-propelled sounds nice but it means you can't mow backwards in tight spaces. I looked at a cordless electric (battery powered) and that was promising, but it was 20 pounds heavier than my rinky dink gas mower. It's big and hard to maneuver, but it's quiet and doesn't vibrate and it stores well.

For the life of me I cannot find a mower that is easy to start, light-weight and maneuverable, and doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I may have to give up on the idea.

In the mean time I am weight lifting in hopes of being able to start my mower before mowing season ends. And I decided not to worry about blue, I soon won't be able to see it anyway.

The End of the World and My Lawnmower Won't Start

With all the rain my lawn is in dire need of a mowing but finding a day dry enough to do it has been a problem. I thought yesterday, Sunday, would be it but the lawnmower would not start. I got pretty frustrated trying to get it going and finally left a message for the guy who serviced the lawnmower a few weeks earlier. Surprisingly, he called back in an hour. Said it wasn't his fault, he was super busy and didn't think he had time to look at it, and it was my fault for doing something stupid anyway.

So then I was mad. Mad at him for lecturing me, mad at myself for doing something stupid, mad at the weather for raining and mad at the grass for growing. Took Hapi for a walk in hopes of walking it off, but it didn't help. Had a bath and then drank the last of the homemade vodka-raspberry-juice liqueur and ate some potato chips and watched a depressing TV show. That didn't really help.

Previous to all of that one of my sons told me that he had posted on Facebook a link to a scholarly paper that predicted the collapsse of civilization sometime in the next 10 years due to climate change. My son said he was making changes in his plans for the future as a result of reading this paper. We discussed it for a bit, I was a tad sceptical and especially so since my son seemed a bit vague on some of the political facts supporting this argument. I went looking for the paper and downloaded it intending to read it later. But with the lawnmower situation I was now more receptive to the idea of civilizational collapse. So by the time I went to bed I was in full blown existential depression.

Needless to say waking up didn't help much either, especially now that it was raining in earnest. Forecast is for a couple of days of this. I finally tried to read the paper my son had posted and I have to say it is poorly written, overly long and doesn't really make any kind of sensible argument at all. If this is the final word on civilizational collapse then we might have a few more decades to muddle along.

Found the lawnmower manual which recommended washing the air filter with soap and water, so I did that. Next step is to soak it in engine oil and replace it in the lawn mower. Who knows, maybe that will work. Then I'll call back the maintenance guy and tell him to p*** off, but if it doesn't I will bite my tongue and say nothing.

In the afternoon there was a brief letup in the rain so I took Hapi to the Reservoir. Forgot that the black fly are out in force so I walked quickly to stay ahead of them. I think if civilization does collapse they are going to miss us.

No Boundaries

This week they moved to the upstairs. They are still working in the basement, they just expanded the worksite. Since the business end of the bathtub backs onto my bedroom they had to move furniture to cut a hole in the wall to access the plumbing, so I now have no safe haven from the dust and noise and workmen and tools strewn about. Plus, they found mould in some of the basement gyproc immediately below the upstairs bathroom (see photo above). The bathroom sink was leaking and I knew that, I just didn't know how long it had been leaking. Obviously long enough for mould to take hold.

Upstairs bathroom

They cut holes into the gyproc in my bedroom and in the basement ceiling to access the plumbing. All of the sinks except the one in the kitchen are disconnected, so the painter washes his tools there each evening. I brush my teeth there too. I thought it would only take a couple of days to remove the old bathtub and install the new one, but after a week it is still not plumbed in. Consequently I took a shower in the basement shower stall. But since they were painting in that room the curtains had been removed from the window, which is in plain view of the male student's bedroom window next door. There were no cars parked in their driveway last night so I took a chance. It's study break.

Downstairs bathroom

Bobby likes to spend his weekends with his grandkids so he tries not to work on Saturdays, but he said yesterday that he might come by this Saturday to do a bit of work. Oh joy. Once again, he thinks another two days and they will be done. Which is what he said a week ago. Since they are working in both bathrooms, I now know where all the publicly accessible bathrooms are in town. Washing up is a problem, but as long as I plan ahead I can make it to a reasonably private toilet.

Meanwhile back at the ranch my email to my financial guy to transfer money to my bank account landed in his spam folder and he didn't see it until I sent a follow-up email a week later. So I was unable to meet Bobby's weekly ransom demand.

The news both north and south of the border is crazy, but since my personal life is kind of off the rails the craziness in the world out there is just part of the scenery. Last night a friend called me to see how I was doing. When I told her that I have burned through most of what I thought of as my lifetime discretionary money fund, she asked me if any of the workers smoked. I told her that one of them does so she suggested that he might burn the house down and I could collect the insurance money.

She also told me that another friend of hers just pulled a live tick off her dog after a walk in the woods. In February. It is that warm now. She thinks it is just winter delayed, that sometime in March all hell will break loose weather-wise. I think she's wrong, that this is the new normal.

She says, Fine then, after the next big blizzard you can lead the Naked Yoga class in the school parking lot.

The ice, the mail and a rug

We had a large amount of snow on the ground last week, I thought we were in for a white Christmas for sure. But over the past weekend we went from -15C to +15C (with rain) and then back to -15C (briefly) so most of the snow is gone and what remained froze. Most of the trails are now quite icy. But with sun and temperatures this side of zero in the daytime I expect we'll lose the remaining little bit of snow before Christmas.

I took the picture above at the reservoir; the pond that used to be full of ducks is now covered by ice so smooth and glassy you can see the reflection of surrounding trees in it.

In October I ordered a used book online that just arrived today. Very disappointing because it is not what it purported to be. I wanted the revised edition of A Handweaver's Pattern Book and got the first edition, which is a very different book. The revised edition is more extensive and errors in the first edition have been corrected. I ordered it form Abe Books but it came from Powell's Books in Portland Oregon. I called their 1-800 number and they apologized for it not being what it was supposed to be and told me they were unable to fulfill the order correctly, so they would refund my money and I could keep the book and perhaps pass it on to someone else who might like it, since I already have a copy. Very nice of them but still disappointing, I was really looking forward to getting my hands on this book.

I have now emailed a place in Ontario that says they have the book, both in new and possibly used copies. The used copies would be cheaper but at this point I am prepared to pay the extra for the newer version. From their online description they at least seem to understand the difference between the first and second editions so I await their response with optimism. Unfortunately they are closed over the holiday season so I doubt I will hear from them before January.

In my town we don't have door-to-door mail delivery, we pick up our mail at the Post Office. I read and hear about the controversy around discontinuing home mail delivery in favour of group postal boxes, and how it will be so hard on disabled and elderly citizens. But here, we have never had home delivery, going to the Post Office is the accepted way to get your mail. And it is such a social occasion: you meet people there, it's a great source of local gossip, and they give biscuits to dogs. My dog is hugely in favour of that. I would be far more concerned it they shut down the local Post Office. A Postal Outlet has opened in the neighbouring drugstore but it is not the same thing at all, all you get is mail and postal supplies, no socializing, no gossip, no dog biscuits.

I have devised a rug pattern in my head for my next weaving project. It is too difficult to draw it on paper (I wish I had software to do it for me) so I can only go by numbers (how many warp threads of each colour in what order, which heddles they must be threaded through) and hope for the best. It will be quite wonderful if it turns out more or less how I imagine it. I was just going to do a short warp—one rug—but then thought I might go for broke and make it a long warp. Once again I may be biting off more than I can chew, but I have a hard time keeping things simple.

I've been sick with a cold the past week and quite lacking in motivation so consequently I have not done the necessary sewing to complete the first project. I should really finish that before starting a new project I guess, but I am concerned that if I leave warping the loom for too long I will forget my hard-earned knowledge of how to do it.

Some more winter

('Snow angel' on a nearby frozen pond)

Recovery from the flu has been slow for me. I still feel quite lacking in energy. Last week I started back on regular activities, exercise class and choir practice twice a week. That on top of regular dog walks was quite exhausting. The last choir practice I attended I had to stop about half way through, sometime in the middle I stopped being able to read the music (just looked like a a whole lot of polka dots and lines to my stunned brain) and my voice quickly followed. I stayed, hoping somehow what we were practicing would sink in on some level. This week is reading week at the university so that affects everything around here, both the exercise class and choir practice are on hiatus and I am relieved.

(Hapi sleeping through the blizzard)

Winter continues, another blizzard last weekend. Not a huge amount of additional snow, but lots of blowing snow and ice and power outages. I was surprised the other day to find out that most of the town lost power for 10 hours or more. My power remained! I later talked to a neighbour who used to work at the post office and he said that he thought our street was on the same grid as the university and that's why we didn't lose power. Apparently the university has better power service.

(The Gaspereau River in winter)

Today Hapi and I went up the Gaspereau River. At the head of the trail a wood stick about 4 feet long was leaning against a tree, I picked it up as I had forgotten to bring my walking stick. I am glad I did.

The regular trail very quickly petered out, there's a section near the start where you have to wade through the Gaspereau and that section was such a mess of open water, ice slabs and snow hiding the breaks between that I didn't want to risk it. Hapi had no problem with it though. I backtracked a bit and found a trail of footsteps heading up the steep bank around that section. The bank is very steep and in normal weather I would not have attempted it but the snow was crisp and icy and the footsteps provided toeholds along the slope. With the help of my wooden walking stick and the icy toeholds, I headed up the bank.

At a certain point there was a brook flowing down that I had to cross, Hapi headed straight down that brook and suddenly a large bird wing appeared in front of her. She stopped, nose to beak with a hawk sitting on the edge of the brook half way down the slope. The hawk didn't move, other than to open its wing in front of Hapi, I guess to make itself look a little larger. I thought it must be injured or sick, it did not attempt to fly or even walk away. I called Hapi away and the hawk folded its wing and watched me. The slope was too steep for me to attempt to reach it, I felt sorry for the bird.

The footsteps now headed downwards and I reached the regular trail on the other side of the impassable section. I tried to walk back to see the hawk from below, however I did break through the ice and snow in one place into the river, not far enough to cover my boot though. I could see the hawk sitting there, it did not turn to look at me or Hapi, just sat motionless by the brook facing away from us. It did not look well.

(Hapi by the river)

We continued on and it was very pretty there, the snow and ice made it look quite different and the trail was very faint, not a lot of people come there in the wintertime. After about half an hour more I turned to head back, I was quite exhausted. Hapi immediately disappeared. When I walk up the river she stays close by I think because she doesn't want to lose track of me, but when I turn around to head back she knows where I am and where I am going so she no longer feels the need to keep an eye on me. So for most of the walk back I didn't see or hear her, I didn't know if she was ahead of or behind me. Sometimes I'd catch a glimpse of her through the trees out on the ice covering the river, she trots along oblivious of the danger, hunting for critters to chase or capture.

When we got back to where the hawk was, it was gone. I hope it was able to fly away.

I left the wooden stick by the tree at the trailhead for the next person, it was handy to have it, especially on the steep detour where we saw the hawk.

February

Came down with the 'flu some time last weekend. Knew I was pushing my luck, I had something going on every evening for four nights in a row and I was not sleeping all that well in between, so by Sunday evening I knew I was in for it. Managed to get out for a dog walk on Monday afternoon, but not again until Thursday. Monday and Tuesday I had a fever although all I felt was bone-snapping cold. By Wednesday morning the fever had broken and I was relieved at getting off relatively lightly, but apparently that wasn't really the case.

Getting out for a dog walk is possible, but it is pretty much the extent of my energy for the day. As long as I don't move I feel fine, but the second I try to do anything the complete lack of energy kicks in and I am done.

I have been reading a lot. And I knit a cap. Made some soup, ate some soup.

Hired the girl next door to walk Hapi. Then I called an ad in the local paper for a dogwalker and tried her out too. I think I'll stick with the girl next door. At least she has experience with a large dog that can be aggressive toward other dogs, their family dog is not unlike mine.

My book discussion group is doing February by Lisa Moore this month, I completed that book and also read The Ocean Ranger by Susan Dodd. It all brings back terrible memories. Dodd notes that it has taken 30 years for people to finally be able to write and talk about that, three books came out in fairly quick succession dealing with the subject, Moore's and Dodd's books and also Rig by Mike Heffernan.

I have been all over the map with my own emotional reaction to discussing this book. I was fully prepared to dislike Moore's take on the story, but I am softening my stance. I thought Dodd's analysis was extremely good, I liked the way she mixed the personal (her brother was on the Ranger) with the analytical. I had a hard time relating to Moore's disjointed story, it seemed pointless to me, dismoored. Although that may have been the point. But some of the widow Helen's imaginings of what happened struck home.

There were three Nova Scotians on the Ocean Ranger that night, one of them a friend of mine. I said good bye to him only a few days before, as he was leaving for his two week shift on the rig. His wife was my best friend at school, I spent all that next day sitting with her while she waited for a phone call that never came.

I remember drowning dreams for months afterward. Waking in the middle of the night holding my breath, wondering when I could breathe again. Looking up at nothing but black water.

I also remember helpless rage and horror. The character Helen feels none of that, she retreats into herself and her grief. I can understand that, but it wasn't universal.

But in the end you had no choice but to get on with life. I talked to a friend about the Moore book, she said she couldn't read it. Not that one not any book. Too soon, too hurtful. I can relate to that too.

The other thing I have been reading is Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time fantasy cycle. There are 14 books in the cycle and I have just completed the first.

I had been reading The Song of Ice and Fire series by George R R Martin ("Game of Thrones") and finished reading book 5 quite a while ago. Apparently there will be seven books in the series and book 6 has yet to come out. I had been quite into it but by book 5 I was having a hard time keeping track of all the characters and complications, and frankly almost relieved that book 6 was a ways off.

Some reviewers like to refer to Martin as the American Tolkien, however a short while ago I read somewhere that really Robert Jordan had prior claim to that epithet. Never having heard of him I looked him up and found out about the Wheel of Time series which was already completed. I thought it would be interesting to compare and also nice to know that the entire series was already in place. Unfortunately Mr. Jordan died before he could complete it but he left sufficient notes and outlines for his widow to select a suitable author to complete the series.

So far so good. I have the Wheel of Time on my Kindle and it promises to provide many hours of good fantasy reading. Good stuff when you are sick.

While home sick there was a great storm with raging winds and high temperatures that melted all the snow. Now we are back to freezing again, but this time with no snow cover. Although the weatherman says that will all change tomorrow.

Now I'm off to eat more soup.

Early spring playtime

This past week has been record-breaking warm here, downright hot (break out the shorts and T's time) on Thursday. Silly Nova Scotians who went south this week regretted it, the best of Florida was no better than here. Although I bet you could go swimming at the beach there; I don't think I would have chanced it here. We are almost back to "seasonable" now though, big high of +8C today ("seasonable" is +5C). For a couple of days it was cooler indoors than outdoors, I didn't run the furnace or light the fire for several days because the house never cooled off overnight.

I've been getting estimates on cutting down some trees on my property, a line of spruces along the south side, because they block the sun. It turns out that my neighbour on that side is very keen to see those trees gone and has gone so far as to offer to pay part of the cost. However most of the work will have to be done on their property, it is harder to get at those trees from my side than their side, so I am giving them a few days to think about that.

I am actually sitting on the fence on this issue, I like the trees and like the sound of the wind in them and the way that birds can hide in them. I have a feeling that if I cut them down I will discover that they contribute unforeseen benefits by their presence. Will I miss their shade? But having uninterrupted sun all summer long on my garden area would be nice. Presently no part of the back yard qualifies as "in full sun". I wish I could just trim those trees down to half-size, but that is just not doable. In the summer they provide shade for my house during the first half of the morning, I don't know how much of a difference that makes to the heating up of the house then. They don't provide any privacy.

Last night four of us went out for dinner and local theatre: a lovely little restaurant called Pizzazz Bistro and then on to Centrestage Theatre to see "Twelve Angry Jurors", a take-off on Twelve Angry Men. They had a mixed-gender jury.

The restaurant was truly excellent, we all ordered different things and we were all pleased with our food, we would have ordered different wines but ended up drinking the same wine, an Argentinian Malbec. For dessert two of us had cheesecake and two of us had apple cake. The desserts were all circular, and you could order a half-piece and get a semi-circular dessert instead. So many times I have split a dessert with someone that it is kind of nice that the restaurant provides half desserts.

The play was great, they did a great job of adapting it I thought. But I am not one to judge, having never seen the original. The theatre is tiny, I don't think it seats more than 80 or 90 patrons. It is very much a local theatre operation, the theatre staff, actors and many of the audience know each other and joke around (the instructions in case of fire were half serious half silly). All in all it was a most pleasant evening out: good company, good food, good theatre.

Earlier in the day I took Hapi out on the dikes and we met a lady walking her golden retriever. The retriever was young and wanted to play with Hapi, but she was all aloof and growly with the young dog. The woman recognized Hapi and told me her dog's name, Duncan. I remembered meeting her and her dog in the Kentville Ravine several months ago, before winter. Duncan was smaller then, not quite his full size. But I remembered that Duncan and Hapi had very much enjoyed each other, in fact it was the best dogplay Hapi had had since Hiro left.

After 20 minutes of ignoring Duncan Hapi suddenly decided she was ready to play with him, I think she even took Duncan by surprise since he had kind of given up on her by then. But they took off, chasing each other and running through the mud of the tidal flats and drainage ditches. It was a pleasure to watch, although Duncan's owner was concerned about having to load the muddy stinky dog into her car afterward. I suggested we take them to the "Duck Pond" in a nearby park to wash off. The pond is posted with No Dogs Allowed signs, but at this time of year I doubted anyone would accost us.

We got the dogs to the park and they leaped into the pond and had great fun play fighting in the water. They got so hyper that it was near impossible to recapture them and get them leashed up to go our separate ways. Afterward I realized I should have got contact info to organize future play dates for the dogs. Oh well, hopefully another time. At his full adult size Duncan looks smaller than Hapi but he weighs as much as she does. His coat is not nearly as fluffy as hers.

In spite of the wash in the pond, Hapi still stunk of the dike mud. It's not as bad as rolling in manure, but close. Good thing she is an outdoors dog.

The smelt are running

Today I was shopping at Sobey's, I went because they had my favourite chocolate bar on sale but I also checked out their seafood counter. They had smelt. I asked about them, the fish lady said this was their first batch, the run has just started. Smelt from Sobey's is not quite the same thing as eating them fresh from the river, but still, I asked for one meal's worth.

The best way to eat smelt is right by the river, fresh caught and fried up in butter. They are small enough that you pick one up by the tail and just eat it from your fingers. There are hardly any bones. When they are running, there are so many of them in the river that you can catch them in baskets.

Sunday night we were supposed we were supposed to get 5 cm of snow, but by morning it was obviously a bit more than that. More like 15 cm. It looked beautiful, light and fluffy, piled up on all the tree branches. Monday afternoon we got another 10 cm. but it didn't get much deeper because it was fairly warm and the snow was damp and packing down.

Today I took Hapi down to the Kentville ravine. We haven't been down there very much lately because the one public trail in has been a sheet of ice. It is so steep that it is impassable when it is icy. There is another trail, an 'authorized-personnel-only' trail which is not so steep or icy, but on weekdays the authorized personnel are out in force. I've gone down that trail on weekends with good luck.

Anyway, today the ravine was beautiful in the snow. Hapi ran through the snow looking very happy. She does figure eights around me and I swing my walking poles at her; she ducks and swerves and disappears into the woods, reappearing suddenly a few minutes later running straight at me.

A young couple with three pre-school-aged kids followed us down the trail into the ravine. The oldest girl was nervous of Hapi and kept her mother between her and the dog, but the littlest boy, just barely walking, marched up to Hapi and said, Woof! Woof! Hapi backed up and looked at me, uncertain whether she should be scared of him or not.

After the walk in the ravine and shopping at Sobey's I took Hapi to visit her little admirer, Sidney the King Charles Cavalier spaniel. Sidney is so funny, he really is completely enamored of Hapi and Hapi hardly knows he exists. Today Hapi was lying on the floor and Sidney came up and was sniffing her ear. He was literally blowing in her ear and she kept shaking her head and looking at him, What are you doing!?! She can't figure him out.

I've been having trouble with my knee lately. It started some time ago, I noticed that my knee hurt going up the basement stairs with a load of firewood. Then a couple of weeks ago it got worse, a really sharp pain that was there all the time. So reluctantly I went to the doctor. She thought it might be a meniscal tear and ordered X-rays, although she said if it was a meniscal tear it would not show up in the X-ray. However the X-ray showed significant arthritic deterioration which probably better explains the pain. So I've been on anti-inflammatories to bring down the inflammation and I am now on a wait list to see a physiotherapist. I don't know how long that will take.

The anti-inflammatories are tricky, either they are too weak to have any effect or they are strong enough to make the pain go away but they give me heartburn. There doesn't seem to be a happy medium. The latest anti-inflammatory I am barely tolerating, I will take it until the end of the week and then stop; hopefully the pain will too. At least it does not interfere with walking too much, climbing the basement stairs is the main problem. I've decided that it is because the stair risers are too steep and the treads too narrow. There's really not enough room to redesign them, more shallow stairs would just bring my head closer to the edge of the ceiling going down.

Really the only way to fix the problem is to put the stairs back where they were originally, but that's a major renovation I don't want to do. The only other alternative is to not put firewood in the basement. Have to think about that.

But the main thing is, the smelt are running, spring is just around the corner.

Ice wine snow storm

(Hapi napping in the snow)

There was an orchid show at the University on Saturday, I went with a few friends to see the orchids. A lovely blaze of tropical colour on a stormy winter day. We then walked to the university art gallery to see a show of works by local artists. I was really impressed by the quality of many of the paintings and works of sculpture and photography. Many paintings had price tags on them, mostly in the hundreds of dollars. Several were priced in the thousands of dollars. Three small paintings by one artist were priced in the $2500 - $8500 range. It was not anyone we had heard of but one of us later looked the artist up on the internet and it turns out he is a well-known American artist who has retired to our area.

I took Hapi to the vet to get her limp checked out, turns out she has pulled a muscle in her shoulder and I am supposed to limit her walks till she heals up. Not easy. If I have to though, apparently it is safe to give her aspirin or acetaminophen.

The second major storm of the winter was on Saturday (the first was in October, so technically this is the first of the winter). A messy mix of rain, freezing rain and snow, with lots of ice and snow by Sunday morning. North sides of everything coated in ice, some 20 cm (8") of fluffy white stuff on the ground. After a leisurely morning coffee I spent a good hour shovelling the driveway. I had the good sense, if I do say so myself, to park the truck close to the bottom of the driveway so I only needed a narrow path from the back door to the truck and a wider path from the truck to the road.

Taking the protective tarp off the truck was another task, a bit tricky since I put it on when it was still raining so there was ice both under and on top of the tarp. After carefully breaking the ice under the tarp I was able to slide it off. The main purpose of the tarp is to keep water from seeping into the windows facing the space between the cab and the cap, but in wintertime it also prevents ice from building up on the windshield.

The past two weekends have been the Ice Wine Festival locally, with sampling of ice wines at many of the local vineyards. Some friends and I wanted to go to the l'Acadie Vineyard on Sunday for the festival. I phoned to find out how bad the roads were in the Gaspereau, they weren't too bad. I drove to Lin and Pete's with Hapi and met up with them and and another couple, Barb and Scott, to walk to l'Acadie, a couple of kilometers down their road. We walked down the road and along the way picked up Peggy, Lorna and Manou. Meeting Peggy and Lorna was pre-arranged, but Manou was out shovelling her driveway and we easily convinced her that wine-tasting was better than shovelling.

The eight of us arrived at the vineyard and we were an instant party. I think the Vintner, Bruce, was very happy to see us, he must have been wondering how many people would brave the roads after the storm to visit his vineyard. He and his wife had prepared a wonderful fondue of gruyere, emmental and kirsch for the tasters, and had lined up four sparkling wines and a dessert wine served in tiny dark chocolate cups for us to taste. He said that when he worked on vineyards in the Okanagan in BC, he had had his fill of the hard work involved in producing ice wines, so he wasn't going there on his Gaspereau vineyard.

We had a good time, the wine and fondue and conversation was great. Hapi loved the walk and was fine with sitting in the snow outside the winery while we tasted. Bruce wanted photos of us lined up inside and outside because he thought we exemplified what this festival meant to him: a bunch of people out in the snow having a good time.

We left l'Acadie and decided to continue walking to Gaspereau Fibres, where we had heard that they would be serving wine from l'Acadie accompanied by lamb hors-d'oeuvres. As we approached the shop, Hapi saw a big flock of crows and seagulls congregated in a field across the road, no doubt feasting on chicken shed litter. She took off across the rather busy road to chase the birds and find out what they were all so excited about in that field. I had to follow after her with the leash to drag her back.

At the shop there were only two lamb tarts left, we were late. So we divided those tarts in quarters and each had a bite (they were yummy!) and a tiny cup of Marechal Foch red wine. Lorna had heard that I was going to teach Lin how to knit and asked if she picked out some yarn would I let her sit in on the lesson. So we asked the shop attendant about an appropriate project and she suggested a hat made from Fleece Artist sock yarn. Lorna picked out a colour and purchased a circular needle as well.

We all walked back to our various starting points and Barb and Scott and myself stopped at Lin and Pete's for tea and coffee. Hapi played with Lin's dog Sid. Just before sunset Hapi and I drove home. It was a fun weekend and the walk to the vineyard was the highlight.

Life, death and oscillations

So twice a month seems to be about my speed these days, for blog posting that is. Not that I have any great speed at anything else, still have a cold, still tired of it, but still alive and kicking.

Hapi and I went to the Kentville Ravine this morning, it was super icy with a thin coat of snow hiding the ice. But a gorgeous cold sunny day. We met Bodhi and his owner there. Bodhi is a 6-month-old all-black Great Dane: acts like a puppy, looks like a horse. Bodhi always tries to get Hapi to play with him and Hapi growls and growls and finally relents and plays with him. Bodhi also likes to push me away from Hapi by body-checking, which is a bit scary when one is standing on a narrow icy path ten feet up from the creek.

As we were walking under some really tall hemlocks the snow on the upper branches started to cascade down in chunks and spray. It was like standing under a snowy waterfall. The whole forest got foggy from the snow spray and the chunks of snow fell from a great height in slow snow motion. Very dreamlike, very beautiful.

Later in the day I went down to the theatre to get some files off the computer in the projection room, and as I passed through the cafe at the front of the theatre someone called out my name. I looked and it was an old friend I hadn't seen in more than a year. I had heard that he suffered a stroke recently but was OK.

I stopped to chat with him. He told me the whole story of the stroke and what it brought up for him. He lives in the Harbour, his wife commutes every day into the Valley for work. The stroke happened in the early morning just after she left to work, and he kind of thought that was what was happening but since he didn't have a car he thought he would just lie down until she got home in the evening. Then he thought that she would probably take him to the hospital, so he should have a shower before she got home.

Crazy, eh? But his symptoms were so mild, a bit of double vision, a bit of dizziness, and that was it. He didn't think it was that big of a deal, and he didn't know that if you think you're having a stroke you need to go to the hospital RIGHT NOW.

As it was, they misdiagnosed him at the hospital and sent him home. They thought it was an ear problem and gave him aspirin(!!!) (aspirin!!!) (omg, so much for RIGHT NOW!!!). He ended up having to return the next day because he still had the symptoms and wasn't content with the ear problem diagnosis.

O, ...M, ...G.

Can you imagine?!?

Anyway, that was a few months ago and his symptoms have cleared up with little residual effect. But, it could happen again at any time, and he might not be so lucky the next time. So now, he's not very complacent about that, he is not nearly ready to check out, but they are telling him that besides quitting smoking, improving his diet and getting more exercise (done, done, and done!) the only other thing he can really do is get to the hospital, quickly.

But that's the kicker. He lives a 25 minute drive away from the nearest hospital, and his wife uses the car to get to work every day. He would have to find a neighbour who is home and ready to drop everything to take him in, assuming he recognized what was happening to him and could still use the phone to call around for help. And 25 minutes might not be quick enough.

So what to do. Should he move next door to the hospital? Stay put and take his chances? He has no answers and neither do I. If I lived in the Harbour I would not want to move next door to the hospital in town. But that's a scary choice, knowing it could literally be the death of you at any moment.

Once that conversation was out of the way we went on to some other interesting stuff, stuff I hope to talk more about with him later. But Hapi was tied to a lamppost outside the cafe and I didn't want to leave her there too long, I really had to leave in mid-conversation. I think we could have gone on for another hour or two easily.

In compensation for Hapi's long wait at the lamppost (I looked out the window a couple of times, she was holding court while passersby stopped to admire and pet her) I took her the long way home via the rail trail and the Acadia woods. Still sunny, cold, and icy with a thin skim of snow. But just so nice to be out in the woods with my dog on a sunny winter day.

As noted above, I still have a cold. Very annoying and energy-sapping. I suppose that what I really should be doing is lying low till it is cleared up, but I have a dog that requires a couple of vigourous walks every day. Can't not do that. Our weather is still all over the map but generally way warmer and dryer than last year. The weatherman says it is due to a positive Arctic Oscillation this year. Last year it was negative. It's not a regular thing, no telling if it will stay positive or if next year will be negative again, but generally they say that it is increasingly more often positive than negative. No doubt due to climate change but I can't say I am upset about it. I am all for positive Arctic Oscillations if it means I don't have to shovel the driveway.

A different kind of winter

Today it is sunny, bright and freezing. No snow on the ground here, not even residual snowbanks from previous snowfalls. Yesterday it was sunny and warm, whatever snow was laying around yesterday morning was long gone by evening. And that is pretty much the weather pattern for the past month. We've had a couple of substantial snowfalls, followed almost immediately by substantial rain, warm sunny days and then into the deepfreeze.

Ice is a big problem, I have put cleats on my rubber boots. Rubber for the melting days, cleats for the freezing days.

If it weren't for the non-stop succession of colds (I am into the third this month alone) I would be happy about not having to shovel snow from the driveway. Looking at photos from this time last year I know that bare ground was nowhere to be seen, shovelling was the major physical activity of the month. However I was not sick.

Hapi still needs her daily walks but we are down to one a day, I no longer have the energy for anything more than that. The back yard is filling up with her poop. Good thing it is frozen today.

A couple of days ago I went out for lunch with a couple of friends at the local Big Stop (Irving gas station restaurant). Lin and I had Haddie Bits, Val had turkey soup. The Haddie Bits were good (deep fried bits of haddock sitting atop a pile of fries, coleslaw on the side). But by the time I got home I had no energy left at all, could not even put leftovers in the microwave for supper. Went to bed and slept 12 hours and still felt exhausted. I am marginally better now, but still a ways to go, and I am giving up hope that this will be the end of it. I am quite certain my immune system is shot and when I start feeling a bit better I will be felled by whatever cold virus is lying in wait for yet another round of this miserable business.

A fellow I met while walking Hapi in the Kentville Ravine says he is sick for the first time in years (he called in sick at work but would rather be out in the ravine with the dogs than home in bed, I don't blame him) and his wife is in the same boat as me, her third or fourth cold of the season. He blames the weather, the up and down of it all. I am becoming a believer.

I got a Kindle for Christmas (a late Christmas gift), what marvelous timing! Reading is my principle activity besides sleep.

I am torn between the handiness of the Kindle and the familiarity of real books. It will take me a while I think to find free ebooks on line that I want to read, and the fact that I can't use the Kindle to read library books is a bit of a drawback. Apparently Amazon allows US library books to be read on the Kindle, but not Canadian. Amazon seems very reluctant to move beyond the American market, unlike Apple.

But still, it is extremely user-friendly once you get used to the limitations. And the usage paradigm is quite different from the iPhone/iPad/home computer paradigm. But once you get used to that it is fine.

I've shown the Kindle to a couple of friends and they immediately try to navigate by touching the screen. Since this model is the most primitive of the Kindles, touching the screen gets you nothing but fingerprints. And there is no keyboard either so initially it is a little mystifying as to how exactly one uses the thing. It has a soft keyboard of course, displayed onscreen by pressing the keyboard button, but the characters are not arranged in the familiar QWERTY style. Another learning step. Amazon seems to go out of their way to get you to understand that their product is totally, TOTALLY, different. The screen is not backlit, so you cannot read it in dim light any more than you could read a real book.

So far I have not taken the Kindle out of the house because I am scared of its fragility. I went to Staples to get a protective case for it but they were sold out; apparently a lot of us got Kindles for Christmas. So I am waiting for them to be in stock again. And for me to have the energy to go out and buy one.

Sucks to be sick.

Janus, looking backward and forward

Apparently my brain goes to sleep shortly after supper. The longer I can postpone supper, the longer I can keep it awake, but I think there might be a limit to that.

I was supposed to go to a birthday party tonight, a friend's 50th, but I could not get up the energy. I feel bad about that, but I don't think it would have been much use to force myself out the door. I'd like to think this is the tail-end of the 'flu but I am pretty sure it is not, I think I am pretty much over that.

Today was one of those crisp bright January days with a light dusting of snow on the ground, just enough to be blindingly bright. Hapi and I went for a brief walk along the Gaspereau canal, a kind of short elevated canal along one side of the Gaspereau Valley. It's about halfway up the side of the valley so you get quite a view from there, and you're mostly looking down on treetops on the lower side of the canal. The canal is not frozen.

Most of the electric energy produced in Nova Scotia is from coal, but there are a few small hydroelectric dams scattered through the province. The Gaspereau canal connects two small power dams. No boats use the canal, it is only about one kilometer long and there is no place to put a boat in, the sides are too steep. In the summer kids jump into the water from the one bridge that crosses the canal, but that is the only use the canal gets other than power production.

Sometimes it seems like the year has two beginning months, January and September. September always seems like a beginning, being the start of school after the summer I guess. And January is the official start of the year. You'd think the first month of spring ought to be the start, not a month into winter. Anyway, winter here doesn't really start until January. Might have a couple of good snowstorms in November or December, but January is the real start. In January there is nothing to look forward to except winter, at least two or three months of it. Sure, the days do get longer, and that is definitely a blessing, but it's still winter.

I've been trying to think about what I have accomplished in the past year and what I hope to do in the year coming. It's hard to think about accomplishments, I had a fairly aggressive list of things I wanted to do and hardly any of them got done. I was going to do so many things around the house that need work. A lot of painting, a couple of building projects, a few repairs...

The fence got built. Sam replaced the kitchen faucet. I got my loom set up and took a weaving workshop. I joined a choir and then unjoined. I got a dog. I stacked 4 cord of firewood, a cord and a half of it had to be stacked twice because I had to move it from inside the woodshed to out behind in the lean-to.

I built 4 raised garden beds and grew some vegetables, I planted 6 berry bushes (raspberry, blueberry and gooseberry), bunches of chives, strawberry plants and asparagus. I froze some of the vegetables and a whack of strawberries and blueberries (not my own), I made quince jam from 6 quinces I got off a bush in front of the house. There would have been more than 6 if I had not done an overzealous pruning job before I knew that it was a quince bush.

I also have a plum tree that does not produce plums, I thought it was because it is a type of plum that requires two trees to pollinate each other. But apparently it did produce one plum that a young man visiting next door managed to snag and eat before I realized what it was.

I got into artisanal bread baking and have developed a sourdough recipe that works pretty well. I bake about one loaf a week. I don't eat a lot of bread.

I volunteered at the foodbank and at the film society. At the foodbank I help bag up food for distribution every couple of weeks or so with 5 or 6 other women. There are over 90 families in our town that use this foodbank, up from around 60 during the summer.

At the film society I help put together a short presentation of movie trailers as previews of upcoming shows. It's a complicated process, but sort of interesting. I now have my own key to the projection room. The projectionist, also a volunteer, is a quiet but multi-talented fellow who is among other things a playwright, a director, a dancer, and a fiddler. We kid him about his hidden talents, that the next thing we know he's going to reveal that he is also a NASA space engineer or something. He says not.

I had a bunch of visitors, friends and family, who came to see my new-old place. I took care of my son's two dogs for a couple of months. I visited PEI twice for a couple of days each time. I went kayak camping once.

I think that pretty much sums up the past year. Mostly it seemed to me that it was about getting settled here.

The to-do list from last year is still around, I still need to paint and repair and so forth. I would like to expand the garden, from 4 beds to 8. I would like to get out more often with the kayak, although how exactly I am going to do that with this dog I don't know. She really does not like being left alone. I would like to go to Cape Breton. This winter I hope to get out skiing and snowshoeing.

I think I would like to be a little more focussed in the coming year, but what exactly that means I don't know.

I was in the Kentville Ravine the other day with Hapi, we ran into a woman I have met there before with her Great Dane puppy, Bodhi. This "puppy" weighs 137 lbs. Last time we met Bodhi kept trying to get Hapi to play with him and Hapi just growled at him. This went on for almost half an hour before Hapi finally caved and played chase with Bodhi. This second time Bodhi again tried to get Hapi to play and Hapi again growled at him. Only this time Bodhi appeared kind of upset by that, he started barking at her and leaning up against me. He leaned so hard that I had to step back a couple of paces.

His owner was watching this and said, I think he is trying to push you away from Hapi. We wondered what Bodhi was up to, but it really did seem like he was pushing me away from Hapi. Almost as if he thought Hapi was dangerous and he was trying to protect me from her. Or else maybe he thought Hapi would play with him if he could just separate us.

Last time we met Bodhi's owner asked me what my passion was. Kind of an odd question and I couldn't answer it. I said I was too much of a dilettante to have a passion for one thing in particular. She said her passion was for gardening and creatures, she likes plants and animals. I think it would be nice to have a passion for one thing, I just have too many interests and not enough time or focus.

I am just too scattered, too much of a dilettante.

Christmas with the 'flu

Christmas Day at the town reservoir.

Nova Scotia was one of the few places in southern Canada that had a White Christmas. We had a snow storm just before Christmas and then it turned cold so the snow stayed. Christmas Eve was a lovely starry night and Christmas Day was sunny and white. I unfortunately was down with the 'flu. Got the 'flu shot the week before and then got the 'flu. So much for the shot. It is supposed to take a couple of weeks to kick in, so I guess I should have gotten it sooner.

Thanks to the 'flu I missed out on a dinner party, a dance, and the Christmas Eve carolling service in the Harbour. Christmas Day I was damned if I was going to miss out on turkey dinner too, so I dragged myself out to the Community Dinner. The dinner was great, but previously when I was still healthy I had volunteered for the after-dinner clean-up crew and that did me in.

As it turned out, there were plumbing issues that resulted in no hot water and a malfunctioning dish sterilizer, so I don't know how good a job we did. Even though we knew it was kind of useless we ran everything through the sterilizer anyway, and that was a major bottleneck; we spent a lot of time standing around waiting while it sterilized each batch of dishes in cold water. Cleaning cooking pots with cold water is not fun either.

There was a lot of leftover vegetables. We joked about having a community mashed potato dinner in January.

One of the organizers, George, offered me a leftover jug of cider and I wanted that cider badly but it meant I would need a ride home because I didn't have the energy to walk home with a half-gallon of cider. And at that point the only rides on offer were from people who were staying to the bitter end of the clean-up.

I really should have abandoned the cider and just gone home. But I didn't. So Boxing Day I paid for my folly with yet more sickness, and added a Boxing Day open house to the list of Missed Events Due to 'Flu. On the other hand, I have had a nice pot of mulled cider on the wood stove for the last week and I am grateful for that. I also got a second turkey dinner as take-away after the Christmas Dinner, and I had made several pots of soup before I got sick (potato-leek, split-pea, and red-pepper-and-kefir), so I did pretty well in the food department. One friend gave me a nut cake for Christmas, I bought a fruitcake and made some chocolate macaroons, and my neighbour gave me shortbread cookies.

Last night the rain storm started and was still going strong this afternoon. All our Christmas snow is gone. And I am still sick. The nice thing about the rain though is that I don't have to walk the dog. She has no desire to press the issue. She has abandoned her doghouse and is sprawled across the livingroom floor on her back.

I've taken an interest in the history of the "Dark Ages", I got a couple of books and a video on the topic from the library. The video was kind of fun, it was called Medieval Lives and is a BBC series hosted by Terry Jones of Monty Python fame. There's a good description of the series in Wikipedia.

The content is serious but the presentation is as funny as one might expect of a Monty Python alumnus. I kind of like Jones' reason for doing this series, that he wanted to get his own back at the Renaissance. He deals with the smug assumption that the Renaissance was so much better than what preceded it. He also says that a lot of what we think we know about the Middle Ages is actually 19th century propaganda. I guess with the Industrial Revolution creating so much misery for so many people, it was a way to convince people that things were so much better than they were back in the Dark Ages.

The books I got are histories by Thomas Cahill, one of them being How the Irish Saved Civilization. It focuses in particular on the period immediately following the collapse of the Roman Empire, which is the period I am most interested in right now. It's hard to find books on that time period through the local library system. And apparently, according to some reading I've been doing on the internet, there is a lack of english-language books on the topic in general. Apparently European historians are more interested than English historians in that time period.

Some photos of my dog...

After three months of visiting this pond in the Acadia woods, Hapi has finally spotted the goldfish that live there.

Hapi strolling in the Kentville Ravine.

Hapi in her doghouse.

Summer of Irene

Hurricane Irene did no damage here, there was some wind and a little bit of rain but nothing special. The day Irene passed closest to my part of the world was a gorgeous sunny bright clear day with a fair bit of wind, it was quite nice. I picked up my house guest at the airport with no problem, although she said there had been a bit of turbulence in her flight. I guess when you fly over a big storm that might be expected.

My guest stayed for a week and we fit in three winery tours, Hall's Harbour, Peggy's Cove, Chester, Halifax, open mic at The Port Bistro (we crashed a birthday party there), Night Kitchen at the Al Whittle, the Wolfville Farmers' Market and numerous seafood dinners. My guest bought bottles of wine from two of the vineyards we visited and they were really quite good, one was a cranberry apple wine and the other was a rose.

(Hall's Harbour at low tide)

(open mic at The Port)

(some musicians at Saturday Night Kitchen)

I learned a lot about grape growing and winemaking which I will put to good use with my own grapevines. Not the winemaking part, I think I will stick to buying wine rather than attempting to make it, but I did hack off a lot of the grape vine foliage after the advice of two of the tour guides.

Gaspereau Vineyard was the best, our guide was lively, funny and informative. She plied us with wine. At the end I had to refuse a tasting because I was starting to get concerned about how much I had had to drink. The one I refused was the maple wine which I am told is really good and excellent over ice cream. And, it was all for free!


We also visited Luckett Vineyard and Muir Murray. Luckett's is on a high north facing slope with a fabulous view of the Gaspereau and Annapolis valleys, the Minas Basin and Cape Blomidon. They have this one vineyard there with an old London phonebox in the middle. Apparently you can make free phone calls from it to anywhere in North America. You can also (according to a friend who tried it) get quite an electric shock from that phone. Whups.


Muir Murray is new and big, they also have a great view of Blomidon. We got the most detailed view of the winemaking operation there. They have an old apple tree with a grape vine growing over it. Apparently they grow well together and in fact in some places that's how they used to grow grapes, in an apple orchard.

We toured all three vineyards for free and got unlimited tastings at Gaspereau, three wines for free at Muir Murray and one free at Luckett's. The rest of the vineyards around have a charge. Nevertheless I am interested to visit them, there are four more nearby that sound very interesting.

Of all the vineyards we visited I liked the wine at Gaspereau best, and other people I have told about our tours concur. But I am also told that for the best of the best I have to visit Benjamin Bridge.

All of the wineries here got together to develop a new label, a wine called Tidal Bay. But each vineyard uses different grapes in their blend of this wine, so each Tidal Bay is different. What a great idea! You could go around and try all the Tidal Bays available. This is very new, only a couple of wineries have Tidal Bays for sale yet, the rest are still working on it.

Here is what I learned about winemaking here. The first vineyard in Nova Scotia was started about 30 years ago on the North Shore, so winemaking is quite new here. The vineyards around my home are even newer. Two that we visited opened their doors in the last year or so.

White wine is easier than red wine, so most vineyards start with that, expanding to red wines as they get better. White wine does not keep as well so many bottlers just put screw tops on them rather than the increasingly rare cork, because once opened a white wine should be drunk fairly quickly anyway.

The traditional wines that we are most familiar with require a warmer climate than what is available here, so the wines here are made from grapes adapted to colder climates and have less familiar names: Jean Milot, Lucie Kuhlmann, Marechal Foch, Baco Noir. We have one grape that is unique to Nova Scotia, it grows nowhere else, the l'Acadie Blanc. It was first tried in Ontario but no one had success with it there. Someone tried it here and it took off, so they gave it an appropriate name for Nova Scotia and all the vineyards here grow it now. It makes a very nice dry white table wine.

You can make both red and white wines from the same grape variety, red wines simply include the skins and seeds whereas white wines do not.

If you have a sensitivity to wheat or have celiac disease, stay away from wines fermented in oak casks. There is some wheat involved in the fermentation process in an oak cask. Around here both oak and stainless steel casks are used, one vineyard that we visited uses no oak all.

The flavour of a wine is affected by the soil and even the underlying bedrock of the particular spot that a vine grows in. Vines from one part of a vineyard can produce wine of a different flavour from vines in another part. South facing slopes are great because the grapevines love the sun, but a gentle north facing slope is fine too. Hurricanes are not good for grapes, everyone was relieved that Irene was as mild as it was here.

Vines are cut back severely after the grapes are harvested, and their foliage is trimmed regularly through the season. Grape vines are trained to grow on wires and the grapes appear at about thigh-height, with foliage above.

Too much foliage blocks the sun so they trim it back, but that also exposes the grapes to birds so various methods must be used to discourage the birds. One vineyard used disco balls, another used recordings of birds in distress, still another used the sounds of multiple bird species, which communicates that this vineyard is already overcrowded with birds.

When we weren't wine touring we were touristing.

We visited the restaurant in Peggy's Cove that Kim and Josh and Eva and I had visited last April. The food was not particularly good and it was expensive. Oh well. Peggy's Cove was much more lively than it was on that stormy day in April. It is essentially a tourist site, there are maybe 35 permanent residents there. Everyone else is either a tourist or someone making a living from the tourist trade. It has a tiny well-protected harbour and a coastline of big rocks on which the ocean waves crash.




Chester is similar, it is a beautiful small seaside town of lovely old homes, but the residents are virtually all summer people. I'd have liked to have taken my guest to Lunenburg which is a little more authentic, but it is also further away. In one week you can only scrape the surface of what this province has to offer.

In Halifax we got to Point Pleasant Park but not to the Public Gardens. We ate at one of the best pizza places ever, in an area called Hydrostone. After the Halifax Explosion this was a housing development to house the people who lost their homes in the explosion. Buildings were faced with an interesting form of cinder block with a kind of granite coating to make them look a bit like natural stone.

We also walked part of Spring Garden Road and the harbourfront boardwalk. We did not visit the Citadel.



My guest had a great week, Irene brought us some of the best summer weather we've had all season. Finally in September we get the summer we missed out on in July and August. You might call it Indian Summer, but I call it Irene Summer.

Sam moved next door. My neighbour rents rooms to students and she had a room available when my guest was here, so Sam moved out of my guest room and over to the neighbour's. He paid for the whole month of September but I don't know what will happen after that. The dogs are at my place. Today it is raining so they are indoors, but normally they live outdoors. They don't mind the rain but they get soaked and muddy so I would just as soon keep them in the dry.

Yesterday I took them to the town reservoir and they met several other dogs and were relatively well behaved, I was impressed. Hapi approached another female dog rather aggressively but she picked the wrong dog to threaten. This other dog was a meek former street dog from Taiwan with plenty of experience in dealing with more aggressive dogs, she nipped Hapi's nose and that was the end of that.

Hiro does the usual alpha male dance, he is entirely predictable and all bluff. I think it all went rather well.

All my friends complain about their smell, they think I am crazy. I can't smell the dogs unless I bury my nose in their fur and breathe deep, and I appreciate their affection. Hapi is more demonstrative but Hiro enjoys sharing the attention. They are strong but they respond well to voice commands. They have a strong desire to please.

(old pic of the dogs in D'Arcy)

I would rather have just one, but watching them play together it is hard to contemplate separating them. They do love each other