Change in season

Well it's been a couple of weeks since I've posted anything - it's been pretty busy here and I've had no time to sort through and post photos. I've been picking lots of berries (blueberries & blackberries) and chokecherries and making them into jams and jellies. We've been visiting & being visited, painting the patio chairs, preparing for a corn boil and went to the Annapolis Valley Exhibition in Lawrencetown (photos to come). Tomorrow we're off to Annapolis Royal for the farm market and later in the week we'll head up the valley to Blueberry Acres (though not sure what we might happen up there).

Sometime since my last post fall fell on the valley. Yes, it's only August, but apparently around the time of the Ex, fall starts to set in here. Mornings and evenings are cool, in the low teens, but sunny afternoons are still in the low to mid 20s. I am no longer wearing sandals everywhere - I can't remember the last time I didn't wear sandals constantly from May to mid September! Never thought that I'd miss any part of the Toronto summer, but I wouldn't mind a couple more weeks of warm evenings & mornings. Mostly though because my eggplants are finally starting to come along and I'd like them to get big enough to eat. Guess NS just isn't cut out for eggplant growing, or at least not this summer, since it started later than usual.

One of our medium sized eggplants & chokecherries on the tree.

Dad and 2 of the newly painted chairs

Yesterday I visited my friend Dave at the family farm in Cole Harbour, east of Halifax and Dartmouth. I was happy that I managed to get a short visit in before he heads back to the UK tonight. We discovered that it's been over 4 years since we last saw each other!

Dave and the view from the farm. Well, actually this photo was taken from the provincial park that now abuts the family farm, part of the park land was donated by Dave's father 20 years ago. The Cole Harbour Heritage Park was only recently realized & is the largest protected salt water marsh in eastern Canada, perhaps in all of Canada.

Some wildflowers in the park and on the farm:

Fireweed & morning glory

Jack in the Pulpit

Change in Look

It's still the same blog, I just changed the look a bit so I could fit more photos in less space.

The Oaklawn farm zoo

Finally, a new post - I try to update once a week, but somehow don't always manage it. Last Monday we went to the zoo - well it's a farm zoo. I don't really know what that means, but there are big cats (lions, tigers, pumas, panthers, jaguars), small cats (ocelots, margays, etc), monkeys, lemurs, wallabies, some exotic birds, rodents, and reptiles; your traditional zoo animals. Then there are some owls, eagles, bears, skunks and other captured Nova Scotia wildlife (most of them seemed to have been orphaned or injured in the wild). And finally there is an assortment of domesticated animals like emus, ostriches, geese, ducks, llamas, camels, goats, deer. Here are a few pix:

A couple South American rodents - an agouti and capibara

A few more mammal - some kind of small ungulate, a llama and a porcupine

Birds of prey - bald eagle, screech owl (I think), barred owl

Some fowl photos - a duck and a goose,
a white peacock and a frizzled chicken

A bird and its feet should ne'er be parted...
an emu

And last, but not least, some reptiles - lizard, snake, and (little) turtle
(don't ask me what kind, I can't remember)

A huge THANKS to Sharilynn for telling me how to get the photos side by side (you can click on them to see a larger version in a new window).

High School Reunion

My 20th High School reunion is taking place this weekend, so since I was in the area I thought I might as well go to at least one of the events. My friend Jackie (the same school friend from the Moncton trip) and I went to the meet and greet last night. However, it was held at a lounge where there were other customers and we had a hard time deciding who we went to school, who were the spouses and who were the other customers. In the end we talked to 4 people we hadn't seen for 20 years and left after an hour to visit some of her friends who were camping in Windsor (about 20 minutes away). I had more in common with these people I had never met than with some of the people I spent up to 13 years with during our formative years. Ah, reunions...

The Great Train Ride

So you may or may not know that Yvonne (a friend & labmate at the ROM) and I took the train from Toronto to Halifax when I moved home. I figured it was a good choice, given that the sale fare was only $10 more than a flight, it was more environmentally friendly, I could bring more luggage (especially since Yvonne was along for the ride), I was in no great hurry and a nice long train ride would probably help me decompress a bit after a couple very stressful months.

Me and my friend Bill at Union Station. Bill was kind enough to drive Yvonne and I to the train station and somehow managed to fit all the luggage AND the three of us into his little car! I was very impressed. (Photo by Yvonne Verkuil.)

The luggage check-in staff were extremely friendly and helpful (imagine my shock after all those years of flying!). The train ride itself from Toronto to Montreal was very pleasant, Yvonne brought along a lovely lunch for the two of us and we had lots of snacks. Seemed like it should be a very nice trip home.

Arriving in Montreal

We changed trains in Montreal around supper time and had about 45 minutes to find some food that Yvonne could eat, given her allergies. At the end of the meal, I somehow managed to throw away her coffee. This is when things started going not so well (foodwise) on the trip. A few minutes later we on the train platform being told that we could only take one carry-on each onto the train (which was NOT the information that was available on the internet). This caused quite a dilemma since I had packed quite strategically so that all valuables (including laptop, hard drives, DVD player, cameras, etc...remember I was moving), fragile items, sleeping gear for the train and snacks were easily available and/or safely packed. I had only minutes to decide what HAD to go on with me and what could survive the cargo car, in the process I left all the snacks in the bags that had become checked luggage. Doesn't really sound like a big deal, since there is a dining car, snack bar and snack carts on the train, right? However, you have to book your dinner in the dining car BEFORE you board (again, info NOT on the internet when I booked). OK, well there's still the snack bar that has frozen dinners, soup, etc., except they kept running out of things that were anywhere close to edible. I had a slightly edible frozen pasta dinner, but poor Yvonne's frozen dinner had gone off. The only options left for her were soup and a not so tasty hot dog. Well, at least I found a bit of dark chocolate in my bag which we consumed quite happily with some red wine (to help forget supper). I also placated myself with the idea that the snack bar had breakfast sandwiches, and really, how bad could those be? I didn't manage to find out, because they were out of them by the time I went to get one. Having had little sleep, crashed blood sugar levels and as yet no coffee I was not the happiest camper on the train. The helpful lady at the snack booth told me that they had toast and coffee in the dining car. Turns out they had a wonderful continental breakfast, which was very filling and I enjoyed it very much, but alas, Yvonne was stuck with just toast and coffee. Our final meal on the train, lunch, was not very memorable - so much so that I cannot recall it. In fact, we may have entirely given up by that point and just eaten chips from the vending machine in the Moncton train station (this was the biggest train station between Montreal and Halifax, but lacked food vendors, only junk food machines).

Aside from the food issues, the train ride itself was quite nice. We chatted with some other passengers (fittingly from Nova Scotia and the Netherlands - Yvonne is Dutch), did a bit of reading, took some photos, wandered the train, watched the scenery and lounged about. We also discovered a rather tasty Nova Scotian wine from the Jost vineyards (who knew!).

Reading

Our library

Taking photos in the lounge

Taking photos of loungers

Lounging about

The scenery whizzing by...we saw a lot of trees between Montreal and Halifax.

We arrived in Halifax on time, 28 hours after leaving Toronto, and were very much looking forward to dinner at Swiss Chalet - bland but completely edible!