join me on my walk home

 What a lovely Friday afternoon it has turned into from a dreary white sky morning that threatened rain.  But even so, off I took myself for a long overdue haircut (I've been pony-tailing lately).

My walk home was deliciously slow, as I stopped to- well, not smell the roses...

 



for there were only rose hips left,  like these little pretties

 

 

I climbed slowly up one of my favourite hills for houses like this favourite

 

Unfortunately for my exposure, but fortunately for the day, the sun came out

but still I thought this sweet little house was worth sharing

and look who was watching me from across this one lane road

 

Here we have the literal flower bed!

 

at the turn in the road, Moore House 1850

 

Looking down from the turn is the three corner junction

 

at the bottom of which grow these beautiful bamboo

 

A festoonery of some large rose hips!

 

Some totally gorgeous Weeds that look like miniature chrysanthemums

 

A bee so bizzy with one

 

reducing the colour saturation to enjoy the graceful lilt of these petals

 

and the bee is still locked in to what is obviously a motherload of nectar.

I had to leave him to his business and carry on my way.

 

little and blurry

 

or large and crisp? I like these 2 versions of the same view

 

Asters like Snowflakes on Virginia Creeper

 

pale mauve asters, chartreuse maple leaf, dull green horsehair, shiny Virginia Creeper, purple leaves of Nightshade and its scarlet berries...a charming tapestry

 

more wild beauty; snapdragons and asters

 

Autumnal Brocade

Coming Home

 

Our newly painted attic eyebrow, our new roof, AND our new chimney

as I turn to go inside and wish you a lovely weekend doing what and being who you

are meant to be.

 

a Halls Harbour afternoon

A second installment today of some of the pretty sites we saw this past weekend.
Now it is Sunday's trip to Halls Harbour, a lobster town with a tourist trade and some delightful cottages. We had our picnic by the docks and watched the boats slowly raise with the incoming tide.

Looking Across the Bay of Fundy to Cape D'Or and Advocate Bay beyond.

 

Wally and I sat on the rocks above and watched a little girl intent on throwing

 stone after stone in the water

 

And there it goes!

 

Suddenly a bee landed at Wally's feet, heavy, almost drunk, with pollen,

before flying away

 

And here are a few of the lovely little cottages in the village of Halls Harbour:

Just big enough for two

 

Simplicity: an air in blue, green and lemon yellow

 

a fairy tale entrance through the hedge

 

a charming deck with the cliff that forms the harbour as a backdrop

 

some people know how to have fun!

 

But this is what it's all about

 

with just enough chairs for the 4 of us though we didn't dare

 

and off down the North Mountain on a winding trip back home

 

a romantic trailing rose bush and picket fence shadows of the late afternoon

 

this same house, a poem of olden days at the three corners in Centreville

 

a late September cornfield

 

Rolling clouds over a field of hay bales

 

angles going every which way

 

The sky continued to amaze me all the way home

 

Wally says this is the effect of the ocean which surrounds this lovely Nova Scotia

 

Today I tackle my studio in the pale greige of Painters White that I used on the upper cupboards in the kitchen. It's such a versatile colour and I have half a gallon of it left which is an amazing indication of how far it spreads when you consider I did 2 coats on both the interior and exterior of those cupboards.





Annapolis Royal afternoon

Company has come and gone but the pictures and the memories remain.

 

a funky tribute to maritime life on the front lawn of this home in Annapolis Royal

 

you can look but don't enter

 

a gorgeous late Saturday afternoon looking across Fort Anne to the Annapolis River

 

An enormous tree in the Fort Anne Cemetery

 

An amazing twist to a chestnut tree

 

a wonderful Indian import

 

a most amazing House with a red mansard roof

 

And more pictures to come of our gallivanting

 

I finally have my studio reamed out after all these months of talking about it, so that I can start painting. But what colour? White is too bright with the southeast exposure. Hot pink too reflective of its own colour. So now I'm considering a midtone greige. Do you remember that word from the '80's? A cross between beige and grey, basically a warm grey that won't cast too much of its own colour onto whatever I'm working on. I can brighten the space with an inspiration pinboard. The big news for me is that we are donating the old teak wall unit to my studio so that I don't have to make do with the mismatched shelving as I have been. That was Wally's idea. AND he came up with the sacrilegious solution to cover up the awkwardly placed low-hung window (typical of older homes) with the wall unit freeing up the opposite windowless wall for a long length of table and wall-hung shelving where I could strap some undershelf lighting. How very decadent, but necessary to my tiny space with all the STUFF I have!

 

That's the latest. Hope you are well in all you do, content with your choices.

 

 Peace

 

The Carrot of Company

It's been quite the week and a half since I last posted. I can't believe what we've crammed into a week.

 Our new chimney was finished, with added flair by Mike Tracey, mason extraordinaire.

He created a chimney like no other for which we are truly grateful.

 





The following day my dear friend of over 20 years ago in Muskoka arrived for an all too brief visit.

 Of course we had to go down to the South Shore, the Atlantic side of Nova Scotia to historical old Lunenburg to see the sea from an old world vantage. 

My friend is not a shopper so it didn't matter that we dawdled right into closing time

and had the town and the wharf to ourselves.

This wonderful reflection would make a painting on its own

One of many amazing combinations of colour and fabulous old architecture, this crossover of mint and turquoise and juxtaposition of angles is aptly named Cilantro.

 

Oh yes, there was one souvenir shop still open, but this is what caught my eye.

 

This old door is so well decorated with iron that you wouldn't know it was done for security

 



A small ship/large boat with some fun angles. Welcome Aboard!

 

The harbour was beautifully lit in the evening light

 

I played around with the sun behind this mast

 

the beautiful patina of the old wood on the main pier

 

Back to Back company had us back to sea, this time at the lonely, stony Ross Creek Beach on the Bay of Fundy, where the low laying clouds and wind finally turned to rain and chased us away.

Then it was off to Kingsport, where within the short drive from Ross Creek, we were in sunshine with more people, men casting their fishing lines into the incoming tide and a few wanderers like us.

 

This form of seaweed is called Spiralled Wrack, though they all don't spiral

 

The next day found us at a beach way past Lunenburg on the South Shore where we picnicked in the brisk wind off the ocean and found another ( of many ) piece of Spiralled Wrack leaving its delicate tracery in the sand.

Anyone who knows me knows I am an animal lover. The organic farm and donkey sanctuary we stopped at near Mahone Bay was so beautiful. These donkeys wandered sleepily from their donkey Bunkie to the call of their owner.

 

Such gentle creatures, I was completely charmed

 

On to village of Blue Rock

 

where people have fun decorating their pretty homes

 

At low tide these stone croppings show how treacherous it would be

 to negotiate one's way through at high tide

 

Low tide at the docks, the lobster traps stacked and ready to go

 

The calm waters on a Sunday afternoon,

 

Jagged stone crops around the bay

 

 

How odd that this calm sky would be so close to...

 

this crazy "bread loaf sky" in the opposite direction

 

A little further down the road we crossed a long inlet on a car ferry to La Have where the famous Bakery is located, with line-ups in the late afternoon

 

I enjoyed the display and stayed away from the gluten and sugar that would surely lay me down

 

Lots of free photo "opps" with Pickled Eggs and yet another ancient cash resister.

This one says "This Registers the Amount of Your Purchase"

 

The dining area seems to be a combination museum/schoolroom, with free books in one corner

 

I try to have something creative to show you by the end of each of my blog posts, but I can only show you my newly painted kitchen in the aftermath of company. You can compare the old colour they were, a yellowy cream, to the cupboard hanging on the upper left above the dryer. The new colour, a palest grey with a cast of pink, called Painter's White by Behr is wonderful in all kinds of light. The original red that I originally chose, still lines the edges of the purple cabinets below.

 

Wally laid a vinyl tile floor and even grouted it for effect. We are amazed by how good it looks.

He also installed the new one piece toilet, all since Sunday and Monday of last week!

 

While I was downstairs painting, he also managed to repair the ceiling in the guestroom, pull the old pink broadloom out and clean off the sticky bits of foam that clung to this fabulous original linoleum floor that is in almost pristine condition. Who knew we would want such a thing, but now that we have it, we are delighted.

 

I hope you, too, are delighted with the surprises life brings you that you never knew you wanted.