SNOW!
It was really looking like spring over this last week.
We were seeing the deer grazing quite regularly, and finally caught sight of the piebald yearling
that was just a baby last spring.
We usually see the deer at day's end when the light is low, hence the poor shots.
This past weekend we headed off to Greenwood again to my favourite health food store, Valley Natural Foods. My order of kelp was in.
The spring runoff was pooling in the low parts of the farmfields.
As always, I took particular pleasure in the line up of trees on field edges.
This fan of pines was particularly sweet.
But then, so were these lovelies.
Some of the farms we saw as we drove through the Annapolis Valley
with the North Mountain in the background
another stand of trees bordering a somewhat overgrown field
Coming into Kingston, this super stand of firs greets us
Aha! My darling little house that I show you each time we come
Well, Greenwood and the health food store have come and gone and we are driving home again
past some cultivated blueberry fields with an out-of-place subdivision bordering them.
past a little creek with a pretty stand of stunted trees or, as we would say here, "scrub"
The evening sun finally shows beneath the clouds, casting its golden light across the fields
lighting our way like a stage
I had to include this blurry shot for its drama
We got off the highway at Coldbrook looking up this commercial patch of road towards where Wally goes to work. This is sub highway #1 that traverses the Annapolis Valley called the Evangeline Trail.
We could have taken it to Greenwood, but it would have taken three times as long.
We turned left into Kentiville
Which has some pretty nice properties, this one being another favourite of ours.
I also love this Leave It To Beaver/ Father Knows Best house, a 1940's beauty.
Again, please forgive my blurry shot in the low light from a moving car.
It isn't unusual to see these giant houses on a hill
A poor shot of the Kentville "castle", the Cornwallis Inn that operated from 1930-1973 was on par with the finest hotels on the continent. It contained ninety guest rooms (including four luxury suites) and ten sample rooms for commercial travellers. The hotel had a head porter, bell boys, maitre d’hote, accounting department, chef, maid service, full kitchen and dining-room staff, clerks, stationary engineers and drivers. English Royalty has stayed here.
Now it is rented out as apartments and offices, some of its façade compromised with commercial signage. My hope is that it is maintained well enough that someone some day will restore it to its former glory.
We decided to stretch our day and carried on past our road.
I love this old house too- so quaint.
This almost-a-castle house sat on the market for quite a while til the colour was changed from a drab all over green to this contemporary palette.
We come to the New Minas 4 corners where we proceed to do a little grocery shopping in town before going home. The next day we debated about whether to keep our nasty old tin shed and revamp it as a greenhouse, but decided against it as I couldn't bear the idea of an eyesore makeshift structure to match our makeshift deer barrier. So the shed will go.
By day's end I saw a crocus!
Now I did tell you about snow. It has snowed in succession over the last few days,
interspersed with freezing rain.
I stepped out the front door yesterday and took this shot in our lily garden.
Such hardy little flowers
What an amazing thing Spring is
This impetus of Life
I still love the muted beauty of winter
There is an elegance to this palette that soothes me
Perhaps that's why I get a kick out of looking at my pictures from behind.
Here I am holding up that drawing I showed you in my last post to the late afternoon sunlight.
Here it is right side up, on a real gold kick, using a Sharpie paint pen.
And here is Muji carrying on the gold theme.
“Did you know that wherever you find fool's gold, real gold exists somewhere nearby? This also goes for relationships and friendships. Real gold is found in the heart. For every piece of fake gold that you discard, remember that true gold isn't too far.” Suzy Kassem