winter evening drive

There's always a heightened sense of anticipation as Christmas nears. Sometimes it takes an extra effort as one gets older to keep the spirit of Christmas intact. It's been a discouraging year in many ways, but there have been wonderful highlights that have rekindled my faith in human nature and reassured me that good prevails.

Wally had a day off on Wednesday and unearthed me to go to Greenwood to top up our health food supplements, most importantly magnesium  which we all, cats included, take. A trip like that would leave us free to enjoy Wally's coming 4 days off.

I really mean it when I say "unearthed" as we left quite late in the afternoon.

I didn't find out til later that evening that the reason I was feeling so sluggish was because I was fighting a low grade cold. Still I enjoyed having some clear weather for this trip - a change, as it always seems to be crummy weather on the Saturdays that we've gone.

Clear weather aside, the light was already getting low and I lost quite a few shots taken from our moving car. This is a little farmhouse scene with a barn in the back that has a roof so low it appears to touch the ground as the property dips downhill also indicated by the addition on the garage in the foreground.

This was a sad little blue house that sat for sale since before we moved here over 5 years ago.

This summer new owners repainted it and put new windows and a driveway in. The wind has clearly played havoc with their Christmas decorations, but it's nice to see the house being cared for again.

This has been a treacherous week for ice with some awful accidents on the highway. I nearly fell a few times myself.  Wally slowed here as he negotiated this icy on-ramp where one is normally obliged to speed up. This is the highway on which he might normally come home on a good day, but he always takes the slow and easy route, knowing what goes on out there.

The early evening light (it was almost 4:30pm) made even this industrial area not so bad. You can see the range of the north mountain (beyond which is the Bay of Fundy) in the background.

Heading northwest here, you may be able to see all the black specks in the sky, a small indication of the thousands of crows that do an evening migration around here.

Dressed in peaches and mauvey violets, the clouds were almost iridescent.

more crows flying over this snowy cornfield.

the sun going down and it's not nearly 5 yet.

Backlit by the sunset, I suspect by the size of it, that that's a raven in the uppermost branches

of that tree to the right.

I was lucky, for all the shots I lost, to have a few decent ones of the sun setting over the farmfields.

the clouds backlit in mauve in a peachy sky

You may remember this wonderful farm scene with the 3 silos from past trips.

Though blurry, the colour is so painterly that I had to share it with you.

So many shots lost in a blur on the highway, I just barely caught this favourite house of mine as we slowly came to the corner in Kingston, Greenwood's sister town.

Looking closer, we can just make out the choirboy on the front porch. 

The eagle emblem over the door makes it look somewhat American.

Like a fuzzy1940's Christmas card, I'll end here, with more to show you over the weekend.

Have a jolly old time of it dear ones.

This festive season takes some careful negotiating sometimes. That's easy to do when we set our expectations aside and remain present to the wonder and glory of what IS.

breathing gently into this moment

remembering that the best present is presence

a tour of Halifax harbour

And now it's officially the third week of November and I'm still playing catch-up from the first day when we went to pick my friend, Connie, up at the airport. After proceeding directly to Pier 21 in downtown Halifax, at Connie's request, Wally and I left her there to explore her past while we proceeded to Pleasant Point Park.

We went by way of the industrial docks, an extension of the public docks that have been made over to everything from the Nova Scotia School of Art and Design to a grand farmer's market, Pier 21 and a brewery, a convention centre and restaurants. These massive silos are part of the "real" world of the harbour.

This pile of building blocks that houses P & H Milling Group dwarfs the train car below it.

This extensive walkway to the silos may also be a track. What do I know?

Four silos deep, this massive structure fascinates me.

The harbour is full of huge structures that I imagine have something to do with loading and unloading the containers to and from the trucks that bring them and/or carry them away.

I often forget that these containers that come overseas from all over the world are the very containers we see on trains and trucks. Just around this corner lays the prettiest park...

Point Pleasant Park

This is where we often come to eat our lunch as we did that day.

(Connie ate hers on the way to Pier 21). 

Wally pointed out a container ship beyond the little island that houses the lighthouse,

rising out of the ocean like a massive apartment building sized mirage.

A buoy to the right of the island also marks the way.

Another container ship is leaving and will round that point and go out of sight before we leave this scenic vantage point.

After checking out some art galleries along the piers where Connie was, we picked her up and carried on to our rendezvous with a seaside restaurant

. Here we pass the old Alexander Keith's Brewery now turned offices for rent. What a fabulous old fortress of a building.

Just a little cool, it was a beautiful evening, a Wednesday, to walk along the boardwalk.

We found this fabulous Maud Lewis background for a portrait, Dartmouth across the bay.

To our surprise and delight, we found some...

starfish in the water!

and more!

Now we've come to that small ship(?) (I never know when they go from big boats to small ships)

This is the one you can see in that previous picture of Connie. Wally is in an excellent mood, finally on a mini holiday with the prospect of eating out.

Here a man is boarding the Acadia.

reflections of her and the ropes in the water

more reflections of a pier just beyond

I guess I'm just in a reflective sort of mood. 

These pigeons have found a safe place to roost.

We arrive at our destination only to find that the restaurant is closed on Wednesdays.

Of course; it's November.

But that doesn't stop the seagulls from having a buffet on what I can only imagine are barnacles.

This seagull sets up a warning cry.

"Get off my roof!" and he chases this pretty girl away.

What a lucky shot of these boys on a sculptural bump.

This handsome pigeon waits for a handout

as does this female

posing for the camera

Wally and Connie are off ahead of me in their hunt for an alternative restaurant.

We cross the road and find this outrageous construction site.  I don't want to think about all the old buildings that had to come down to make way for it.

Looking through glass, please forgive the reflections.

About to turn into an old group of buildings turned shops, one last view of the street with restorations going on beyond. It is truly a lovely city.

Remember that buoy out in the harbour to the right of the lighthouse?

I'm sorry I didn't get Wally to stand beside this one to show you the scale; they're huge!

Well, that's all for this installment. It's getting harder to motivate myself for all this photo prep I must do if I want to get these pictures up on the blog. I hope it was of interest to you.

til next time

peace in our hearts

driving the 101 in autumn

So much water under the bridge, so much catching up to do.
I will start with the 2nd of our 3 trips to Ikea in October as we attempted to design, shop for and finish our new bathroom upstairs in honour of Connie's visit over this last week.

We made that 2nd trip on October 18th which proved to be a lovely autumn day.

  

Formerly the Bog Road Bridge, this is now the Freddie Wilson Overpass.

In 2007, a few weeks after Freddie's 53rd birthday, this honorary sign was hung.

Born in Windsor, Nova Scotia,  Freddie, the oldest of 4 brothers, had complications at birth which left him with brain damage.  From age 6 to 18, he attended a Truro training school for mentally challenged children and moved back home in 1973. It is around then that he started waving to vehicles from this overpass, living only a minute's walk away. He particularly loved eliciting honks from passersby, particularly the truckers. I can't remember seeing him in the 5 years that we've been here. He'd be 63 now.

approaching the Hantsport and Mt. Denson exit on this lovely day.

The views to the south were almost obliterated by the bright sun.

I love this pasture amid the forest.

down to Falmouth with Mt. Uniak in the distance

another southerly scene with old mountains rolling in the background

a hilltop home

looking down at a Falmouth community

Windsor from the highway

scrubbier trees in the lower land

The highway views start to blend for a while

but little pockets of focal points stand out

coming into the Municipality of East Hants

The terrain is more rugged the closer we get to the ocean,

with this lovely northern lake to catch the eye.

Climbing Mt. Uniak, the light is getting low and I abandon my picture taking.

Wally out in the partking lot of the new Ikea at closing time with a stainless garbage bin for the new bathroom among other things. I couldn't capture the surreal enormity of that sign and the fact that we are planted on the edge of a cliff overlooking Dartmouth Crossing a wasteland of big box stores. Maybe another time.

As promised, I am sharing the new project I started in October, working in a Dylusions black "Journal". I had bought the book a few months earlier and cooked on how to use it over the late summer months.

As one opens it, there is an envelope on the left for clippings. The journal is a cardstock sewn book attached to the back of the black bookboard cover that enfolds it.

Knowing that I wanted to use this book for autumn themes but much aware that I was a novice at using both its dark background and the cardstock pages, I decided to experiment with an eye toward semi-finished pieces. I began with a product I had never used before: Ranger's white opaque pen, something like a gel pen. I started on the right page finding the ball of the pen scratchy and difficult to work with. A 2nd pen in the set of two was easier to "roll" with though I had to go slow to keep from skipping. Between the two pens I used an amount of ink amounting to one pen's worth on these two pages; a little pricey I'd say. Regardless, I had fun.

Well, as I said, I have some catching up to do, but I'm somewhat undone by the pace we went between sight-seeing and doing taxes. So I may take a little break before I return. Wally just called on his lunch break and encouraged me to take a nap. I never nap unless I'm unwell, but, geez, I'm tempted.

thanks for dropping by! Til next time...

peace