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

dusk in hall's harbour

Hi again. Still culling photos from our quasi holiday with my friend Connie on her week's visit in early November. I say quasi because it really was a working holiday for Connie who had committed herself to helping us wade through old financial stuff that had paralyzed Wally and me.

One Sunday evening, we stole her away for a trip up over the North Mountain and down to Hall's Harbour, a trip that only takes us about 20 minutes.

The light was low, the tide was low, and the road was closed where we stopped on this quiet night.

Looking across the harbour you get a feel for the steep slope of the North Mountain

as it comes down to the Bay of Fundy.

A sailor's knot for a boat tied well below the pier.

We strike out across the pebbled inlet, Wally already walking back before I've begun to make it out.

Intrepid explorer that I am (ha ha) I wobble my way out along the shallow stream of outflowing tide, 

looking up at the pier on the opposite side.

At the end of it you can see the last bit of sunlight in the west,

and then it's gone, setting over New Brunswick.

Ahead of me, to the north across the bay is the other side of Nova Scotia.

To my right, some little houses lining the shore with their stairs to the beach.

Despite the brightening of this photo, it has become almost too dark to see, lights coming on automatically in the dusk. Connie and I head back up the shifting pebbles, careful not to fall. It's getting tricky.

A little boat on a trailer on the other pier that we cannot access tonight.

A parting shot of Connie on the curve down to the docks where the road was closed.

I think she enjoyed it though it was reminiscent of her world back in Ontario on Lake Huron.

Just as we were leaving, a little fishing boat was wending its way home.

And with that, my pictures of our first week of November are over. Connie left on the 7th, working up to the last minute to help us through a small mountain of paperwork, then gone like Santa Claus, into the dark Canadian sky. Of course we've talked many times since, but the visit, well, she was most welcome.

Friends. The embodiment of kindness.

Still, let us remember that the closest friend we have is ourselves, the one who keeps us on track.

Starting with that initiative we can make a better world for ourselves.

with peace in our hearts, releasing the troubles of the mind, we-

like a little fishing boat-

wend our way home

evening in peggy's cove

"So Soon?" you ask. Well, this Peggy's Cove trip was a rare treat for us so of course I took scads of photographs. If I don't post them soon, they'll fall into the abyss of Never Was. So here we are again.

My last post watched the sun go down at the famous lighthouse. My friend, Connie, and I walked the short road down alongside the sheltered inlet.

We passed the same lobster shack seen at the beginning of my last post,

here with a boat decked out in netting and buoys. 

Coming round the front of this same building, lobster traps in a row,

we can see the tide is a bit lower than when we arrived about an hour earlier,

the natural breakwater at the front of the cove dark-rimmed to show the water line.

On the other side of the street are a few commercial spots now closed.

This one, with its rolled up awning and areas for sitting, seems to be a café of sorts.

This newer style of building seems to be a semi-detached,

perched on rock with a mat of grass that looks like a bad toupée. 

 

the right side of that same building with the wild rose hips adorning the front view

looking back from whence we came as the road rises

a little further along we rise to an uninhabited stretch

its rocky barrens still beautiful in the evening light

another otherworldly stretch of rock covered in what may be low laying blueberry bushes

Not much of a biologist, I do know that these fern-like plants that turn this lovely orangey gold

are bracken.

Well, maybe this thick matting of scrub are not blueberries after all.

(After posting this earlier today, I received a message from my dear Saskatchewan friend, formerly a P.E.I girl, who advised me that this is most likely the Northern Bayberry.  Deer and salt resistant, growing in poor but well-drained soils- even sand- they provide their own nitrogen/fertilizer. The leaves provide a pleasant scent, often used in candles, though repellent to insects. Thanks Jane!)

Turning once again from this new vantage to catch the waning light over Peggy's Cove.

The lights are on at the Sou'Wester Gift shop and restaurant.

Is that the peak of the light house I see at the left end of the gift shop roof?

The sky is doing its best baroque/William Turner homage.

I think it was Oscar Wilde who said that we relate more to an image that is pre-identified for us by an artist. I think this must be true for most concepts in life, that we hinge on something that we once heard in the past. If only we could, as a species, build on that.

Across the road is the once home, now gallery of William de Garthe, a Finnish born artist who, as a young man in 1930, left his job and art training in Montreal on a quest for "the most beautiful place on earth". Taking the train to Halifax to catch a boat for Brazil where an aunt lived, he was struck by the rugged beauty of the Atlantic coast, reminding him of the island home he grew up in on the Swedish border.

Painting commercially, then resuming fine art,

it wasn't until the early 1960's that de Garthe learned to sculpt.

In the late 1970's de Garthe decided to carve  "a lasting monument to Nova Scotia fishermen".

On a 100 foot granite outcropping behind his home, the 10 year project was about 80% completed when he died in 1983.

At the far left end, St. Elmo, shelters the fishermen, women and children of the sea.

By way of interest, St. Elmo was originally Saint Erasmus, who may have become the patron of sailors because he is said to have continued preaching even after a thunderbolt struck the ground beside him. This prompted sailors, who were in danger from sudden storms and lightning, to claim his prayers. The electrical discharges at the mastheads of ships were read as a sign of his protection and came to be called "St. Elmo's Fire."

Another point of interest: besides being the guardian of all mariners, St. Elmo is the patron saint of children with colic,

abdominal pain,

intestinal ailments and diseases,

cramps and the pain of women in labour,

as well as cattle pests. 

More people of the sea memorialized by William de Garthe.

Here is a plaque erected by his widow. It reads:

FISHERMEN'S MONUMENT

by William E. DeGarthe, artist and sculptor

This work of art is a lasting memorial to the gallant men of

Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia, whoharvest our oceas. The monument

depicts from left to right: fisherman's family; Peggy of the Cove;

Fishermen at work.

This monument was donated to the province of Nova Scotia by

Mrs.P. Agnes deGarthe in 1984 in accordance with the wishes of

her late husband, William E. DeGarthe.

We finally leave lovely Peggy's Cove but not without one more stop to capture the sun's fading glow over a group of fishing piers in another inlet on St. Margaret's Bay.

Another quintessential fishing dock scene

And so, good night.

We were quite buzzed from this mini holiday and touched down at home long enough to feed the cats before heading out to a Mediterranean supper in Wolfville to polish off our Saturday night. 

We haven't had so much fun for a long time. Did I mention we had a 1940's soundtrack on the last evening of our use of a brand new car, leased for our day out, with Sirius radio.

What a hoot to travel in style.

hope you got a sense of the magic

I hope, too, that you are finding it in your own life.

peace and lovingkindness