A little Canadian Adventure!: Part 1

Shopping in Mahone Bay.  Met the owner, wanted the chairs!

So it was time for another visit to Maritime Canada, and the province of Nova Scotia to visit friends Chris and Colette.  How long since we'd been?  Turned out to be a long time.  Too long, as we both love the province, and the friends aren't bad, either!  So we set off on 13 May, spent the night at a Gatwick hotel, and flew to Halifax - arriving in the afternoon, ready to hire the car and drive on.  From our own side of the Atlantic we had booked a little house in Mahone Bay for 2 nights, and invited them to drive down and stay with us before we went home with them.  We all like Mahone Bay.  Picture postcard town with a certain charm. 

(1)

(2)

So when you drive up a little dirt road by the river, and find the cottage you booked (1), aren't you excited?  We were!  Lots of oohs! It looks tiny, but this is a three bed house with a full bathroom and a small cloakroom downstairs, and it has two double rooms plus a single.  Plus Kitchen, dining room and living room.


 And the others were with us within about half an hour.  They'd brought food and wine and a few beers, so supper was soon on the table.  The view from the front door (2) was lovely, and the same goes for the view from the sofa (3)  in late afternoon.   How lovely to just sit with a cuppa and see the sun on the birches outside.

(3)

 Have a look at the BBQ area, with picnic table and fire pit (4) and then the river itself (5).  Believe it or not, from the house,  we saw blue herons here, fishing from the rocks, and we also saw several eagles doing the same thing!  What a fantastic sight to see a magnificent bird swoop down from the branch he was watching from and get his supper, fresh!

(4)

(5)

Mahone Bay is famous for it's three wooden churches you see as you drive down into town.  But they appear on every pic and postcard. So I took this with the churches at my back.  Gorgeous, isn't it?

And here is a view just across part of the bay.  Second home?  That little one in the middle would do someone nicely!!

Peacock butterfly (female) seen in the garden this week - early May

Pretty girl!  I don't recall seeing one of these in the garden before, but every year I spot a "new" (to me) butterfly or moth.  Maybe I am just more aware of them, the more plants I grow for bees and other creatures. 

I had to look it up because although I was familiar with the name of the butterfly, I wasn't familiar with the creature - and I know it was female because the male's marking are the same but brighter.  That was what made me inspect her carefully, because she seemed to be sort of "dulled down" for one so highly coloured.  

Anyway,  there she is in all her glory.  Our garden is in West Dorset about a mile from the coast for anyone interested.

Anne of Green Gables - L M Montgomery (and more!)

Well!  here's Anne Shirley, arriving at Green Gables to live with Marilla and Matthew, brother and sister both over sixty. They had "ordered a boy" to adopt;  to help out on the farm, and Anne is what they got.  What a shock she's going to be for them.  She's an orphan, who never thought she would have a "real" home;  she can't stop talking, she makes up stories, she invents names for the places around her (The local pond becomes The Lake of Shining Waters).  She makes friends, particularly Diana who lives nearby.  She's always in trouble too because she's had no-one to guide her - Marilla "harrumps", and Matthew smiles and gradually Anne settles in to life at Green Gables, doing chores, going to school, making friends. There is joy, laughter and tears too in this tale of a child who is finally loved and who loves back fiercely.

This was going to be a one off as they say these days, but the book was so enjoyed by its readers, the publishers demanded a follow up.  That became Anne of Avonlea, and Anne is now seventeen.  No chance of college for her, she has become the local schoolmistress, and new children are at Green Gables too, for a second cousin of Marilla's has died and there is no-one to take on the six year old twins.  So Davy and Dora come to Avonlea to live with Marilla and Anne.  More adventures ensue, and every page is a delight.

Were these books written for children?  Of course they were - but children of all ages.  I read Anne of Green Gables in my early teens, and now, many years later I came to it afresh and loved it so much I decided to read the whole series which I had never read previously.  Next up will be Anne of the Island  followed by Anne of Windy Willows, Anne's House of Dreams and Anne of Ingleside.

Mrs Mac Suggests - What to read in MAY

Hello!  Well, here in the UK we have a Spring Bank Holiday to come, so people are hoping for good  weather - Spring is very changeable and sunshine cannot be guaranteed!  It could be nice.  Here's hoping.

What are we going to read then, this May month?  Well.... there's a dearth of hedgehogs here now, something that was very common 50 years ago becomes  rarer  every year.  Those little prickly creatures may even go the way of the Dodo.  So when I got a book to review with the tiniest hedgehog on the cover, I thought that it might be just the book for May.  So I'm going to read

A Handful of Happiness - Massimo Vacchetta

(Vacchetta is an Italian vet, and this is the story of his rescue and care of Ninna, a small hedgehog).

Any non-fiction about an animal (although possibly not A Street Cat Called Bob which I feel has been done to death now!), but rescued or not, there is sure to be something out there for you.

Enjoy the sun when it breaks through, my friends. 

 

 

The Song Collector - Natasha Solomons

 Several different kinds of love stories intertwined in this dual-time story set in Dorset.  Just after WW2 and the start of the 21st Century are the two time settings, but the characters remain the same except for those born after the early chapters.

Love of all kinds.  Love of the land;  love of a country house that costs so much to heat and keep standing that it is the catalyst for the breakup of a family.  Love of a woman, and the love of two men for that woman; love of music.  All these things contained within the pages of a book by an author I like a lot.

Certainly, after WW2 and on into the 1950s and 1960s, many of the country houses requisitioned for use during the war were returned to their owner with bits missing, badly damaged, some then unlivable in at all.  Use Google and you will find many country houses were just sold off or even blown up, so that the land could be used for building or farming.  For the war brought a real change in the way people lived.  The folk who had always worked in "the big house" and doffed their caps metaphorically (and sometimes for real) as the owners of said big house passed by,  had found that there were other chances for them at higher wages; and so only the older workers stayed on, doing the best they could.

A pot of tea on the lawn in the sunshine and The Song Collector would perhaps be enjoyable!

Geranium Nodosum (a hardy geranium)

So - it's been a nice afternoon for gardening (well, mostly weeding!)  I have no idea what kind of weather encourages weeds to grow in certain areas but grow they do.  Curse the Romans for bringing in Ground Elder!  The roots spread for miles, and I hear they can go downwards that far too.  I have a long thin border up at the top where the car parking area is, and it has several good shrubs and hardy perennials in it; but I need to get weed smotherers in there too and at one end there is too much bare earth. 

At the farm shop today I spotted rununculas.  Not weed smotherers, and certainly not perennials, but a cheery show for a short time in spring, so a bright read one came home and is "in".  I also had, ready to plant, 3 dark red saxifrage which should form a good size non-weedy clump, so they are also in.  Finally, the geranium below, which I bought last September.  The reasons for not planting about 20 poor souls at the right time are not going to aired today, but nevertheless they are gradually going in and (hopefully) spreading their roots and settling in.  This geranium, one of the rather wilder kinds, is a nice lilac pink, and blooms for a lot of the summer.  It will spread too, and apparently is great for naturalising under shrubs and is happy almost anywhere.  So in it went. It's flowers are rather bigger than they look there in the pic, although not as big as the flashy flower-show type.

The Wild Air - Rebecca Mascull

We are nearing the end of a four year remembrance period for WW1. Reading this book, I found it an excellent way to learn about a small part of that war as well as the early days of flight. Of interest to me as my father's only cousin and "best pal" was a flier in the RFC (Royal Flying Corps) and lost his life in that war.  

This book covers a period from the turn of the 20th century until 1920 or so, and is the story of Della, a quiet mousey child, beloved by Ma, dismissed by Pa (after all, she is just another girl) and is "lost" until the return of Aunt Betty from North Carolina where she lived for many years. Whilst there she saw the early fights of the Wright Brothers, and because she can see Della's worth, takes her under her wing and teaches her the rudiments of flight by building kites with her, to fly along the beaches of Lincolnshire. As Betty has some money, she pays for flying lessons, and up there in the sky, Della finds her true self.  A fascinating section of the book shows her at air shows, here and in Europe (plenty of aviatrixes then) making some money, and knowing that flying is what she wants to do for all of her life.                                                                              

 And then WW1 arrives.  Women will not become fliers for their country.  They need to be at home, keeping the home fires burning. People die, hearts are broken, and the best Della can do is to be a motor mechanic working for a woman who's husband and son are both at war.  And there is a marvellous love story here too, for those who like them, though it does not detract from the tale but only enhances it.  And - there is just one big adventure still to come.  

A wonderful book with a female heroine - and heroine she is, learning to fly when women should know their place, which is at home and certainly not in the skies . Don't forget the Author's Notes, where she points out how few female pilots there are, even in  2017.  She also has lots of info about avaitrixes at the time depicted in the book.   Research for this? Impeccable. Knitting this together with fiction? Fabulous.