While many of you are basking in spring in Ontario, we have a snowstorm!
Overnight tonight we have a snowfall warning and a blowing snow warning in effect. Winds are supposed to get up to 70km/hr but so far there is no wind – just a lot of snow! I just stepped outside to quickly shoot a few pictures.
We had never been to Arisaig so today we went! It’s on the northwestern coast between Pictou and Cape George – for those of you who we’ve driven around last summer. I’m pretty sure we could see PEI across the water (full of ice chunks!)
Here is a shot from the wharf along the coast:
There is a lighthouse restructure here with several historical plaques on the rocks. One says “The steeple of St. Margaret of Scotland Roman Catholic Church can be seen from this point. Arisaig is the site of the oldest parish of the Catholic highland settlers in Nova Scotia and the second oldest parish in the Diocese of Antigonish. The first log cabin church was built nearby. A cairn commemorates the church and the community’s ancestors. A second church was built near the existing Glebe House in 1816. The present church was completed in 1878 and dedicated to St. Margaret of Scotland.”
Here is the small lighthouse that has been rebuilt on the wharf with the year 2007 above the door.
(I *love* our new camera.)
Did I mention how FREEZING it was?
Here’s the Arisaig church:
Lobster season isn’t too far off!
We ended up near New Glasgow so we went into town for groceries. Groceries are INSANELY expensive, but at least the bigger town had a bigger selection. Heads of iceburg lettuce – $2.69 ! No baby spinach leaves under $4.50. You would keel over if you saw the amount of money we pay for groceries here in Nova Scotia.
We took a long drive back and ended back in the Caledonia area where we were a few weeks ago. I couldn’t wait to stop and see the old church we saw last time with our new camera.
I’ve never seen stained glass peel off before! I don’t think it was real stained glass!
Here is the out house for this old church:
I can’t wait to see this place again when the snow is gone. I’m too shy to peak in the old windows, but I just love the history of the place.
I wished we had taken photos last time of this orchard we saw that had electric fences and there were deer inside the fence. Well we drove by it again, and there were still deer inside the orchard – with two layers of electric fencing!!
More deer across the road. We saw MANY MANY deer today.
I just can’t get enough of the old farmhouses. I always have been so intrigued by them. I always think of someone like Charles Ingles building a beautiful house for their wife and growing family and how proud they would be of what they built with their hands. And think how sad they would be to see their beautiful workmanship today:
There was a bit of open water on the lake one south of ours. Here are a couple ducks.
And more deer!
Some photos from this week for you.
Sally kitten:
A bunny that thinks he’s still camaflouged. I have walked by him twice a day to walk down to the car and back and he doesn’t budge. Today I went and sat in the woods near him and watched him for a few minutes. Bunnies are so cute. He’s at his in between stage where he’s less white and turning more to his summer brown.
This nest is in our of our little spruces. It’s a little too high to get a good picture so maybe next time I’ll use my smaller lens and a step stool. Chickadees are always in that tree – not sure if they make a stick nest or not. It was used last year too.
Is it spring? There is some growth in our gardens! We planted new tulips and giant daffodils last fall. I can’t wait to see them bloom!
Maybe it isn’t fully spring yet. Look at our driveway. Pure thick ice. A bit will warm up in the sun and drip down and then refreeze on the next section of the driveway. A few areas at the top of the driveway have thawed where we dumped our woodstove ashes during the winter. This picture was yesterday after work while it was raining. Now it’s cold and slick and thick again.
Saturday’s drive took us on some backroads to Guysborough – one of them being a terrifying (for me) drive on an ice road (6 inches thick?) in the middle of nowhere. This house was on that road, and yes, someone lives there currently.
No one was spending the winter in this one:
Check out how red this blueberry field looks:
Here is a new plantation of trees, seemingly planted to keep a big ol’ church from eroding over the steep edge down to the fields below.
The church was big and old, but still used, and had been resided with white vinyl at some point. I could smell the oldness of it from the parking lot though – I suspect there are some rotten timbers in there somewhere.
Out back, just a few feet away from the back door was this out house.
When I was walking up the driveway after work, I noticed two bald eagles flying around.
Why was I walking up the driveway? Because it still looks like this:
2-4 inches of ice. We’ve thrown out the woodstove ashes on the driveway all winter so layer by layer they are reappearing as the sun hits the driveway. Jeff got up yesterday with 4-wheel drive so you can see his tire tracks.
Anyway, back to the story. I went inside to get the camera to see if I could get a photo of the bald eagles. One came into sight briefly, but when I tried to take it’s photo it went behind a tree. Seconds later a flock of ducks flew over so I jerked my eye and camera lens upwards and managed to get two photos of the ducks instead!
Here is the first one zoomed and cropped a bit:
This new camera allows me to do really artsy things like:
Domain scams are still running rampant. Here are 2 that were pulled on me this week. I’m going to delete the actual domain names out of these emails so I don’t tamper with their search engine results in the future.
#1. I received an email trying to sell me the .com version of a .ca domain name I own.
Our company specializes in acquiring expired domain names to help individuals and businesses protect their brand online.
The domain name ____.COM expired recently and we were able to secure it.
We noticed that you own ____.CA and felt that you may be interested in acquiring the .COM version of your existing domain name.
It is available for a one-time fee of only $99.00 USD.
To purchase or learn more, please visit http://zipdomains.com/buy.php?domain=____.com
At first I thought – hmmm – I was thinking about dumping my .ca version now that I don’t sell the product anymore. However the affiliate income from the site has picked up over the last year. Maybe it would be worth $99 to secure the .com version? The site was my biggest competitor a few years ago.
So I clicked on the link to see what the details were, and quickly realized that no where did it mention actually transfering the domain name to my ownership at all. Were they just going to lease it to me year by year? This seemed fishy. I Googled ‘Zip Domains’ and quickly learned that these people don’t often own the domains at all! I leaped over to GoDaddy.com, where I purchase my domains, and did a search for the domain name in question. It was available! I quickly scooped it up for just over $12 Canadian. And to think how many people probably fall for this one when the domain name is actually freely available!! I’ll have to develop this site soon because there are lots of links up on the web for the site. Could be a nice little trickle of income.
#2. I got an email saying:
Hi,
my name is Brandon Birdwell and I would be interested in buying your domain ____.COM from you. Are you interested in selling it? If yes, how much would you want for it? What payment method would you prefer?
And just in case you are wondering how I got your email, anyone can get that info at whois.net
Regards,
Brandon Birdwell
Hmm. Odd. First glance, seems legit, but I’m incredibly skeptical. I Googled his name and found nothing out of the ordinary. I Googled his name again with the word ‘domain’ and still nothing out of the ordinary. It seems weird to me that the domain name is all in capital letters, as if this email was created by a bot that grabbed domain names in capital letters from WHOIS records. It also seems odd that the letter is defensive about how they got my contact info. And why mention what payment method I prefer when I haven’t agreed to sell it? Still a skeptic, I Googled “I would be interested in buying your domain”. BINGO! Several other people with the same email, word for word, with different names. It seems this person is looking for people wanting to sell by Paypal. I don’t know if they plan to reverse the payment after they have the domain name, or what this particular scheme is, but I’m out.
Be careful with your domain names! It is better to be skeptical than taken as a fool!
At the beginning of the week I found a salamander in the basement. It took me a few moments to determine if he was actually alive because it really isn’t the time of the year to find a salamander in the basement!
We brought wood in on Sunday evening so I figure he was probably hibernating in the wood because he was really dosey.
I put him in a little container with some water while I figured out what to do with him. I couldn’t leave him in the basement. And I couldn’t throw him outside – it’s still winter outside! He’d freeze!
While he was in a little bit of water he started to really wake up.
So I bought him a little $10 aquarium and decided he can stay with us until the ground thaws and I can set him free.
So far so good, he’s still alive, although shy. I believe he is a blue-spotted salamander. I bought him some amphibian food, but he hasn’t eaten anything. I googled around a bit and all indications are that I really shouldn’t expect him to eat because he’s supposed to still be hibernating.
I was able to get a couple of pictures through the plastic aquarium where you can see him. He’s really cute.
We are giddy with our new camera – a Nikon D90! I haven’t even read the manual yet but today we took it for a ride to town, bought a case for it, and then took a little drive over to the Canso Causeway to look for seals.
We saw several! The first one was a dead road kill on the side of the road 
We saw 3 dead ones by the end of the drive.
The Causeway connects mainland Nova Scotia with Cape Breton Island. It is less than an hour from here. One side of the causeway is frozen and the other is open water. On the ice side there were a number of seals all spread out over the ice. Exciting! I hadn’t seen so many seals!
There isn’t a place to stop on the Causeway, but just past it there is a little pull off. From there we saw a seal that was close to shore so we tried out the new zoom lens and snapped away. It was very frigid – the winds there are so cold it feels like they’re trying to take a bite of your flesh.
Speaking of taking a bite of your flesh, we didn’t want to get too close to the seal because they have big teeth and will bite! Another woman was stopped taking a photo and she was getting close enough to make him growl. Jeff warned her to not get too close but she said she was sure she could out run the seal.
(Have you seen how fast these guys can move? I was impressed)
Here are a few photos.
We think that she/he was trying to get up and over the Causeway to get to the water so I hope it wasn’t the next roadkill seal. We left so we didn’t have to watch that happen.