Jeff showed me this video last night and I smiled through the whole thing.
You’ve gotta see this video! A moose and her two babies play in a back yard sprinkler.
Cute video for your Friday
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Monthly Archives: May 2010
Cape George Lighthouse
I really think the lighthouse at Cape George is my favourite place in Nova Scotia. I think I could sit there all afternoon and watch the lobster boats, the waves, listen to the birds and the clanging of the buoy, watching the tourists drive up, do a quick walk about and zip off, and thinking about the life lighthouse keeper and his family must have had living at that site.
In between our Saturday errands in town, we drove up to the Cape George lighthouse.
You can see Cape Breton and PEI from this spot. And sometimes whales! But not today.
Here are a few photos:
Jeff got a new Canadien’s cap, but I don’t think it is giving the team any luck :no:
This is my new favourite picture of Jeff EVER!
We stopped at Cribbon’s to see if they were serving up their fish and chips but they still aren’t open. Seems silly. There seems to be a lot of tourists around already. While we were at the lighthouse, two motor homes pulled up with California plates! It sounded like they were speaking Dutch
Long Weekend – Lovin’ it!
I took an extra long weekend by taking Friday off in lieu of the overtime hours I worked to co-present my work in Halifax last week.
Sleeping in didn’t work so I got up when Jeff went to work and by 9am I was outside ready to go.
I did a 3 hour yard work marathon in the cool morning, in a hoodie and track pants to keep the blackflies from eating me. I spread 12 more bags of cedar mulch, edged the gardens, weeded them as I spread the mulch, trimmed the lawn around the gardens, and dug out all the yellow day lilies in the garden against my house.
I left the web cam on, so Brian and Dad both watched me and the wheelbarrow travel around the lawn.
It felt so good to get that done and it looks terrific.
Side effect – I had to get up early this morning because I’m too sore to sleep. I guess the bending over and lifting of the big mulch bags was a good work out.
Luckily, I didn’t see any snakes yesterday. I have a blue and purple knee from wiping out on the gravel after a snake surprised me while I was weeding the other night. I tried to run away from it, but I was sitting down to weed, so by the time I got up and started running I was quickly on my face on the gravel driveway.
There was a heavy frost last night so it was a good thing I didn’t plant any more than a few pansies so far.
Vegetable garden is next. We bought more manure and soil for it that we need to spread out. The $80 I won at work in the Survivor Pool (I drew Sandra out of the hat) all went in to mulch, manure, and soil!
Now we have to figure out how to fix the Black and Decker edger/weedwhacker. It felt like a belt came off inside and now the plastic blades won’t turn. Unfortunately we can’t figure out how to get it open and I don’t imagine they have a service facility anywhere near here.
What are your plans for the long weekend?
We don’t have any yet – other than relaxing, and hopefully getting out in the boat to fish.
This was always the weekend we went up to the Stock cottage on the Bruce peninsula to kick off the season. My cousins and I would always find some place to swim, even if it was freezing, just because we could!
10 years ago – Camping at MacGregor Point
If my memory is correct, it was 10 years ago that Dad, Julie, Brian, Leanne, and I (with Winger and Surf) went camping for the May long weekend at MacGregor Point Provincial Park.
It was the weekend that Walkerton’s e-coli outbreak hit the news.
It wasn’t warm.
I slept in my little tent with my dogs, and Dad, Julie, Brian, and Leanne slept in the other tent.
When a park ranger drove through the park after dark to tell everything that there was a bear running around the park and we should all stay put, I freaked out and my dogs and I slept in the back seat of my car with the windows open a centimetre. I slept on the floor and the dogs got the seat. It wasn’t as comfortable as you’d think.
Here are a few pictures I dug out of my photo album and scanned:
And just because these were cute, I scanned in two photos of Julie from July 2000 in Mom’s old backyard. The first one is with Surf, and Winger got into the second photo with them.
Saturday evening’s random updates
I’m sure Jeff won’t mind if you use this one
A week ago we had a visit from two insurance salesman. I am a new union member in my workplace, and along with the membership to the union, every member is offered a $4,000 insurance policy for free. I filled in my details to accept the plan. Of course I expected a call or a visit from that company – the company I had never heard of. Well they called me to let us know they were going to be in the neighbourhood and wanted a time to stop by. I reluctantly agreed. After all, if I croak suddenly, the least I could do is leave my husband $4,000 at no cost.
Well after we had the appointment for them to stop by, I googled the company’s name to see the word SCAM scattered all over the search results. It seems this company is more like an Amway or a Primerica company that depends upon recruiting the young and the desperate, works them hard, promises them big numbers, but pays them little.
We spent all day in dread for this appointment and tried to think of ways to get them out of our house if they turned up the pressure too much.
In the end, they turned out to be two nice young guys – one was desperately shy, and the other was the pitch man. He worked his way through his memorized script, and we were jumping right through his hoops, until he asked:
Him: “Sir, what will you do if your wife dies?”
Jeff: “Well it doesn’t much matter because I’d be in jail.”
Ha!! That one wasn’t in his script. Next question. 
Gardening
I’ve decided that there are really only two good times to garden.
- When it is windy and the temperature is below 8°C
- February.
Those are really the only black-fly-free windows. In February we usually get a nice thaw here and the gardens are exposed. That is really when I need to clean out the flower gardens, weed, and add mulch. Today was luckily so windy and frigid that there was only one black fly that was alert enough to bite me.
Survivor – Heros vs. Villains
Best season since the first one. Go Russell!!
Kitchen Colours
I think we’re really close to settling on a new paint colour for our kitchen, and the hallway. AND we’re really close to picking out the formica pattern for a new counter top! Why do I say “really close”? Well because I’ve already decided what I want and now I have to wait for Jeff to make a really good argument for another colour and pattern, or cave to my suggestions. :yes:
Although in the end it doesn’t much matter what I choose because I am dreading painting the hallway and the kitchen more than anything else and think I might before just to leave it the INSANELY ugly colour it is now. I’ve painted big rooms, bathrooms, inside kitchen cupboards, heck I even painted a big picnic shelter in a provincial park, but the thought of painting around all the edges of the trim in the hallway and kitchen around all the cupboards puts me in a PANIC. I want perfect edges. I don’t want wall paint smears on the ceiling. I hate seeing my mistakes. I hate that my leather recliner has ponytail brown paint on it because I had paint all over my leg and sat in my chair. :no: Maybe I should practice somewhere else first. Like in some one else’s house.
Jeff’s Canadien’s Hat
I have no idea where Jeff’s cap is, but he’s so frustrated that he can’t find it. That hat drew so many comments from strangers. People would always come up to him and comment on his favourite hockey team. But about two weeks ago it mysteriously disappeared. I’d suspect someone was up to some hijinks by hiding it until the playoffs were over, but unless one of you secretly drove over from Ontario to do that, we don’t have any friends here that are up to the pulling-pranks level yet.
We’ve torn apart the house and looked through everything, everywhere, at least four times. And his truck. And the car. Jeff’s even looked in the shed. And I even stopped at the Chinese food restaurant we ate dinner at a couple weeks ago in case he had it with him that day and took if off to eat.
No sign. No clue.
Just the painful frustration of not knowing where it is, where it could be, or how the Habs aren’t being jinxed by a loss of this magnitude.
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Our hike through Abraham Lake’s Old Growth Forest
A few months back when I was at a forestry conference, I heard about an old growth forest in Nova Scotia. Since we moved here, we’ve been amazed at just how little all the trees were here, but then we learned there has been forest harvesting here for centuries!
At the conference, I heard there was a stand of old growth red spruce near Abraham Lake, but because of the spruce bark beetle infestation, the old growth red spruce would all be gone in a couple of years.
I told Jeff about it and he checked out his maps. Since it looked like the area was accessible by bush roads only, we waited until later in the spring for the roads to firm up.
Today we took at a stab at finding the area, and not only did we find it on our first attempt, it turned out there were two hiking trails through the old growth forest!!
In 1971, the forestry company in charge of the area took the old growth area out of its operating plans and gave it to the Nature Conservancy of Canada.
Unfortunately, forests can not be preserved forever. The red spruce are the biggest spruce I’ve ever seen – maybe the biggest trees I’ve ever seen in Eastern Canada. But the spruce bark beetle (Dendroctonus rufipennis) – the same beetle responsible for all the dead white spruce around our house – has hit every single one of the old trees that we saw. Even the hemlock were attacked. There is no doubt that within 1-2 years there won’t be a single one left standing.
Spruce beetle leaves holes ALL over the bark of the tree:
The adult beetle bore through the bark and lay their eggs inside of the tree. When the larvae hatch, they feed inside of the tree, burrowing tunnels through the tree that quickly girdle and kill the tree.
This tree, a giant red spruce, is recently dead, but still standing, so I gave it a hug!
The tops of the trees die, and because they become so hollow, they often either blow completely over, or are snapped in half by the wind.
The forest was quiet and really dark in places. A rain storm was on its way, but luckily it held off AND the black flies and mosquitoes weren’t very active!
Look at all the green moss everywhere. Many forests in the Acadian forest have a bed of moss because it is so moist out here.
See how hollow this one is before it snapped in half?
We also saw many hemlock trees, and a few white pines.
I was trying to trick you into thinking this log was so tall that only my head was poking over the top, but, well, it didn’t work.
I was hugging this big dead one tight to my chest and you can still only see my hands. These are big trees!
The trail we took stopped at the lake half way through its loop. Abraham Lake is a beautiful calm clear lake.
Here is a nice big yellow birch:
Mandatory self portraits!
Joggins’ Fossil Cliffs – UNESCO World Heritage Site
On our road trip last Saturday, we ventured to Joggins, Nova Scotia to see the newly designated, World UNESCO Heritage site.
Joggins is on the Bay of Fundy and has world famous cliffs full of fossils from the coal age.
We knew we had to hit the site at low tide, because the tides there are over 15 feet and the fossils are under the way for a portion of the day! We got there shortly before 10am and ventured along the beach to search for signs of prehistoric life!
There was a group of children staying over at the site for the weekend, and they had signed out all of the hard hats, so we were on our own! But warned to not go within two car-lengths of the cliffs or we stood a good chance of being hit on the head by falling rocks and boulders.
Oh! And don’t forget to get back to the stairs by 3pm or you’ll get caught by the rising tide!
There was a coal mine at the site before that closed up for good in the 1960′s. There is evidence of an old wharf near the stair case going down to the beach level, and coal pieces are still scattered amongst the rocks on the beach.
Here is an entire vein of coal.
The fossils we found were all of plants and trees. They were 300 million years old, but some of them you could feel the texture left from the imprint of the vegetation.
Here is a dead fish that didn’t make it out with the tide. Jeff said it is a skate.
Who knew that Christopher Columbus even walked along this beach?
The trees were tropical trees – as big as 30 metres high they think. The bark is similar to a palm tree:
If you ever visit Joggins, be very leery of these green, algae covered rocks. They are as slippery as ice.
In case you thought I had odd dimensional hands, that quarter should clear up any photo scale confusion. 
That is a fossil of a stick of some sort.
Plant or amphibian? I am not sure, but you could feel the texture like it was just imprinted.
The one on the left was a cookie slice of a tree – way way cool. If there was any fossil I would want, it was that one. But you aren’t allowed to take any so when you go, see if you can find it!
Low Tide on the Bay of Fundy
Early Saturday morning on the Bay of Fundy:
Joggins photos coming up next (but not tonight!)
Listen up Facebook, you’ve gone too far
Facebook, we’ve been close friends for a few years now, and you brought back some wonderful friends into my life.
I’ve been guarded as you made some other changes, but I defended you. I defended your design changes, and your openness to letting me decide how comfortable *I* was with sharing my personal information.
But I think our friendship is over.
In the last week, you’ve opted me in to sharing my information with other websites without notifying me. That was a really big no-no.
And now today you’ve decided to link every aspect of my profile to public pages.
What the >:XX for???????
Too far Facebook, too far. I felt slighted that you discriminated against those of us from small towns. I wanted my profile page to list my real hometown, and my real current town – not the next closest, bigger city. But I let it slide because you were such a good friend.
But now that doesn’t even matter because I’ve deleted my towns from my profile.
And my jobs.
My education.
My husband even deleted that he was married.
Was this really the result you were striving for??