Hirtle’s Beach, south of Lunenburg, is a popular destination year round for local residents, though it is less known to tourists than Rissers Beach or Crescent Beach.
It’s one of those beaches where the sand gets washed away for the winter and returns for the summer – soft beige sand deep enough to bury your brother in.
The waves can be big enough for fun body surfing. This is the North Atlantic and the water tends to be cold, but once in a while, warmer ocean currents will come by and surprise you. Not that these teenagers care that much.
At the far end of Hirtle’s Beach is a wonderful hiking trail around Gaff Point.
Here’s some more scenery of Hirtle’s Beach featuring my brother and his dogs, Nixxy and Jake. These are Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers – yes, it’s an official breed. They are smart and fast, great agility dogs – these dogs have lots of ribbons at home.
CBC Radio host Peter Gzowski once said, “Rose Vaughan’s songs are like Alice Munro short stories.”
High praise, given that Munro just won the Nobel Prize in Literature!
Halifax singer/songwriter Rose Vaughan has penned many iconic tunes over the decades. As a young and vibrant septuagenarian, she still performs occasionally and plans more recordings.
The Trio’s second album
One of her tunes, “Stone and Sand”, from the Rose Vaughan Trio’s 1993 Fire in the Snow album, is featured in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2e7VMqJKt4
Rose’s songs have been going around in my head lately, as well as on my DVD player, because she recently hired me to get her songs online so people could buy them digitally.
The Trio’s third album
I was delighted to be asked, as I’ve known Rose since the 1990s and even played a little accordion on her Winter Rose album. Cathy Porter, a consummate musician who did most of the Trio’s arranging and has gone on to be a sought-after side performer with some of Nova Scotia’s biggest stars, also enhanced the sound of bands I was in back then – much smaller stars in the firmament, I assure you.
Their music was part of my life in the years after I returned to Nova Scotia and before I had my family. They’re lovely human beings whom I feel privileged to know.
The Trio’s first album, Sweet Tarragon
Each of Rose’s songs paints a story. The music is gentle and melodic, and the lyrics thoughtful and introspective. I can’t claim to be objective because of the nostalgia factor, but I’m truly enjoying listening to the albums again.
If you like “Stone and Sand” above, I invite you to take a listen to the songs on the Artist Playlist on her Facebook page, and samples of her other songs there and on her website, where she now sells CDs and mp3s.
An iconic sight in the waters of Mahone Bay and beyond, Dorotheahas taken hundreds of young people on maritime sailing adventures as part of the Nova Scotia Sea School.
It’s the kind of intense, group adventure that teenagers crave and need for their development, and that schools don’t usually provide.
Lives have been changed.
Dorothea needs an overhaul. Compare the $30,000 they’re looking for to the cost of rebuilding Bluenose II! Small projects like this are very satisfying to support as they can have a huge positive impact on individual lives.
The 12th annual Sand Castle Competition was held on a perfect sunny day, July 14, 2012. Here are photos of some of the entries. The winners were the giant lobster and the pyramids.
Storms don’t always coincide with high tides, but today’s nor’easter did.
Tide was 2.2m (7.2 ft) late this morning (see this link for tide chart), and near the causeway to Oak Island the road was covered with several inches of water. In 8 years of watching storms here, this was the highest storm surge we’ve seen, with water flowing completely over the road.
Late February: the best part of winter. The sun is shining straight through my office window in the semi-basement. How pleasant. Meanwhile, outside, all is white, hard and frozen. Last weekend, a couple of anglers walked about three hundred meters over the frozen sea in front of our house, carrying two chairs, a pack of beer and their fishing rods. They sat there motionless for hours, looking at the hole in the ice they had made for fishing, while drinking beer and having a good chat, I bet. Way to go!
