Abord the tall ship Unicorn, on the Lunenburg waterfront
After their triumphant sailpast in the sun in Halifax, several tall ships came to Lunenburg for a mini version of the big event. The Unicorn, in this picture, takes teenaged girls on excursions of several weeks with an all-female crew for life-changing experiences. I heard its captain explain to some astonished men that no, in fact, there aren’t spats among the crew, and in fact they all get along very well. And the ship is clean, particularly the bathrooms, not something you can expect on many ships. I was ready to sign up.
Friendly Lepidoptera probes Dennis' hand with probiscis. Click to enlarge.
Dennis Robinson writes:
This butterfly came to me yesterday. He started out by alighting on my knee and ended up drinking generous quantities of cranberry juice, strawberry juice and Welches grape juice from concentrate. I think he (or she) liked the grape juice best.
He sipped it off the end of my finger but later actually took some out of a teaspoon. He was very tame and seemed to be well aware that I was trying to help him. You can see that someone, possibly a bird, had taken a small chunk out of his back wings but he was in good spirits and very friendly. This is the first time that that I’ve had such an encounter. I have other pictures of him on my knee curling up his proboscis but this will do for now…
(It’s probably a moth, due to its coloration, hairy body, and antennae which are smooth but not clubbed at the end.)
Since we live and sail on Mahone Bay and have come to know most of its islands by sight, I read Frank Parker Day’s 1928 novel Rockbound with great interest. I wasn’t the only one. Thanks to CBC’s Canada Reads program, the previously obscure novel has been lionized by the Canadian literary establishment and the public.
One of the book’s biggest fans is my mother. She has read it several times. When I took her sailing around East Ironbound Island, the setting for the novel, the binoculars and cameras were in constant use.
If Day’s characters were as thinly disguised as his settings, it’s no wonder that the locals he met on Ironbound felt betrayed by his portrayal of hard-drinking, feuding fishing families eking out a hardscrabble living on a small island. But they are long gone now, and new generations of readers marvel at the dramatic sweep of his story, his vivid characterizations and the detailed portrayal of pre-industrial fishing. For me, Rockbound has made the outer islands of Mahone Bay come alive with the ghosts of those who have gone before. Imagine rowing from Tancook to Ironbound, from Ironbound to Pearl (“Barren Island” in the novel) – well, I can’t, really, but characters that I have come to care for do just that in the novel, so I believe it is possible.
Poster for Rockbound, the musical. Click picture to visit Two Planks website.
When I heard that Two Planks and a Passion Theatre Company was developing Rockbound as a musical, I was astonished and very curious. Written by Allen Cole and under development since 2006, it is now playing “off the grid” (outdoors) at the Ross Creek Centre for the Arts, half an hour north of Wolfville. My mother and I, both very excited, went last Wednesday.
From the opening song, my questions and doubts about how a musical format would serve the story were laid to rest. My ears were awash in delicious sound and my jaw remained in my lap for much of the performance. Harmonically and rhythmically complex and expressive, the music transcends genres and beautifully evokes the epic story and the setting. The acting and singing were wonderful. How else could this play have been done? The music elevates the story, poeticizes it, universalizes it.
I hope to see Rockbound again when it comes to Chester Playhouse August 13-16. Meanwhile it is playing until August 9 at Ross Creek. Not to be missed.
The deer netting is practically invisible so I've run three levels of flagging tape around it so the deer will know that something is there.
My deer fence looks like a carnival, the thin mesh festooned with orange and yellow flagging tape. What’s inside is not terribly tempting to deer, not yet anyway. It may not be big news for hungry humans either. The potatoes should do OK, and I hope to get some beans – especially if we get a bit of heat around here. But when your broccoli matures early with heads the size of a loonie, you know the plants are feeling stressed. They somehow know that under these conditions, they’d better reproduce while they can.
This broccoli plant has given up already. It doesn't think it'll grow big enough to support a floret larger than a loonie.
How many pioneers tried to feed their families out of soil no better than this? Recently forested, no topsoil brought in, rocky, no manure integrated into the dirt yet – not much good for anything but potatoes.
It takes time to build up soil like this – plus compost, manure and other organic matter. My ambition is to enlarge the garden with time. Newspaper and black plastic are smothering the weeds in future sections of garden.
Beyond the waves rolling into one of Queensland’s beaches on St. Margaret’s Bay, a windsurfer in a full-body wetsuit spent the afternoon learning to master his board. Meanwhile, an afternoon party rolled on at a cottage on a sheltered pond separated from the ocean by a bar of rocks and sand. Some of the guests enjoyed taking turns in a rowboat. Others swam in the warm pond.
A friend just put together this video about “The Story of Maple Syrup”. I contributed a particular photo at the end of the video. A note: the light amber grade of maple syrup may be considered the finest, but I prefer the darker stuff – more flavour, and no doubt more of those nutritious minerals they mention.
I’m determined to develop a garden on this corner of our property. Grass won’t even grow there, just weeds and wild strawberries. Over the 5 years that we’ve lived here, I’ve cleared a 15’x15′ patch and tried growing things like beans, potatoes and broccoli. But deer, and maybe rabbits, have munched whatever managed to grow – even potato plants, which surprised me as potato leaves are rather toxic.
This year, however, the recession and the spike in oil prices last year have got many of us thinking more about growing our own food. So I’m getting more serious with the garden. It’s time to learn to grow food!
The soil is terribly poor. Over the years, I’ve added a bit of seaweed and compost, but finally this year I paid for a load of manure. That was the first firm step of commitment.
The second step: a fence. But I needed to do it cheaply, using mostly materials at hand.
The only thing I actually had to buy was 100 ft of 7′ high “deer fence” – black plastic netting – from Lee Valley for about $27 plus shipping. For the support posts, I had some 8-foot lengths of old aluminum tubing from a shed structure which had collapsed in a winter storm some years ago, and some leftover copper pipe which happened to fit just inside the aluminum tubes.
To erect the support posts, I pounded 4′ lengths of the copper tubing halfway into the ground with a sledge hammer, then used a plumber’s pipe-cutting tool to cut off the top bit that had got mashed by the force of the sledge. The aluminum tubing slid over the copper and another foot or so into the ground. Hopefully it will be strong enough at the level of the ground to withstand bending forces. In fact, I haven’t had to run guy lines or construct inside props to support my fence posts.
Then I attached the deer netting to the posts, which have boltholes at the top and halfway down, with plastic ties. I cut pegs from twigs and hammered them through the netting into the ground to keep the rabbits out, although there are a few gaps which concern me where the netting doesn’t reach the ground.
The black netting is practically invisible from a distance, so I’ve run plastic flagging tape around the perimeter halfway up for the deer to see. Deer can jump up to seven feet high, so I need to finish the job by running more tape all the way around the top. Another thing to buy.
So far so good. But with the weather we’ve had, the garden is growing slowly, so the temptation may not yet be very great. The wild strawberries are much more interesting to grazers (me included). Stay tuned. [Update on the deer fence, July 3, 2010]
It has been raining for weeks now, it seems. A quasi-stationary low has delivered warm, moist air to the South Shore on an ongoing basis.
Lunenburg is still picturesque through the fog. You get a new appreciation for why the buildings are so brightly painted. It’s a cool place to hang out.
Waiting to head out into the AtlanticFriends of ours are waiting to make a trans-Atlantic crossing in their sailboat, but the weather has delayed their departure. They’ve moved the boat into Lunenburg Harbour so they can enjoy the ambiance and feel like they’ve started their trip. No matter what other ports you may visit, Lunenburg is special, a unique, historic, world-class sailing destination.
The brand new Chester Skate Park. Photo by M. Sepulchre
It’s finished. Spearheaded by students from Chester Middle School, looking for ways to create more cool activities to keep kids out of trouble and promote an active lifestyle, and several years in the making, the concrete Skate Park is now a very impressive reality.
I bet that the successful organizing effort has yielded as many benefits to the community as the park itself. Congratulations to all involved!
