Canada Day Weekend

 

It’s Canada Day Weekend and fortunately the weather finally turned out its nice side. With temps in the mid-seventies the island has started the celebrations on June 30 this year. Today we had the raising of the flag and singing of National Anthem at 10:00am at the Herring Cove Provincial Park. In the back and close to the campground local vendors had set up stands. One was selling knitwear of a special kind, (see picture hereto) while others tried to raise money for various help – projects. Of course, we met a lot of people we knew and were chatting our way across the big field.     Trying on the latest fashion… Afterwards we went to Lubec,ME to see whether we could buy more delicious lobster from the Inn on the Wharf. This time we chose 3 lobsters with a total weight of almost 5 pounds. While they were cooked we sat down on the patio deck with a coffee and a piece of raspberry pie. When the waitress arrived we chatted her up and she told us that she was from Bulgaria and had come to the U.S. as an exchange student. Her name was Lydia and she had plans to graduate as a Molecular Biologist in Bulgaria this fall. Lydia was the most charming and friendly waitress I had seen in a long time. She also told us that she was in a group of three students, all of them from Bulgaria. When we asked her whether she would agree to be mentioned in this blog she was more than willing to pose for a picture.  So, if you should come to Lubec, ME and visit the Inn on the wharf, you might get lucky to get Lydia to be your waitress. After receiving our lobsters we dropped by the grocery store and got a few things for the kitchen. Our sightseeing van was decorated with Canadian flags and was noticed where ever we came. We had gotten an invitation to see our neighbours, Susan and Miada from Denver,CO at 3:00pm so we all got over to their house for a snack and a chat. The conversation went on in English and Norwegian and touched everything from Jazz music via the big Colorado wild fires to various travel topics. We were served absolutely delicious snacks with excellently spiced up tuna on toasted bread. The day was adjourned with a lobster supper, prepared by Bea in our very own kitchen. Have a great Canada Day Weekend!

Kingsbrae Gardens – Another Visit to St.Andrews by-the-sea

We had left Campobello with the 9.00am ferry. The sea was quiet as a bathtub and we could even see a small whale come up to the surface. Kingsbrae Gardens, located in St.Andrews By-The-Sea, New Brunswick, is a horticultural garden rather than a botanical one. The main difference is that Kingsbrae Garden is a feast for the eyes with wonderful display and themed gardens, as well as being educational; botanical gardens are generally parks with collections of individual specimens of each variety of plant, with education and cataloguing the primary function. At Kingsbrae Garden you will find most varieties labelled, at least once, but as there are masses of some varieties, not every plant is labelled. You might think of a botanical garden as a living encyclopaedia, whereas Kingsbrae Horticultural Garden might be likened to an enormous and beautiful coffee table book, offering glorious images with every turn of the page. Kingsbrae Garden celebrates St. Andrews’ heritage of fine gardens with its use of old and new gardening styles. Visitors will find these great traditions in gardening in the White, Rose, Knot, Perennial and Cottage Gardens, to name but a few. Newer styles are reflected in the Gravel, Edible, Secret and Ornamental Grass gardens.

And the Winner is: WHO ARE YOU?

Have fun where ever you are in this strange world!

A Nice Day on Campobello Island

Surprisingly we had a very sunny day and decided to take advantage of it. So we got into the Fat Lady and took off to show the Island to our friends from Norway. First stop was Friars Head, which really is one of the top view points and highlights on Campobello. From here one can see the Cobscook Bay in Maine, the Friars Bay and Passamaquoddy Bay farther out. We explained the hydro tidal power project which was initiated before WW2 but was scrapped when finances went into defense budgets. Next stop was the Mulholland Lighthouse which was built in 1885. It is an octagonal tower and 44ft. high plus the light. The view across the “narrows”  and the International Bridge  was especially beautiful today. From Mulholland we drove north and went to Mill Cove Beach. Not many island visitors have seen this beautiful and peaceful place. The must-do-stop was the Head Harbour Lightstation, which we have enjoyed many times before. On our way back home we stopped at the Families Fisheries Restaurant and had a snack and something to drink. While we were having a little meal in the shade a restaurant employee appeared and dropped two fresh lobsters in a huge pot of boiling water . The water was heated over a big wood stove outside. Of course, I had to go over and take a picture of the pot. Driving across the island with the top down is one of my favorite things to do and today the air was so warm that the wind was very welcome. Bea made a nice chicken dinner and we all agreed that we had had great time together.

            

blogger Tags: Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Lobster, lighthouse

Dogs, Dogs, Dogs

When I was a baby, granny and grampa  had a little dog. It was black and white, had a long fur and was called Molly. Not having a memory of my own from that time, both my parents and granny had told me how Molly had always been around that little baby, never letting get any stranger get close to my stroller. Molly was guarding me like a treasure. When I grew bigger I rolled around on the floor playing with Molly. Some times when it must have gotten too much for Molly, she growled until I let up. Ever since that dog had disappeared out of my life I had a longing to get my own dog. I became a dog-lover. When we lived on our farm in Norway we had two dogs, a mix-breed and a Riesenschnauzer. Bea was the one who wanted the Riesenschnauzer. So here were two dog lovers. Our dogs were named Lisa and Sjiva. Both were small puppies when they came to us. It was winter when Shiva came to us. Bea taught her to go outside to do her business. LIke I said, it was winter and we had lots of snow. Shiva had no problems with that, she just found a spot in the snow. Several months later the snow was melting and we noticed that Shiva was still doing it on snow. But that white stuff was disappearing at an alarming rate. So one day it was gone. Shiva got outside to find a cold white spot, but got increasingly desperate as she couldn’t find a single bit of snow. She was circling around on the lawn, looking and looking. Finally she gave it up and did it on the fresh green grass. She had learned something new. Lisa, the mix breed, had a different thing going. She loved to fly after neighbour’s sheep, in fact any sheep she could come across. One day we did a walk down the valley. Behind a texas gate sheep were grazing. Lisa was walking up to a mother sheep and  came between the mother and her little lamb. The mother sheep wasn’t happy about our barking dog and got downright angry. When Lisa wouldn’t stop barking she snorted and started stomping her forefeet on the ground. Lisa had never experienced something like it and got afraid. Within a second she had turned around and was stampeding home, leaving us standing on the road – speechless and wondering. We continued our walk and when we finally got home Lisa was not visible anywhere in the yard. I had to call out her name several times before I spotted her sticking her head around the corner of the house. Obviously, she was expecting to see that angry mother sheep coming to take her. Suffice to say, she was a “Happy Camper” when she saw that it was just us, her family, coming home. Dogs have been important to us all the time and when we bought our property in Alberta we took over two dogs from the previous owner. “Boomer” was a 5-year Labrador og Molly was just  a 10-12 weeks old puppy mix. Boomer was a brave dog which has been fighting off black bears more than once. He had scratches from bear claws on his head and hated the slightest odour from a bear. Molly, being a small puppy was hiding in a dog house until she got older and followed Boomer on his expeditions. We had a 120 acres for us and the dogs and they ruled over every acre. When we traveled south in August 2008, Boomer got sick with cancer. He was 11 years old when we had to relieve him from his pain. It was the most terrible day since we came to Canada. Luckily, we still had Molly, who got even closer to us now that Boomer was gone. We can’t imagine to live without a dog. They give us more than we ever will be able to give to them.

Bea and Shiva way back in 1988

I with Lisa  in 1988

    Boomer and Molly

 

About Socks and such

When the topic comes to socks I have a whole lot experience with that. Not that I ever mailed a sock like fellow blogger Bob did. Bob even mailed a sock across the Atlantic Ocean, which really would make it an international sock. I can’t but imagine what customs officials would think if that mailing was checked on the suspicion of containing drugs and they find a single sock? What kind of guy is this? Ok, I was going to talk about MY own experience with socks. First of all I must tell you that socks suck. They suck in a big way, cause they have a tendency to simply disappear. They disappear in places where you would not expect them to disappear. I mean I could understand if you go to the beach and take your socks off and one of them disappears in the lose sand. But most socks disappear at home, despite the saying that “a house cannot lose a thing”. When I know that I put 3 pairs of socks into the washer and only 2 pairs and a single one reappear then where the heck is that lost son of a sock? I put it in there and after the laundry is finished it’s gone. Not a single piece of it can be found. And it happens again and again. My drawer is full of socks – single ones - lost souls who are waiting for their partner sock to be found again, to be reunited with their better half. Geez… how many socks I have bought. I buy them in bundles…5 pairs for 19.99. On Sale!! Yep, that I do, but they won’t stay with me. Even mother-in-law has sent packages of socks from the other side of the Atlantic. Yes, yes she is actually mailing socks! Imagine that. Also these European socks like to disappear. In an attempt to make use of single socks I have laid them out on the bed, looking for matching colours uniting them in a second marriage, but most of them also have some sort of a pattern and that’s where it stops. Also, there are way too many shades of blue, grey and even black that this match-making has a lot of success. Of course, I could discard the single ones, but then what if the other one reappears in a magic way. And some of them do. Bea has occasionally found them hidden away in a fold of a shirt and sometimes balled up in under pants. Wow… But most of them never show up again. So here I go again – buying new bundles of socks when they are on sale. And the local post lady puts another message in my P.O.Box announcing a new package from Germany containing socks. Thanks for looking and keep an eye on your socks.

South of the Border

What’s the purpose of the trip today?  That was the question we got when we left Campobello across the border this morning. Of course the purpose was to show off a few of the nice places in Maine to our guests from Norway. The first stop was the West Quoddy Lighthouse in the West Quoddy State Park. The lighthouse keepers dwelling has been turned into a visitor center and was a very interesting place to see. After following route 191 via the little fishing village Cutler we got to Machias from where we went to the Rogue Bluff State Park which offers one of the nicest sandy beaches in the region.  Norwegians on the beach Had us a short lunch stop at the Dunkin’ Donut place, though I would always prefer a Canadian Tim Hortons. It was a nice day with some nice sunshine. and our friends got to see another region of the east coast. blogger Tags: Maine, Machias, West Quoddy

And yet another rainy Day

It’s kind of hard to take, but there’s nothing to do about it: We had another rainy day. So the best we could do was going to the Roosevelt Cottage and “having Tea with Eleanor” as they call the daily tea session the Roosevelt Park has created. Even though I have seen the cottage and been at the tea several times it is always a nice way to spend a few hours, and maybe especially on a rainy day. Eleanor Roosevelt was a truly amazing woman and far ahead of her time when it came to initiate social reforms, something which wasn’t always well received by the establishment. The cottages themselves are true treasures in workmanship and outstanding materials used. The Roosevelt cottage had always running water which came from an indoor cistern, but it was not equipped with a telephone.  Whenever there was a call to either the U.S. President or the First Lady, (the only phone on the island was installed at the General Store in Welshpool) someone from the store had to bicycle or run to the Roosevelt Cottage a mile away to get one of them come over to the store. Eleanor Roosevelt, who was the one spending most time on Campobello, had to bicycle herself to the store to make the phone call. But Eleanor did not think of that as a big problem. She was very well known and respected between the islanders. Eleanor was born in 1884 and died in 1962, the year the Roosevelt Campobello Memorial Bridge was built. A visit to the park, which is an associated part of the U.S. National Park system, is free of charge and attracts thousands of visitors every year. It is also the only International Park in the world which is owned, financed, administered, and staffed by the people of two countries. ************************************************************************* Miraculously, the rain stopped in the late afternoon and the sky cleared. Having been confined to the house for too long we all got in the car and drove to the beach at the Roosevelt Park. We had a great walk with beach combing, finding more those famous round rocks which already had intrigued the Roosevelt children in their days. Our day was coming to a delicious end when our guests made a wonderful tomato soup, which we enjoyed with cooked rice and garlic bread.   Thanks for stopping by again!

Oh-Oh it’s raining…

Thunder was rolling this morning and dark clouds had settled over Campobello. In fact we had a heavy fog as well. Pretty soon it also started raining and all plans for further tours with our Norwegian guests were scrapped. So, what could we do other than planning food preparations? Since Norwegians are people who like to eat seafood we decided to get lobster for supper. We called a restaurant in Lubec and ordered fresh cooked Maine lobster. At the restaurant we had to wait 30 minutes for the lobsters being ready, in fact we could chose the ones we would like to have out of tank. Four lobsters were chosen and while we waited three of us had a haddock chowder and we all got coffee. The day stayed rainy so we did not move outside more than necessary. Late afternoon Bea started in the kitchen, making a mayonnaise sauce 50/50 with sour cream and the juice of one lemon, salt and dill. It turned out to be a wonderful meal with friends which will be remembered a long time. Even Molly had a heck of a good time. Thanks for stopping by!