Big FIND and my Pumpkin.

Last week Sherrie came to Halifax for a visit and as usual after dinner we headed to Value Village and what did I find....
12 Nancy Drew Books!!! I loved reading these as a child and am now in the process of building my collection. I already had a few from childhood (still in my parent's basement...) but most I borrowed from the library. I just couldn't pass them up and I already finished my first book! They are great stories.
This year for Halloween we decided to stay home and hand out candy. So to let the kiddies know to come on over, I carved my very first pumpkin that doesn't have the traditional triangle eyes and toothy smile. I had a BLAST carving it and enjoyed it's glow all evening.
Now I just need to get the evil tree's eyes and the moon to glow next year. I also made roasted pumpkin seeds and they were a delicious and healthy snack that I enjoyed all week!
I hope you had a great Halloween!

Lest We Forget

Today we remember those who have given their lives and continue to fight protecting the interests of our country and other countries who have been or currently are under siege. Although, we may not agree with war or the reasons for it, the people who were/are there on the front lines truly believe(d) in the cause and were/are willing to die for it. It is this tenacity and strength of conviction that we should respect and pay tribute to. We should also pay tribute to the families who have been left behind or are faced with the challenges of welcoming home a wholly different person.

Flander's Fields - The Great War

War takes huge toll on society and today we are faced with this stark truth more than any other day of the year. We should cultivate the feelings that Remembrance Day stirs in us to support efforts to resolve conflict through more diplomatic, humane and peaceful means to end the cycle of loss and suffering and honour the ultimate sacrifice already made by so many.

Trees

After Earl, out two 55 ft Norway Maples in the back sustained some heavy damage (see previous post). We were also worried that the next strong wind might wreak more havoc...so we decided to have them pruned.

View from our second floor deck before.

We called 4 different places to get estimates. The prices ranged from fair to outrageous! Luckily, we have wonderful neighbours that helped us with the cost and we decided on a small company with 2 guys who had a number of years experience and boy did we make a good choice (you can click the image to get to their website)!!
They arrived in the morning and worked away all day climbing, trimming, chipping and chopping and always asking our opinion as they went...making sure we got what we wanted.
There were no ladders involved at all! The owner of the company was a real monkey, climbing all over the two trees even up to the tallest and out on the smallest limbs! We were riveted!
His partner waited at the bottom to guide down larger branches and delt with the chipping and clean up.

He even cut the larger branches that couldn't be chipped into logs that he then also split for us for firewood! Now we just need to buy our backyard firepit we have been dreaming about!
Here they are preparing to take down the top of the tree that broke off during the hurricane and got stuck among the branches.
They did such a great job, I sent them home with a jar of homemade jam each! Here is what the trees looked like after the pruning.
Although we can now see our neighbours in the back, we all get a lot more light into our backyards. Not to mention we all feel a little safer during those high windstorms now that the branches aren't as heavy! Thanks again Green Heritage!!

Just the 3 of Us

Me, Diego and Earl...Hurricane Earl that is! On Saturday September 4th, 2010, the category 1 hurricane made landfall about 100 km southeast of Halifax at ~ 11 am.
Diego and I lived through Hurricane Juan in 2003, a category 2 hurricane that made landfall in Prospect, NS which is around 50 km away from Halifax and the city was devastated! Diego and I actually slept though Juan and awoke to the state of emergency that ensued, so this time we actually got to watch the storm until it subsided around 3 pm. Juan really devastated the trees in Halifax and we lost power for 10 days!

These two photos were taken just around the corner from our house!

This is the popular Public Gardens in the heart of Halifax, it was closed for months.

So we prepared for the worst.
We brought in most of the plants and what we left out we tied down with the furniture.

This is the beginning of the storm.

We had ample propane for the BBQ and gasoline for the car and generator....yes we bought a generator...for our corals! We have hundreds of dollars worth of corals in our large kitchen tank and we were not about to loose it all...that and we also have a sump pump that we would like to power to keep the basement from flooding...We also had lots of candles (and battery operated fire alarms) and flashlights. The storm howled and we jumped with every bang but after a couple hours we decided it was high time to do something fun as a distraction...
So out came Lord of the Rings RISK and the large bottle of red wine we had been saving and the battle for Middle Earth began.
Four glasses of wine and a knock on the door later, we were out to survey the damage with a neighbour. The top of one of our trees broke off and was (and still is) dangling up high in the tree. We will have to hire someone to come in to deal with it and trim our tree back in preparation for the next one! Many other branches also broke off and we helped the neighbour clear it out.
Luckily, there was no damage caused by our trees...but our other neighbours weren't so lucky...at least it was their own tree so there won't be any neighbourhood rifts.
All in all it was a mild one compared to 2003...but it is just the beginning of the hurricane season...with the waters off our coast warming and our climate changing we are bound to have a few more doozies, if not this year...perhaps next. Our running joke is that every year from now on will be the worst year for hurricanes on record...lets hope we are wrong!

The Last Hike

We found out last Thursday that Claudia, Rodrigo and Santiago are going back to Mexico. There were many reasons for this but they said they liked Canada and hoped to return soon. Since the news Diego and I have been trying to enjoy our last week together and do as many Canadian things as we can before they go. On Sunday we went for a beautiful hike at Gibralter Rock along the Musquodoboit Rail Trail. For more info click here. What an incredible trail!
It was a steep hike up especially with a one year old in our arms but the view from the top was breathtaking!
You could see the entire valley! Diego and I thought that it would be a great hike in the winter with gampons, right after a snowfall... snowcaps on all the trees...especially early in the snow season when it is not too cold!
The forest itself was really dense, full of moss, lichens and ferns...so guess who went camera crazy...
Doesn't this look like a snowy layer?
What a lovely lichen!
The forest on the way back down to the "mountain" (ie: very large hill) was still and quiet, full of evergreens and obviously very damp with its moss carpet.
So many boulders covered in moss with small trees...
There isn't much soil here for the trees and much of the damage from Hurricane Juan in 2003 was still apparent, interspersed with the hope of new life. (See my other post here about Hurricane Damage)
After the hike we went down to Martinique Beach, a very long fine white sand beach.
It is a Provincial Park just south of Musquodoboit Harbour bounded on one side by the Atlantic Ocean and the other by a huge salt marsh. It is our favorite beach and also one I take my students too for my summer class.
Here is Tio (uncle) Diego showing Santiago the ocean.
To finish off the day we had fish n' chips. It was an amazing day...very Nova Scotian. We all got the chance to explore somewhere new and enjoy each others company. We will miss them.

Hope you are all have a great week!

Checking In

Life since my last post has been just INSANE!!

I was in BC for 5 days total...not very long at all. However, I did get to enjoy my morning runs around UBC campus (except for the beach security guards that kept kicking me off the beach because it wasn't yet 8 am!) but did not get to the cupcake place Teresa mentioned. :(
I did get to visit my cousin in Victoria whom I haven't seen in 7 years! She has three kids and a husband that I met for the first time! We had a great time!
This is the view from their deck and the birthday pie Pheonix (eldest daughter) and I made for her dad with blackberries she and her brother Paul picked the day before. It was a lemon blackberry pie and was DELICIOUS!
Upon arriving I was rocketed into my new job teaching the lab portion of a second year University course in Ecology (~150 students). I absolutely love it BUT every day is crazy and I am living week to week and working 6 days a week! Luckily, next semester will be the same thing over again so I will have a little more time to breathe now that everything will be prepared!
Here is an experiment I set up in the greenhouse for the students. They will be looking at the the effect of crowding on the growth of corn plants. From left to right you have an increasing number of plants per pot (1, 2, 4, 8 and 16). You can see that the pots with one or 2 are WAY taller than the ones with 8 or 16! Ah competition...for light, water and nutrients. Such a simple experiment yet very effective!

At the same time as all of this insanity... Diego's sister, brother-in-law and their son moved to Halifax from Mexico!!! They live in the flat below us, so we have been busily helping them adjust to life in a colder and culturally (and linguistically) different country! We took them apple picking yesterday. What a glorious day it was, sunny but cool!
We picked Cortland and MacIntosh apples and 2 kinds of pears.
We left with 3 - 10 lb bags of apples and pears, a squash, a sweet pumpkin (for pies of course!), a 10 lb bag of beets and some sunflowers!
That's me in the back picking my 8 for $2!!! SCORE!
I don't forsee any calmness in the near future but just so you know even if I don't post for a little while...I am still alive and well! Even though I am not posting comments, I am keeping up with everyone!! I will post again soon!

Warmest wishes to you all! Enjoy the fall! :)

Winter has Arrived!

We had our FIRST SNOW last night!!! Actually, it was our second but this one actually accumulated! It was a crazy storm, lots of raging winds and large wet snowflakes.

This is an interesting time, since it is the transition between seasons, there are remnants of Fall mixed in with the newly fallen snow of Winter.

Like these leaves under a layer of ice, frozen to the sidewalk. Or this pile of leaves by the side of the road covered in a crusty layer of snow.


It never ceases to amaze me how life can cling so tenaciously in the face of such extremes. The last vestiges of green grass still hanging on in hopes of warmer days. We wont see this again until next Spring!


However, being on the East Coast the winters are mild enough to allow Rhododendrons to survive through the cold, dark season, adding some colour to otherwise grey landscape!

Reminding us that although everything appears to be dead that really life has just slowed down for these few months...maybe we should heed the Rhododendrons advice and slow down ourselves. Enjoy the warmth of our homes, families and friends and marvel at the spectacle of winter! Remember when we were kids...anxiously awaiting the snow, snowsuits at the ready by the door...running out elated with the first flakes!


Let's make winter fun again!

Remembrance Day 2008

Diego and I just got back from the Remembrance Day Ceremony at Parade Square in Halifax. It is always a day of mixed emotions for me. I did not have any close relatives that went to WWI or WWII and only one that went to Vietnam but it always makes me think of all those people who died and continue to die fighting. They themselves as well as their families have made an immense sacrifice to protect the freedoms of others. However, it also makes me see the failings of humanity, these people died because we could not resolve our differences with words but had to resort to violence. I hope that we learn from our tragedies and push the world towards peaceful negotiations so that we do not have to continue to send our friends and family to war.


Lest we forget.

Fall Favourites!

I made a delicious squash medley soup for a dinner on Tuesday. Here are the squash just out of the oven from roasting. I love all the textures and colours they come in!

I just scooped out the flesh, added it to turkey broth that I had in the freezer leftover from Thanksgiving, then added salt, pepper and lots of Turmeric and pureed. Once, they were pureed, I brought the soup to a simmer and added whipping cream and mixed well. Serve with some coarse ground pepper and some chives on top...delicious!

These are my mums. They were in full splendor on my kitchen table for weeks...I thought I would immortalize them here since they are now fading and will soon hit the compost heap.

I hope you enjoy the fall colours, textures and smells as much as I do! ; )