To ALL the Mother's out there...

 HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!

Update!

What a busy few months it has been!

Diego's parents arrived for a 2.5 month visit that was kicked off with Diego's convocation. That was a proud day. They loved Halifax in the summer and my parents got to come out and visit with all of us twice! It was a lovely visit. We even took them backcountry camping in Kejimkujik National Park. It was their first ever canoe adventure and we had to paddle two hours to get to our campsite. The site was glorious and the water even better. I spent most of my time swimming...and eating of course! Another highlight was tidal bore rafting along the Shubenacadie river...such fun for the whole family!

This is the wave as it approaches...

Here is is filling the boat up after dousing us in warm sandy water! All we did was laugh the whole time...except of course when the wave hit...even though it looks like it...it doesn't taste like chocolate milk! Highly recommended!

I also got to spend some time doing field work in Passamaquoddy Bay, New Brunswick last week for a Masters student I am co-supervising! We were island hoping for 4 days to sample different rockweed beds. The beds there are enormous because of the huge tidal range! (see below) The weather was a mixture of fog, blazing sun and heat and torrential downpour. Mostly it was glorious sun.

Interspersed with all of this I have been working hard to get my thesis done. I finished the last two publishable chapters since February for a total of 4. I have the first of 2 oral exams next Friday! The second one, my thesis defence will be in December. This will give me lots of time to make address any comments from my committee, submit my last 2 chapters for publication and write the bookends (general introduction and discussion) for the actual thesis. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! For now, it is back to getting ready for my exam!

Feliz Navidad!

Okay, so I am a day late but still I hope you had a very Merry Christmas!! We started the day at the beach and found a small reef about 800 m away and did some snorkeling.
The party started at 8 pm and went until 6 am! I was pooped by 2 am and my Spanish was failing so I bailed early. We had a blast at the party, 10 adults and a 3 year old. This year the celebration was at Diego's sister's place to make it easier for our nephew Santiago to get to bed after opening his presents. The thing I find the most interesting is how they decorate their houses with Christmas trees, snowmen and Santa Claus. They actually import live trees from Canada and the vast majority of Mexicans have never seen real snow!!
They do have Santa Claus and he does come in the night so Santiago had more present to open in the morning! I asked them how Santa got into the houses since they don't have chimneys and they have bars on all the windows... I don't think any of them had ever thought of that before, not even as children! One tradition that we don't have is to celebrate the arrival of the Wise Men so on Jan 6. On that night the kids put out a shoe and get a little gift. There is also a traditional cake that I describe here when I was fortunate enough to experience the celebration in 2009.

There were lots of gifts to go around and with each gift you have to hug and sing which just adds to the fun and celebratory ambiance. It took almost 3 hours for all the gifts to be opened and then it was time to eat (at 12 am!!!). As usual we had WAY to much food and we will be eating leftovers for at least another couple of days. I made Canadian style turkey dinner to go with the more traditional Mexican dishes and everyone LOVED IT! I even brought canned whole berry cranberry sauce to give them the real experience.
We also had Bacalao a la Vizcaina which is salted cod fish soaked in water to remove the salt and then cooked in a tomato sauce with onions, potatoes and olives. This is a very traditional dish for Christmas in Mexico and dates back to the Spanish conquest. There is no cod fish in Mexico but the Spanish used to fish the cod off the Canadian and American coast and brought the tradition with them. The link to the bacalao recipe is from Diego's great-great grandmother! The one we ate this year (photo below) is from his brother-in-law's family.
We had pork loin stuffed with nuts, plums and grapes with a nut and red wine sauce. Although not traditional and it doesn't look very appealing in the photo below, it was DELICIOUS! I am getting the recipe for sure. There was also a lasagna with walnuts, almonds, capers, olives and ground beef...who would have thought to put nuts in a lasagna but it was very tasty!
For dessert we had ensalada de manzana (apple salad with a cream sauce - in the yellow bowl) and hojaldra. Hojaldra is very traditional at Christmas and New Years and comes from the Yucatan peninsula. It is a layer of a pastry, one of ham, another of cheese and then topped with another layer of pastry sprinkled with coarse grain sugar. Diego's sister made it and I forgot to take a photo but for New Years, Diego's mom is going to teach me how to make it and I will pass on the information because it is delicious!

Noche Buena

Noche Buena or Christmas Eve in Mexico...we are preparing for the family gathering tonight. This will inlcude traditional food such as romeritos (dried shrimp with a type of grass and potatoes cooked in a chocolate and chili gravy),bacalao (salted cod with potatoes in a tomato and chili sauce) with the accompanying Canadian stuffed turkey. The gifts are wrapped and ready to be opened. For now we will head to the beach since the party doesn't start until 8 pm!

I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas filled with good food, excellent company and lots of laughter.

Diego's Big Day!

Diego successfully defended his PhD Thesis today!!! He is now Dr. Diego in Biological Oceanography! His defense was 2 hours long and he did GREAT with all the questions. I am very proud of his success! One down, one more to go in the family! But now, it is time to celebrate!

Keeping Myself Busy

Despite teaching being done for the summer I have been keeping myself quite busy. Before my parents came for an Easter visit, I did a long awaited (ahem...6 years) clean up of our front entryway. It is a vestibule that is not heated or insulated but protected from the elements because it is closed in. I guess we kinda considered it part of the "outside" and it was sorely neglected. We used it as a storage area and stuff just piled up, it was such a mess. The walls were sooo dirty, it took 3 buckets to clean them! I finally got fed up with seeing the mess every time I came home. I thought to myself, "This is what greets me after a long day or work...it is also what greets our guests, this is not acceptable" and the cleaning began. I am not proud of our neglect, but I am proud of the final product!
We now have a welcoming place to greet our guests, a spot to store our scooters and hang our helmets complete with name tags!
Eventually, it will need to be painted but this is a good start!

I also prepared some lemon marmalade using this recipe and some of Sherrie's Meyer Lemon and Vanilla Jelly as a birthday gift for my Dad. He LOVES marmalade. I am not a big fan so I didn't try it...I hope it turned out okay!

Making Pectin

I know the lemon Jelly turned out AMAZING! I will definitely be making it again soon. We had it on crepes with blueberries and light maple syrup on Easter Sunday and it was delicious!
My parents brought us a gallon of Ontario maple syrup that we have been using up on yogurt and homemade granola! They also lugged a bunch of items from my youth, 3 sets of tarot cards, some kids Christmas books and my favourite musical pillow! Stashed in among the stuff were some lovely crocks that I have placed around the house (thanks for the spelling correction!).
While they were here, we stayed at the lovely place on the ocean from my previous post. We were lucky to have a couple of sunny days and took advantage of it by going hiking along the ocean.

Even though it was sunny the wind was still cold! We saw lots of eider ducks and some black guillemots! We also explored the remnants of World War II. There are lots scattered along the rugged coast along the Halifax Harbour approaches.

Bunker

Train tracks to bring concrete for building the bunkers and other supplies from ships.

Now I that they have gone and I am back at home I have been working on my thesis. I had a meeting with my supervisory committee last week and they have approved my remaining chapters (YAY!). Now I just need to buckle down and get them done!!! It is time to be a hermit which means I will be taking it very easy on blogging but I will continue to keep up with everyone.

Take Care! :) See you all soon!

PS. I hope you all like my new spring banner...complete with the ominous fog bank sitting just off the coast. I LOVE fog and we have been having a lot of it lately! :)

New Blog!

My Mom made her very own blog! Click on the photo and take a peak. It might interest some of you! She is an amazing photographer, birder/naturalist and sky enthusiast!

Thank You!

I want to say a great big THANKS to my parents!! I got a phone message from a flower shop on Wednesday but because we were watching the Spain vs. Germany game in a sports bar, we got home too late to get the delivery on Wed. So we spent the rest of the evening and the whole day on Thursday trying to figure out who the delivery was from!! After various jokes about a secret lover, the flowers arrived and they were a congratulations on your first house gift from my parents!
My mom sure knows what I love! They are AMAZING!!
Gerbera daisies with 2 different kinds of lilies and they smell AWESOME!!
I will thoroughly enjoy every view and breath while in my kitchen! The lilies have a blueish hue because it is so hot that we have to have the canopy on our fish tank open to keep the hot lights from killing everything! I am wearing my sunglasses as I write! :) So far the temp has not crested 28C in the tank...anything above 30 = meltdown! Let's hope for some cooler weather!

Happy Father's Day!

Today is Father's Day and unfortunately, my Dad is in Ontario. Although, I cannot celebrate with him in person and I was a slacker at getting his gift sent (:s)... I will spend the day doing things that we would do together (clean the car and have a beer), that he would want me to do (clean the car... and work on my thesis) and that I would do for him (make jam!).
Speaking of jam... Here is you gift Dad! Homemade spicy ginger-rhubard jam that is delicious on ice cream (and anything else you want to put it on)!! I will send it out next week. :)

Gingered Rhubarb Jam (slightly modified from this recipe)

Ingredients:

• 4 cups diced fresh rhubarb
• 3 cups sugar
• 3 tablespoons finely chopped candied ginger
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice

Preparation:

Combine rhubarb, sugar, ginger, and lemon juice in a large saucepan and let stand until sugar is moistened by juices (~20 min). Cook over medium-high heat, stirring often, until thick and clear (~15 min). Ladle into hot sterilized canning jars and seal immediately and use within 3 weeks. However, if you want to keep it longer term then process the sealed jars in a boiling water bath for about 10 mins.

To make the jam, I needed candied ginger...so I made my own and it really is quite simple.
I used this recipe which I won't reproduce because his instructions are great and photos are beautiful!

Happy Father's Day to all the Dad's out there!

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!

Where to begin...

It has been 42 days since my last post and I feel a little hesitant about it. Not for any other reason than I have fallen out of the habit... well here goes. Since I last posted so much has happened!
I guess I will start with the awesome field trip I did with my students to Point Pleasant Park (seen above) in October. For those of you who are not familiar with the Point Pleasant, it is a large urban park on the tip of the Halifax peninsula. In 2003 it was hit hard by Hurricane Juan (see before and after pics below!), so we have a trip every year in October student visit the same 6 sites around the park and measure the regrowth of the trees and other vegetation.

Before and after Hurricane Juan photo of the same spot in Point Pleasant Park

Students estimating the percent cover of ground vegetation in a 1x1 m Wood Frame

Although, there is a lot of regrowth... ...it will take a LONG time for the trees to come back! I discovered 2 things on this field trip. 1) The students LOVE field trips (even in the rain)!!! I am brainstorming all kinds of ideas to get them out even more, what a wonderful way to learn. 2) Terrestrial habitats fascinate me just as much as marine and I have opened a whole can of worms!!! ;)
Let's just say I am getting ready for the next field trip...or really that I am now obsessed with learning about the land around me now that I am comfortable with the ocean!

Thanksgiving was a blast!! It was The Mexicans's (Diego's sister Clau, her husband Rore and their son Santiago) first Thanksgiving so we had a party! We invited a few friend and as usual, I was the only Canadian...who would have thought sushi would go well with turkey! Diversity is wonderful! :)Diego and I celebrated our 7th Anniversary in a cabin in the woods. This one room cabin has no electricity or running water...just a wood stove for heat and propane stove for cooking and candles to see by. What a wonderful place! It is located on the property of a place called Windhorse Farm they are an organic farm that also has a large property where they sustainably harvest wood using a team of horses. They also have a variety of cabins and retreats and tons of hiking!!! Guess who brought all her new plant books with her... We spent the weekend eating, hiking, identifying plants and mushrooms...making tea with sweet fern and playing checkers. Here are some pics I took of this wonderful place.
Can't you just see a smurf walking out of this mushroom?
Some fruiting lichens (a grey species with pink spots and a green species with orange spots!)
Other delicate lichens among the moss.
Last but not least, a rooster video! (I though of you Teresa!)

There...that wasn't so bad...actually I am really enjoying this...I think my break has been long enough!! I will post again soon! I just want to let you all know that although I am not commenting, I have been keeping up and am enjoying reading all your blogs!!
My best to you all!