MAY FLOWERS, MOTHER'S DAY, MAY AT THE BEACH, MAY YOU ALWAYS HAVE LOBSTER

May has been a pretty confusing month, quite honestly. If you have been watching the weather forecasts you know that much of Canada is either under water or is close to being under water. We aren't in any danger here on PEI of flooding but we have seen a LOT of RAIN.

MAY FLOWERS
Of course it brings the May flowers so in the spirit of lots of rain and May flowers I went out and bought, yup, flowers. There is an amazing place a five minute drive from our house called Jewell's Country Market that sells plants, seeds, bulbs, local produce in the summer months, local meat also in the summer months, home made breads and Maritime biscuits. As if that's not enough, there is an ice cream parlour that sells 60 flavours of ice cream and fresh made fudge. That was a huge and happy surprise.

A fair sampling of the selection available.

Since we bought this house in the winter time we had no idea what had been planted in the garden. When spring arrived, all we saw were a few little shoots coming up here and there; help was needed. At any rate, Jewell's is a pretty nice place for a novice gardener to go for advice and choice of things to plant. The staff is knowledgeable and helped me decide what to plant and when to plant and how to have colour all summer long in the front garden. For those of you who do garden, you know what fun it can be and you also know it's kind of rewarding to see what you have planted thriving .I can't actually speak to the thriving part yet but, let's just say, nothing has died. If only I could keep Kaede from digging up the pansies to get at the sweet smelling manure.

The front of the house on May 9th before I planted some flowers.

It was a surprise what would spring up in spring. This is May 9th before I did a bit of planting.

Kaede likes to supervise the weed pulling and planting.

And here we have the results, from 9th May to 31st May. What a difference a few weeks can make in the life of a pansy.

MOTHER'S DAY

May is also the month in which Mother's Day is celebrated. The second Sunday of May people all over Canada celebrate their mothers with phone calls and usually flowers or a nice lunch. This year Erik and I got to celebrate with quite a few mothers as Erik played music for a Mother's Day Tea at one of the seniors' homes here on the island. Sandwiches, tea and sweets were served followed by a beautiful sheet cake proclaiming Happy Mothers' Day. The cake was ceremoniously cut by a woman who was celebrating her 98th birthday that week. Families were in attendance and there was a lively atmosphere as Erik sang and played his keyboard to entertain them.

In keeping with the theme of Mothers' Day, Erik searched for songs with a motherly theme and came up with mostly Irish songs that were dedicated to mothers, like A Mother's Love, An Irish Lullaby, My Mother's Eyes and a few old standards. I watched the people and listened to the buzz of the conversations taking place at the tables. At a table near to where I was sat a woman of about 60 with her mother. The interaction between them was beautiful to see. The younger of the two didn't waiver from looking at her mother in admiration. The resident also knew every single song that Erik played and sang along with a look of absolute rapture on her face. The woman was born in Cape Breton and her particular favourite is Song for the Mira which Erik plays for her each time we visit there.

Singing along with every song.

Some of the residents and their families.

Erik on the keyboard singing, playing and entertaining.

MAY AT THE BEACH

We discovered a beach not ten minutes away. The one we were going to stopped allowing dogs the beginning of April but this one is dog friendly year round. It's a secluded and pretty little harbour at Tracadie with fine sand and a plethora of little washed up crabs on the beach. 

A very warm but misty morning at Tracadie Harbour.

Across from the bach a little bar of sand.

All that black is not all seaweed. It's a school of tiny little fish.

Kaede's first swim of the season.

MAY YOU ALWAYS HAVE LOBSTER

A happy surprise. A barbeque of something boring turned into a feast of lobster. Coming home one day Erik stopped at a little fish shop we used to see when still renting up in Stanley Bridge. Of course he popped in to check it out for future reference and came home with these two beauties and some fresh oysters. 

Gotta' love the Maritimes and you gotta' love a man who brings home lobster and oysters for no reason.

And now, June is bustin' out all over. Sunny days surely must be upon us!!! The rain and the late spring weather is getting a bit boring and  the good spring weather seems to be avoiding us. One day it's 25c and we are on the deck eating dinner, the next it's dark, cloudy, rainy and 9c. Our shorts are sitting, patiently, in the drawer hoping to see the light of day.

One for the road.......check out the names in the bottom left corner. This is the French Open in Paris. Thought someone might believe it was actually me :-)

MORE GOOD STUFF TO SEE IN NOVA SCOTIA

Nova Scotia has so much to see and do and so much going on that I've had to write about our NS experiences in two separate blogs. The first one, HOT SPOTS THAT GET YOU TO PEI - PART DEUX, took us to Digby, Hubbard Beach, Chester, Mahone Bay, Peggy's Cove, Lunenburg and other neat places. Because we have family in Nova Scotia, we are doubly fortunate to spend time there seeing the sights NS has to offer and seeing family. Here, then is part two of fun we've had in Nova Scotia that you may want to also check out while travelling through that beautiful Province.

HALIFAX AND AREA:  Just like Quebec City, Halifax has too much going on to try to capture in this little blog. It's a world class city with a wealth of maritime history, museums, art galleries, wonderful buildings, a top notch university and eateries and pubs galore. Link to Halifax Tourism Information. One interesting little tidbit is that Alexander Keith (famous brewery name) was once Mayor of Halifax so you know there will be many great pubs.
Erik's daughter lives, with her family, in The Hydrostone area of Halifax. Hydrostone is a funky and eclectic mix of houses, shops and restaurants located in the north end of the Halifax Peninsula. The Hydrostone was designed as a new neighbourhood to house victims of the Halifax explosion of 1917. All but one of the streets in the area are boulevards, wide with plenty of grassy park-like areas and back alleys, something not normally seen in the Maritimes. The Hydrostone is a designated National Historical Site of Canada and is a great little neighbourhood to visit as part of your Halifax experience.

Shops and restaurants in The Hydrostone.

My cousin lives in a gorgeous little area outside of Halifax, right on the water, called Ketch Harbour, a very pretty thirty minute drive that gets you into the city. Ketch Harbour was,  at one time, a fishing community, and has a tiny population just shy of 2,000. Most residents now commute to Halifax for work but there is still a small commercial fishing enterprise. Ketch Harbour (once known as Catch Harbour) was one of the first places people settled after the colonization of Halifax in 1749.

Cousin Catherine and me, Catherine

Catherine's home with her amazing garden. 

Walking on the marsh after dinner.

FIVE ISLAND OCEAN RESORT. Wow. This place was impressive. Located on the Bay of Fundy this RV Park offered us some of the most stunning views ever. Click here to see the Five Islands website and their photo gallery.

Nearby are restaurants, a fish market and many attractions like the Anne Murray Centre, Fundy Geological Museum, Age of Sail Heritage Museum, Ottawa House-By-the Sea, a golf course, a Fossil Museum, Mass Town Market and Cape d'Or Lighthouse. Underlining - we were there.

Sitting right on the ocean on the Bay of Fundy we were able to watch the tides go out so people were able to walk about 2.5 kms out on the ocean floor. When the tides come back in it happens so quickly that people often need to be rescued by boat as they climb on the rocks to await rescue.

The height of the tide difference ranges from 3.5 meters (11ft) along the southwest shore of Nova Scotia and steadily increases as the flood waters travel up the 280 km (174 miles) of shoreline to the head of the Bay where, in the Minas Basin, the height of the tide can reach an incredible 16 meters (53ft).

Tide is in.

Tide is in.

Tide starting to go out. This was from our RV site.

Tide is going out.

The tide is getting farther away.

As the tide comes in so quickly people get stranded on land out there.

Springhill:  We all know that Canada's songbird, Anne Murray, was born in Springhill but did you know while visiting Springhill you can visit the Anne Murray Centre and go down into a coal mine all in the same day?

The museum that bears Anne's name is situated right in the middle of Springhill, NS. Inside you will find every piece of memorabilia from Anne's life growing up in Springhill, her fledgling singing career, photographs of Anne with international stars, and all of her many, many awards exhibited alongside family photographs and wonderfully entertaining stories about Anne. The amount of awards she received is quite staggering. Click to see the Anne Murray Centre site.

You can't help but notice that Springhill is a town, like many other mining towns, that has fallen on hard times. In fact, in April of 2015, Springhill as a town was dissolved and became a community within Cumberland County. Should you want to go and see a coal mine there is one opened to tourists in Springhill. If you have no interest in going down into the mine (which I absolutely didn't) there is plenty in the museum to see and do while you wait for your husband to come up from the mine.

Erik getting geared up to go down in the mine.

The entrance to the mine. Men had to duck or be decapitated.

The carts where the coal was loaded.

Each man's clothing was hung from hooks on the ceiling. His mine clothing was hung up at the end of the day and his day time clothing brought down from the  hooks. The reason? Rats.

A coal clinker contains elements that are non-combustible.

Springhill was considered an affluent town when coal mining was its major source of income. However, the life of a miner was not all roses and money. The hours were long and arduous, black lung disease was rampant among the workers, mine disasters, while not common, were definitely a factor. The mine in Springhill had two disasters, 1956 and 1958, that killed many of the workers while underground. A sad but true fact; if a man died down in the mine a representative of the company knocked on the door of the rented home and gave his condolences to the widow and informed her she had twenty-four hours to vacate the rented home. If the widow was fortunate, she had a young boy who could go down into the mine, thus not losing her home. The companies 'owned' the workers and their families. The company store kept track of what was purchased and often it was more than the wages the worker was entitled to.

Another thing we learned: while in the mine miners fed the rats bits from their lunch pails. The reason? The rats were the first to detect deadly methane gas and if the rats scurried away or weren't around for the tidbits, there was danger.

Although I didn't go down into the mine, the  information to be found in the museum and the building where the miners changed was mind boggling. The experience of going into the mine was, in Erik's own words: Very sobering and thought provoking. The conditions the miners worked in, day in and day out, and the risks they took on a daily basis made one feel humbled.

Link to CBC news archives about the two disasters in Springhill, NS.

Ottawa House by the Sea: Originally constructed at around 1773, it was primarily an inn but was best known as the summer home of  the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles Tupper, a Premier of Nova Scotia, Father of Confederation and the sixth Prime Minister of Canada  He has the distinction of being the Prime Minister who held that post for the shortest amount of time - ten weeks. Ottawa House by the Sea is now a museum holding many artifacts of the area around Parrsboro with exhibits that focus on the storyline of the building and the site.

Ottawa House by the Sea, Parrsboro

The beach at Ottawa House by the Sea

Age of Sail Heritage Museum:  Just as the name implies, the museum is dedicated to the once thriving ship building industry. This is a wonderful museum with great exhibits, information, photos and artifacts. If you're in this area, set aside a couple of hours and enjoy.

The Age of Sail Museum near Parrsboro, NS.

A few of the many interesting artifacts located in the Age of Sail Heritage Museum.

Mass Town Market: Not just a market. Well, yeah, it is just a market, but what a market. It's at a cross roads not far from our RV park at Five Island Ocean Resort and sells everything you could possibly want with groceries, fresh produce, frozen foods, a restaurant, a deli, bakery and even some clothing and household items. But. it also houses an amazing fresh fish shop. In addition to the catch of the day and lobster and all the other wonderful sea food you get in Nova Scotia they sell home made fish and lobster pies that are out of this world. As an added service, they have set up dog kennels so your beloved pets don't have to sit in the hot car while you shop. What a great idea.

Click for Mass Town Market - the Lighthouse as their fish shop is called

ANTIGONISH AREA:  While staying in the Antigonish area we lucked out at a stunning RV Park called Cranberry Campground; a bit off the beaten track but well worth the bit of extra driving. The park was located in a great area for walking dogs with lots of wooded area and, of course, the beach. Sites were large and well spread apart, there was a beach and a little general store on site that sold the best ice cream ever. Every evening our ritual was dinner, walk down to the store for ice creams and try to sample as many flavours as possible.

Erik ordering our ice creams while I wait outside with the dogs.

The super, duper little ice cream shop.

A view of the park at dusk.

Another view of Cranberry Campground.

A couple who fell in love with our dogs befriended us and supplied us with vegetables and fresh fish. They lived about twenty minutes from the park and would go home to pick the produce from their garden and he to fish, arriving back at the campground with goodies to share. Such nice people.

While in the Antigonish area we took a trip to the town of Antigonish and had a peek around. Lovely, lovely town with a magnificent market that can take you a couple of hours to stroll around. Being home to St. Francis Xavier University gives the town a diverse and vibrant population with many cultural activities.

The University

Antigonish, NS

CAPE BRETON, NS  Considered by many to be one of the most beautiful areas of NS, Cape Breton Island has the extremely well known Cabot Trail. This trail is a roadway that circles the island and passes forests and very rugged coastline and amazing, breathtaking scenery. It also encircles Cape Breton Highlands National Park which overlooks the Gulf of St. Lawrence where you may see migratory whales.

Click here for Tourism Guide to Cape Breton

We did not take the Cabot Trail, instead chose to drive through the much smaller trail known as the Ceilidh Trail. The trail took us through Judique where we stopped at the Celtic Music Interpretative Centre for lunch and to listen to some music. Link to Celtic Music Centre. While there having lunch we saw a young girl, university aged, who was getting ready to do her set. She was with her mother; they had come from Ohio so she could play her music and she was hoping to be able to go to university in Canada.

Crossing the Causeway to Cape Breton Island.

This Interpretive Centre is a Restaurant as well as a place where local and out-of-area musicians can perform.

Having lunch outside so the dogs could be with us.

The scenery on Cape Breton is really beautiful; actually breathtaking at times. The Ceilidh Trail is a maze of twists and turns and with each turn your eye sees something more stunning than what took your breath a few moments ago.

Things you see on the Ceilidh  Trail.

Making your way down to PEI (hey, if you want to see us) can be as much fun as actually being in PEI. Quebec has so much culture to offer, New Brunswick is sparsely populated with lovely little towns and small cities, Nova Scotia is a destination unto itself and then, you get here, PEI. Just wonderful.

Next up - May flowers, Mother's Day and more.