Our Message Archive
Monday July 6
Ramblers on West Petpeswick Rd. yesterday
I started this page last week and had it mostly done but not quite by the time I had to go to bed. Since then biking, gardening and World Cup games have conspired to keep me from finishing it. It happened again last night when I had a good chunk of it finished to document the goings-on of last week but had to stop and still only made it to bed by 11:30 pm.
Last Monday, Ann and I biked out to Shearwater to join the Railers in Shearwater for the ride to Lawrencetown Beach where we had a picnic lunch. On the way back we had planned to stop in at Cottage Café for a coffee but the access to the trail along Lake Banook was closed off for the junior world canoeing and kayaking sprint championships which went on all week (we didn't partake even as spectators). We biked the same route today, this time as far as Fisherman's Reserve Rd. with a lunch stop at Rocky Run, and managed to get to the café for a coffee and butterscotch roll on the way back.
On Tuesday, while Ann was volunteering at the food bank, I rode with the Roadents from the 5k Café to the Bike & Bean in Tantallon. On the way back, we stopped at D & Jo's Country Farm Market for an ice cream cone. I noticed that they were selling strawberries for a very good price so, on the way home, I backtracked to buy a flat. Ann has since made most of them into strawberry pies, one of which I decorated as a Canada flag using whipped cream.
When I got home, Paddy and Marilyn were visiting, ostensibly to play Mahjong, but they lacked a fourth so had to make do with one person playing two sets of tiles.
I was on the bike again that evening leading the Ramblers Tuesday evening ride along the Shearwater Flyer as far as the first bridge on the Cole Harbour Salt Marsh. It was a beautiful evening, so a very enjoyable ride, but I was quite tired by the time I got home having ridden about 92 kms over the course of the day.
While we were away in PEI a couple of weeks ago, the garden got quite overgrown so there has been a lot of weeding to be done; it's not over yet (is it ever?). On Wednesday (Canada Day), I also finally tackled a job that is probably a couple of years overdue: trimming the honeysuckle hedge between us and our neighbours Connor and Beth. It only took one afternoon to do the trimming but it took until yesterday to chop up the branches small enough that they can be put out on the curb in the green bin.
While I was dealing with the hedge, Ann went with Carl and Roxanne to see the Nova Scotia Tattoo Parade in downtown Halifax. In the afternoon, Carl, Roxanne, Jim, Valerie, Ingrid and Mike came over to sit on our back deck and eat the flag pie and other goodies.
The heat dome that plagued Ontario and Quebec early in the week drifted our way and brought very high temperatures on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Yesterday it was 32°C, hotter than it had been on July 4th since the late 19th century; we were thankful to have installed a heat pump a couple of years ago. There was a Ramblers ride scheduled from Martinique Beach around the coast to West Petpeswick but it was postponed to yesterday due to the heat and forecasts including the possibility of thunderstorms. Instead, I spent the morning weeding, until it got too hot, and then watched the Canada-Morocco World Cup match. I thought the Canadian side acquitted itself well but its lack of real class in finishing showed in the end. Ann and I joined the postponed ride yesterday morning and had a picnic lunch and a walk along the beach after it was over.