Who used to say that?!? Excuse me while I google that catch phrase.
Damn. Of course. Monty python. Doh!! (Simpson’s 😊)
So after I posted my last blog I checked back to see what the previous one had been about. There was some repetition there which happens when a month passes between posts.
So odds and ends again today. Poor Fuzz-Butt aka Luther has had a bit of a traumatic fall. He’s really a lover not a fighter and gets into scraps with the resident spooky wild cat. He came home recently with his ear torn to shreds. He’s a big cat. Even in play he hurts us unintentionally. My daughter wrapped him in a towel to staunch the flow just in case he objected. But he doesn’t look too upset does he?? In fact he purred through the whole process. 
Then several days later an abscess popped up on his lip. See how the one side of his face is all swollen. Poor pussy cat. 
We just scruffed him to have a closer look–while he looks somewhat demonic and uncomfortable, he didn’t fight or fuss. 
It was a huge abscess but it hadn’t come to a head yet. Several days later though it burst and he came up to the door dripping pus. I cleaned him up and he healed quite nicely. 
His list of monikers grows, like a Tolkien character– Fuzz-Butt, Luther, Pus-head and Scarface. I have no idea where he came from. I suspect someone dumped him out in the country when he outgrew his kitten stage. I’m just grateful he showed up here and not at some of the cat hating neighbours.
Last weekend we made our annual pilgrimage down to the river. The colours are beautiful. The day was perfectly calm. 
It’s short trek from the parking lot down under the old bridge to the water. The river was really high this fall. Quite unusual but there’s been heavy rains upstream. It was a deepish crossing and the flow was faster than I liked. I stepped off a point and immediately sank to my knees in unstable sand (quicksand) and fell to my hands and knees to crawl back out. That scared me into staying put while my fearless daughter and her boyfriend carried on down the river. He’d never done a river walk and she wanted to show him the massive river clams and crayfish that abound in the river. 
It was such a beautiful day!!
I amused myself by finding crayfish claws while the kids explored. The clams remained elusive, I think the water was too high but it wasn’t for lack of searching. The claws turn blue after death–seagulls make quick work of the rest of the crayfish. 
There are people who collect them to eat, just a tiny nugget of flesh in the tail but wild foraged food always tastes great.
My daughter and I headed out on a road recently. We took the back road and this beautiful hawk was putting on a show just in front of us, flying from post to road and back just in front of the truck. 
It’s hard to believe it’s the middle of September without a killing frost. This time last year I was digging my tomatoes out from under a foot of snow!! I’m sitting on the deck, in the sun, with my coffee as the geese are flying overhead. The ladybugs are feasting on the aphids infesting my dill, but they’ve got to eat too right?
The Virginia Creeper has turned scarlet. 
There are all kinds of dire prophecies of snow in the near future–of course there are, it’s September in Canada. But for now, it’s calm, the sun is hot, and it’s a beautiful day. It’s time to go uncover the garden (frost warning the past couple nights). The tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers are still going strong. 
This is the view from the deck!! Life is good 😊
I love fall. My favourite season. New box of crayons. New pencils. A fresh page.
The Rescue Crabapple tree I planted, same variety as my mother’s, produced a respectable amount of lovely apples so I made apple jelly. 
Not happy with just these few jars, my sister and I went to my nephew’s house and picked a few more pails. 
So much fruit is wasted. People like the idea of fruit trees but either lack the know-how, the time or ambition to actually use the fruit. I filled up quite a few pails, not all for me. The animals love the apples so we picked all the windfalls and everything on the trees we could reach without a ladder. The ponies, goats, pig and chickens will have appley treats for the next few weeks. And I canned a few jars of whole apples in syrup. My mother used to do this and it was my father’s favourite dessert. 
We found time to celebrate my sisters birthday at a Chinese restaurant in a small town about an hour away from us. It was a lovely drive thru the country and a fabulous meal. My sis is too shy for a photo here (even though I did get a very nice one of her) but I’ll just show you the particularly apt tea cup she got (the diner is filled with mismatched tables and chairs and garage sale mugs, which only add to the charm, and the food is superb!!)
The garden is bursting with lovely produce. Cucumbers, beans, carrots, tomatoes and pumpkins. My onions are drying, not a great harvest this year as the dill was so thick, it took over the onion rows. There’s a few volunteer nicotina, flowering tobacco, hidden in the dill. 
I try to make a large meal on Sundays for my son and whichever other family members want to come. Last Sunday was chicken, creamed garden veggies, and oven roasted potatoes. All produced right here on the farm. 
And, finally, the corn is ready. It’s been such a strange year. Thankfully, now the middle of September, we haven’t had frost yet but it could happen anytime. I only had three rows of corn, and not the variety I like. For some reason the one I prefer was unavailable. Another reason to learn how to save seed. But what I did plant has produced large sweet ears and it’s all going into the freezer as creamed corn. 
I’m back driving bus and had occasion to drive thru my favourite valley. The light was just right so I had to stop for a photo. 
Well, I’d best make a move. I have two more rows of corn to get thru.
But at least if I ran out a few of us could push the truck to the pump. How much a litre?!? $1.369?? So I took 30l thinking there must be another station in town that doesn’t gouge idiots like me who come out of the National Park on empty. Yes there was. One cent less 😳
They had lots of grass and picnic tables but there was some kind of event happening across the highway with screaming engines. So we didn’t stay long. I did try one of the butter tarts I got yesterday at the French bakery. It wasn’t so much a butter tart as it was a tart au sucre with raisins. 
Chock full of raisins, just the way I like, but the crust was too short and the filling too sweet. There was no vinegar or lemon juice to act as a foil for the sweetness. I am actually surprised at how few butter tarts I ran into in the maritimes. I thought they’d be everywhere but maybe it’s just an Ontario thing. And a prairie thing.
There’s a group of guys watching sports with a tv in the back of a van and all their chairs pulled up around the back of it. 
I walked the dog around and they all shouted hello and made small talk. A father and son duo were out walking their dogs too, a husky and a little pug cross and we all stood around visiting for a bit. But the mozzies were coming out and I want to get an early start. They all seem to think the gas station will be open in the morning. I sure hope so. Good night.
Gaelic is a real thing in Cape Breton especially and as I did my tour round the island I saw the Gaelic university at St Anne’s, and there’s a second one at Antigonish, where according to Mr Google you can take a four year degree in Gaelic!!
I found a great bakery, and stopped at the grocery store too for picnic things, and French was the first language spoken. I talked to the cashier about it and she said everyone was bilingual here but that just up the road, the next community was very English!!
This is of course a sign for a nudist or naturalist area but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in Western Canada. But I was just listening to CBC and a naturalist/nudist beach in BC is celebrating their 75 anniversary this year so perhaps this sign also appears there. I’ve never seen it before.
So I had a little snort of Jager, I wish I’d had a bit of a heavier hand pouring but I’m not getting up for more now so I guess I’ll go to bed. Good night.
Can you make out the sign? It says Pats Board-wok. Very cute!! As I was waiting, I did a walk around and noticed this!!
OMG where did my light lens go?? These things cannot be replaced unless you get one from another camper. They just don’t make them anymore. I know it was there this morning cause I did a light check before hitting the road. Of course that brake light doesn’t work all the time but the signal does, and the lens was definitely there. And now it’s not. I’m so pissed off.
And then to carried on. I stopped at one little place that looked like it had a tourist info place but there wasn’t really an office, just some pamphlets. But this was in the park. I thought it was horrifyingly ugly and really politically incorrect but it’s standing right there. The name of the road I was on was the Glooscap Trail. This guy was supposed to be Glooscap. 
I finally made it to the Joggins Fossil Cliff Center. There was a tour so I decided to take it. But my heart wasn’t really in it. I wanted to go. But we walked down to the beach and saw the embedded fossils, looked for some of our own which we were not allowed to remove and try not to get crushed by the cliffs falls or swallowed by the tides, which are the highest of any place in the world. 
This area is three hundred million years old so most of the fossils are plants and small invertebrates like lizards etc.
I really wish there was a bus tour that drove people all around the old sections. Being a passenger taking pictures is my idea of fun!!
I went thru the exhibit on the Halifax explosion. Two ships, one a heavily laden munitions ship, collided in the harbour. When the ship blew half an hour later it destroyed everything in its path. The subsequent fires destroyed the rest. There’s a really good book recently published, written by Ken Cuthbertson. The Halifax Explosion- Canada’s greatest disaster. 
Like many disasters there was a randomness to who survived and who did not. There were many pieces of debris displayed, heavy thick pieces of metal twisted up and thrown many kilometres away. Several watches too, showing the exact time of the explosion, 9:05 in the morning of December 6, 1917. Many people were standing at their windows watching the ships burn, and were blinded by the flying glass when the shock wave hit.
As we walked we saw a man come onto the pier with a falcon. At the sight of the big bird the gulls all took off. This is part of a program to keep the gulls from pooping all over the pier. 
There was also a tall ship at the dock. 
But then it was time to go. I wanted to go see the graves of the Titanic victims. Halifax was the nearest port and many bodies and survivors were brought there before they returned home. About 150 bodies, most unidentified, were buried in Halifax. The Whitestar line paid for tombstones, many of which just carried a number, and names were added later, if and when they were discovered. 
The unknown child was identified by DNA much later and his name added to his memorial. He was the first body recovered and the only child. His shoes were saved and were on display in the museum. Bruce Ismay, of course, survived the sinking and probably with a fair bit of guilt wrote the above tribute to one of his favourite staff members who went down with the ship. Many unidentifiable victims of the Halifax explosion are also buried in the same cemetery. 
Now I was hungry. It’s always a challenge trying to find a place to eat and wondering if it’s going to be any good or not. But as I was driving by I spotted this restaurant all by itself in a bit of a residential area and I said why not. And it was very good. Green curry mussels with a cream ale. Good to the last drop. 
Now this morning I had wanted to see Pier 21 but I just couldn’t face all those people. So we went for a drive instead. I’d just heard a radio program about places that were victims of their own success. For example a poppy field in California that was a popular destination till it was closed due to too many people trampling the flowers. Then Justin Bieber made a music video in a particular canyon in Iceland and that too had to be closed to the public because all those feet were damaging the soil and plants. And so it was with Peggie’s Cove. I thought I would just drive out and see what all the fuss was about. Well that was it. I snapped. I cannot take all these people anymore. To say it was crowded would be an understatement. It was wall to wall with buses and huge motor homes and cars parked everywhere. It was just so depressing. How do the locals stand it?? People still live there!! I couldn’t do it. So I drove back to the campsite and studied my map. I’m heading home tomorrow. I think I should be home in a week. Then I can have a vacation from my vacation 😊
A Sheeps' Trail 