Anniversary Weekend: Monday

Day three of the long weekend did not go as planned. The main planned event was to dust off our bicycles and take them for a spin. Although we managed to dust them off, we did not manage to ride, partly due to July-like heat and partly due to Cuppa's health issues.

First, the poor lady woke up with a migraine, not as bad as some, but it was still a migraine. She could feel it coming last night and tried to head it off by taking some aspirins at bedtime. That probably helped to mitigate the attack but couldn't block it completely. She did manage to make it out to breakfast, which was our other planned celebratory event for the day, but with the heat also factored in as well as her cold returning to full vigor, she pretty well folded after that. Poor thing.

However, we did get out for breakfast, and we did get the bikes ready for action. I was also able to get some garden work done by planting the last of our annuals and doing some weeding, watering and amending of soil. I sweat a lot in the heat. That's good for me — I think.

Speaking of gardening, our beautiful Asiatic Stargazer Lilies have been invaded by Red Asiatic Lily Beetles. Somehow, these miserable insects found their way to North America to munch on our lilies. Unfortunately, they have no natural predators in these parts, and the best defense seems to be to pick them off by hand and squish them. Until then, they keep chowing on the plants until there is nothing left to chow on.

All that being said, it was a lovely weekend although when the temperatures rise to 30°C/86°F in May in Canada, one suspects that a long, torridly hot summer looms. I guess we're due after two somewhat cool and rainy summers, but good golly miss molly, couldn't we just enjoy a pleasantly warm one?

Ah well.

Many thanks, by the way, for those who have stuck with these posts; they are very chronological and uninspired but they're there as a record of sorts. I don't like writing in such as pedantic way such as (i) we did this, and (ii) we did that, and then (iii) we did this and that, but sometimes it's all that I can manage.

Anniversary Weekend: Sunday

On day two of this fine long weekend, we decided to head across the river into Quebec and Gatineau Park, or Parc de la Gatineau: "a wedge of land measuring 361 square kilometres to the northwest of Canada’s Capital Region. In the Park, the NCC protects plants and animals and manages facilities and trails so that the public may enjoy outdoor activities in every season." The kids took us there seven years ago on one of our visits, before they were married and before we moved here. The picture that comes up when I post a comment was taken there. I've stuck with that picture for a long time; it seems to be part of this blog. I change my Facebook picture often but not my blog picture.

The map shows the park and our route. We drove into Ottawa and crossed into Quebec via the Champlain Bridge and despite several wrong turns ended up in Chelsea, the park entrance that has a visitors centre (arrows 1 - 3).



We drove around that section of the park, headed to several lookouts and had a picnic lunch at one of them. It wasn't terribly relaxing, especially for Cuppa, as caterpillars kept dropping onto our table from the overhanging branches. However, I did take this picture looking over the edge of the escarpment, southwest toward the Ottawa River. The Gatineau Hills are an upraised block of the Canadian Shield. Over the eons, the block has worn down and the valley has been raised by sediments, but it remains a fine outlook.



Adventurous people could walk down part of the way, but this is as far as Cuppa and I went as we weren't prepared for the kind of hiking that would lie beyond this fine entrance way. The granitic-type rock comes from the local area.



Afterward we went exploring. We headed north to Wakefield and then west along the top of the park where the scenery looked much like it does below (arrows 4 & 5).



We were able to cut through a pretty isolated and not highly travelled part of the park (arrow 6) and head to Quyon (arrow 7) where we took the ferry back into Ontario (arrows 7 & 8). At that point, we were in familiar territory and only 3/4 of an hour from home.



It was a good day but not up to the serendipitous excitement of the previous day's lunch and concert in the woods.

Anniversary Weekend: Saturday

Although the date is out by half a week, this is our Anniversary weekend. We were married on the Saturday of the long weekend, forty-one years ago. At least minor observances and celebrations are in order. Often, the weather is quite nice as it also promised to be on this weekend. However, despite generally favorable predictions, there was some possibility of showers here and there, now and then.

Saturday: with an eye on the weather, which turned out to be rather glorious in the end, we relaxed for most of the morning before getting in the car, stopping at Tims, and driving west with the Brooke Valley Studio Tour in mind. First, we stopped at gardens near Perth that we hadn't previously visited: Rockwall Gardens. You can see why that name is appropriate in the photo of moi walking towards the rock walls of an former dairy barn. It was a unique find, and I'd love to go back from time to time as the seasons change.



Back on the highway, we eventually came to the Brooke Road turnoff and soon found ourselves on a dirt road in the forests of Lanark County, where gardens must be fenced from critters (but what a fence!) ...



... and worksheds are quaint and rustic ...



... and interesting and curious abandoned shacks lurk. (Note: this photo might be worthwhile seeing large here.)



Our first stop was for lunch at the house in the photo below. For the studio tour, the family moves their furniture upstairs and sets up tables both inside and outside.



Cuppa contemplates what sort of fare to expect this deep in the woods, but it hardly mattered because we were enthralled with the atmosphere as well as the cause. You see, the family with the help of the Grannies of Lanark County Against AIDS (my best remembered version of their name), the proceeds would go to fight AIDS in Africa.



Cuppa quietly contemplated that we might expect sandwiches and/or grilled burgers in such an out-of-the-way setting, but as it turned out, the food was fabulous. It's the wrong angle to appreciate, but my perogies and sauerkraut were scrumptious, far better fare than what I might expect to find in many a city restaurant — at decent prices too. How they managed to turn their house into a restaurant for the weekend is beyond comprehension, but they did.



After lunch we ambled to the neighbouring house which featured many crafts, including very interesting wicker furniture although one was required to bring one's own gorgeous model.



And then onto the next house ...



... where, believe it or not, we were treated to a concert by three fine musicians, but featuring a, symphony-quality bassoon player who talked about Mozart and Beethoven as if he was personally acquainted. Remember, we were still in the woods. How wonderfully weird!



It turned out to be quite the marvellous day. You don't always know what you're going to find when you head out to hitherto unknown locales (I think there's a lesson here, but I'll leave it up to dear reader to draw it — or not), but this expedition proved to be topnotch.

Where will this couple do today, I wonder, on yet another glorious day in May?

Checking In

Well, hasn't it been quite a few days since I last checked in? I'll blame in mostly on my cold. It's rather beastly to get such a humdinger in this lovely spring weather but it happens. Last Sunday, I had such a good day with lots of garden work and other things being checked off my list. I was feeling great, which was especially odd after writing that post about being a low energy sort of guy. I thought: "How ridiculous," as I felt great and raring to go." But whilst sitting at my computer that night I noticed that I was developing a sore throat and was beginning to feel drained. Since then, I have got through umpteen boxes of tissues and several miserable days.

I don't have much to say but must apologize and set the record straight about the number of years we have been married. When I chose to frame it as beginning our 42nd year, I'm afraid that I threw you all off. Last Monday was our 41st anniversary, which began our 42nd year, but I admit that's an unusual way of putting it.

With both of us being sick and having to babysit that day and all subsequent days this week, we didn't do anything special aside from going out for dinner. However, this is a long weekend in Canada as we celebrate Queen Victoria's birthday. Bless her for that. We have long called it the May 24th weekend although it doesn't often occur on that but this year, Monday is the 24th. Kids have adapted that and call it May 2-4 weekend as they often party and open their cases of 24 brews. They think they invented the term, but they only really adapted and massaged it a little.

Regardless, we plan to do something a little different this weekend and hope that the weather will cooperate. It won't be anything as fancy as going away to a Quebec Inn as it was last year, but it will at least be a day trip (knock on wood). May our fine weather will continue as his is the traditional weekend to plant gardens and our impatiens have been purchased and are ready to go in the ground.

Have a good weekend. Hopefully, we'll have some pics and anecdotes to share next week.

We Are Thirty-Nine

One can hardly fathom, where the time goes, but Cuppa and I are thirty-nine today. Just as it was all those years ago, it was the rainy Saturday of our May long weekend. Of course, at the time one barely noticed in the hubbub of a wedding, reception and getaway.

We were married in Toronto and spent our one official honeymoon night (yes, one whole night!) in Stratford where I had proposed a year earlier in the Shakespeare Country Garden after we had seen Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream: not that the play had spurred my proposal, for I had pretty well decided on the timing, and the garden seemed a romantic spot.

My heart was pounding, but I'm not sure why. It wasn't as though marrying this girl frightened me in any way or that I expected her to refuse. Nevertheless, it's a once in a lifetime occurrence, and one wants it to go well. Poor Cuppa thought that I was about to tell her that I had decided to leave her for a year or longer whilst I ventured to New Zealand. I had distant relatives there, and they had sent calendars and photo magazines over the years, and I had always thought that it would be a wonderful place to visit, long before Lord of the Rings may have increased its popularity as a destination. I still do think that it would be a grand place to experience, but I have no real hopes of ever getting there, and that's okay too. Some dreams pass or at least seem less important as time creeps forward.

In an poor and awkward segue, I do want to connect the old part of our story to a more recent one by referring to another trip, our holiday to the west coast last year around this time. We were walking around English Bay in Vancouver when I began to consider which of our vacations had been the greatest highlight. Was it The Rockies, The East Coast, Arizona? Cuppa was somewhat in front of me at the time, and I recall realizing that it was not a vacation that was the highlight of my life but that the wife of my youth and middle age and dawning old age was .... and is.