winter flowers

Now that it's cold and snowy and dark outside, I am cheered by the amazing flowers that are blooming in the house.

The Christmas cactus is dormant all summer, and bursts into bloom when the days are at their shortest.  It will go on to bloom about four times during the dull days of winter before it goes back to sleep in Spring.

I have never seen the flowers produced by a Wandering Jew until this year.  Yellow tassels are replaced by white fluff that doesn't get a chance to blow away in a windless house.

My red oxalis looks like a perfect shamrock.  And the purple nodding trumpets look great all summer blooming outside, and continue blooming in the house, if they get enough light.

"Lemon tree very pretty, and the lemon flower is sweet....."  I am definitely letting you know my age when I say I remember that old song by Trini Lopez from the '60s.  But the lemon flower does smell amazingly sweet, and my small tree is full of them.

This spider plant baby will soon be putting out a white flower.

The amaryllis, just popping a shoot out of the bulb at the moment, promises a thick stalk with three to four big trumpet-shaped pink flowers.

snow birds

We had our first real dump of snow, and the birds are ready to  take all the help I'm willing to give. So I loaded up the bird feeder with black oil sunflower seeds, and set some peanuts on the railing.  I stood outside in the bitter cold with my camera, knowing that shooting without a glass barrier will give me a much better result.
Not to minimize the regular visitors, the chickadees and bluejays, I get very excited when I see something else.  The other day there was a lovely downy woodpecker getting seeds.  But today, I couldn't believe my eyes.  A massive Northern Flicker was pigging out at the feeder!  This is the biggest woodpecker in North America.  I usually see them in spring, hopping around the lawn looking for worms, acting very much like anything but a woodpecker.  This guy today would eat a seed, and then flick great quantities of seeds everywhere.  Now I know why he's called a flicker!  If he wasn't such a handsome devil, I would have flicked him away from the feeder when I first noticed such bad behavior.

I caught this guy with a peanut.

Chickadees are curious and not afraid to come close.

first snow

It snowed yesterday, and it continued all night.  Not the stuff that looks like styrofoam pellets and melts right away, but icy, hard stuff that stuck around all day.  November 10 is very early for this nonsense, but it has a certain beauty as well.

Snow crystals have covered each blade of grass separately.  The textured effect looks like a cocoanut cookie.  For me, it's always about food!

We went for a walk in the National Park and I cut some branches of winter berry.  They make a beautiful, long-lasting display in the house.  The berries are bigger and more plentiful than usual this year.

It's almost time to ditch the pumpkins.  The jack-o-lantern has a certain frosty charm.

Snow covers every branch of the burning bush, but the colours shine through.

There's no snow on these wild rose hips.  But I love these saturated colours.

colours of fall

yellow-orange sunflower

this pink rose is blooming better now than it was in summer

The days may be gloomy and short, but the leaves and flowers around my house are making up for the dark days with blazing colours.

sulphur butterfly on pink autumn joy sedum

chinese lanterns blazing in the green

green guy (don't think it's a grasshopper) on a pink rose

lilac fall crocus

purple monkshood

Annapolis Royal Historic Gardens

dreaming of roses at Annapolis Royal

On Thanksgiving weekend, I was feeling a bit left out of things because our family is spread so far and wide. So I put the pressure on my husband Wayne to do a bit of traveling ourselves.  I have always wanted to visit the historic gardens at Annapolis Royal.  But looking at a map, I also realized that it's 500 km from home. The weather was beautiful and sunny, so off we drove.  These pictures are all by Wayne.  I forgot my camera at home!

I had never visited the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia, and I could not believe how beautiful it is.  The blazing colours of the fall leaves, bright blue sky, historic villages, wineries, roadside markets - what's not to love!

In Wolfville, we stopped at the beautiful Blomidon Inn, beautiful architecture, chock-full of antiques, expansive gardens, and alas, no room for us for lunch.  I definitely will be back to do it right.

Our next stop was Kentville, whose claim to fame is the pumpkin people put up all over town.  Kentville has an Agriculture Canada research station where anyone can wander around the grounds.  I want to go back to see the rhododendrons bloom in spring.


Another hundred kilometers, and we finally made it to Annapolis Royal, and the historic gardens there.  For just $10, you can wander through 17 acres of manicured walking paths, and check out the many flowers still blooming.

A bumble bee gets the season's last nectar from a zinnia

I've never seen a toad lily before.  It has a confusing name:  it's not a lily, and looks nothing like a toad!

a boardwalk winds through the garden

one of many gazebos covered in vines

The garden lies right along an old Acadian dyke system built 300 years ago to keep the waters of the Atlantic from flooding low-lying fields along the coast.  We walked along the sweeping curves of the dyke, which is still in place, doing its job.


I will definitely be back in the spring to check out the season's changes.

rosehip jelly

When I first moved to PEI, I assumed I would be able to find the same food favourites I had always enjoyed.  But that first Christmas, I was so disappointed to discover that Islanders had never heard of rosehip jelly or jam.  I asked at every retail grocery store, and people looked at me like I had two heads.  "Never heard tell of such a thing"  is all I I was told.

My cousins, who live in Kitchener Ontario, home of all things German flavoured, took pity on me and have been sending me jars of the good stuff every Christmas since.

Last week, I found a recipe for rosehip jelly in the local paper  (I guess some Islanders really have heard of it) so I decided to give it a try.

I went out on the Confederation Trail in Charlottetown and found lots of big juicy lovely rosehips.  As I was picking, people walking the trail stopped to ask what I was up to.  One guy even asked if the hips were some kind of vegetable.  They are actually a bright red seed pod that develops on rugosa roses after the petals fall off.  I was careful not to pick them all, because I know that birds eat them too.

I took home about 4 pounds, and got to work.

I rinsed them, and then cut off the scraggly end, and then cut them in half, revealing a very seedy inside.  If you want to make jam, you need to scrape out all the seeds so that just the outside coloured part is left.  I quickly realized that is far too much work.

I boiled the hips in two batches, for an hour. Use enough water to cover.  Place the pulp in a jelly bag, and let it drip overnight.  Add the juice and rind of an orange and a lemon.  Add a cup of sugar for every 1.5 cups juice, plus a box of Certo.

I boiled it for the amount of time directed on the label, and produced 6 bottles.  The colour was lovely, but the next day, it still had not set.  Back to the drawing board.  This time, I added a prepared bottle of rosehip jam to the mix, and boiled it 20 minutes.  The jam turned out kinda rubbery and a bit too hard.  But the flavour is amazing.  Tangy with orange and lemon and an undefinable something special.

Now that I have tried it once, I will definitely be trying again.  Next time, I will nail down exactly how long to cook the stuff.  But I'm sure glad I gave it a try.  Now my dear cousins don't have to break the bank to send me jars of my favourite jam.

PS.  I made a few more batches, and at last, I know what I'm doing.  Here it is in a nutshell:
1.  Pick 2 pounds of rosehips, wash and cut off ends, cut in half.
2.  Cover with water.  Boil one hour.
3.  Put pulp in jelly bag to drip overnight.  If not much liquid, pour some boiling water on top of the pulp in the bag.
4.  Measure 4 cups juice.  Add juice and rind of 1 lemon and two oranges.
5.  Mix in one package of Certo light.
6.  When it comes to the boil, add 2 cups sugar.  Boil 20 minutes.
7.  Test jam by putting a bit on a saucer kept in the freezer.  Return it to the freezer for 2 minutes, and check the amount of jelling.
8.  Fill canning jars.

along the trail

It's getting colder, but I still enjoy riding my bike along the Confederation Trail.  The light seems different this time of year.  The tang in the air is bringing things more into focus.

Canada geese stop by for a snack in a newly planted field

There are still blackberries growing on the side of the trail

Mushrooms are so mysterious.  They spend most of their lives growing underground.  What we see in the fall are the fruiting bodies - the part that produces the spores that will spread with the wind and produce more mushrooms.

 shiny brown mushrooms 

This yellow pebbly mushroom is growing on on the side of the trail.

A brown mushroom peeks out of the grass.

A yellowing fern goes out in a blaze of glory

grapes of wrath

Last winter, a horticultural expert had a look at my tangled mess of a grape vine, and pruned it back to a shadow of its former self.  I was afraid it would be set back, but the grape vine responded by putting out more growth and more grapes than ever before.  Now they are slowly ripening, and I was looking forward to enjoying a delicious harvest of sweet, intensely flavoured grapes in October.

Two days ago, I went out to the back yard to shuck the last dozen cobs of corn I'll get this year, when I looked up in a nearby tree and saw two adorable half-grown racoons.  They looked cute, with their masked faces and fuzzy tails, so I broke a cob in half and left it for them.  

Big mistake.  The next morning, the beautiful ripening grapes climbing up my deck looked like this.  They are not even ripe yet - they need another month.  Last evening, I stepped out on the deck and there the little critters were again, hidden in the leaves.  I yelled at them, and they took off.  

I decided to grab a big ball of black netting to cover the grapes.  By then it was dark.  When I started the painstaking job of wrestling with the netting and tying it to the grapes, I heard a rustling - there they were again - back in the vines, filling their faces.  Then I got mad, grabbed a broom, and screamed at them loud enough for the whole neighbourhood to hear.  

I also tied netting across the deck steps and around the outside, hoping that will keep them at bay.

There seems to be no more damage this morning - whether it's the fear of getting caught up in the netting or the screams of a crazy lady with a broom, it appears they went looking for an easier meal somewhere else.

woolly bears

Late August is the time for woolly bear caterpillars to appear.  They always seem incredibly busy, in a hurry as they roll across my path in search of who knows what.
This caterpillar is the larval form of a moth:  Pyrrharctica isabella, the Isabella Tiger Moth.

Woolly bears hatch in the spring. Mature woolly bears search for overwintering sites under bark or inside cavities of rocks or logs. When spring arrives, they spin fuzzy cocoons and transform into moths.

 The moth, which has cream-coloured wings spotted with black, doesn't stand out from the crowd like its babies do.

The woolly bear usually is black with a band of orange in the middle.  According to folklore, the width of the bands can predict the severity of the coming winter:  the bigger the black bands, the colder it will be.

But this year, the woolly bears I come across are all orange, with not a bit of black to be seen. Does that mean we won't have a winter at all this year? All I know is that today is August 30, it's only 18 degrees C, and I have long pants and a sweater on. Looks like winter is on its way!

PS.  Here it is a month later, and I definitely have found woolly bears with the normal coloration:

defensive posture

I haven't seen another all-brown one since.  

biking the trail

I bought a beautiful new bike this year.  It's a girl's bike, just my size, with silver fenders and a nice big seat. On my first rides along the National Park bike path, I thought I was going to die.  After 12 km, my legs felt like rubber, and my bum felt like it was full of pinched nerves.  It sure wasn't much fun.

But I kept at it, and surprisingly, my bum has toughened up, and my endurance has improved.
I'm still slow - my husband whips past me and is lost on the horizon, but I keep going.  Now I bike on PEI's Confederation Trail, a path that meanders 273 km from one end of the Island to the other.  I start at km 183 in York, about 2 km from my house, and my favourite route is going east.

An encouraging sign along the trail helps me keep going.

Much of the trail is shaded by tall trees, and farmers fields are full of ripening grain and sleepy cows.  Sulphur butterflies and Monarchs flutter beside me, and I see a lot of goldfinches, robins, northern flickers, and of course crows.  There are also chipmunks - one I saw yesterday had no tail.

I have been pushing further and further along this trail.  On Friday, I stopped at km 198 to drink in this amazing view of the Hillsboro River.

I paused to look at the floats from lines of mussels being cultivated in the river, the sparkling blue water, and birds floating overhead.  Then I got back on my bike, and made it to the 200 km signpost.  

I felt like I had enough energy to go a bit further, and then I thought about the return journey - another 20 km back home.  Then I saw a sign that made me know I was meant to turn back.  A 2-foot long garter snake was sunning itself on the edge of the path.  It looked at me unafraid, let me take a few pictures, and flicked its head once as I turned around. 

As soon as I got back on my bike, I noticed a strong breeze blowing against me.  Funny - I sure didn't notice the breeze helping me on my journey east.  This contrary wind starts up every time I turn back towards home.  You would think the wind couldn't always blow the same direction, but in my experience, it does. Since I'm already tired at this point, the ride home is slower.  

Yesterday, I went out again, and made it to km 202.  And turning around, the wind caught me again, and I knew it would be a tough ride home.  I stopped a few times to pick blackberries (see previous post) and ended up with three pounds of them dangling from a bag on my handlebars.  

I'm going to try the trip a few more times, to see how far I can push myself.