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Thursday, September 29, 2011

Delighted By Dahlias

Pardon this photo rich post, but I couldn't just pick a few of my favourites. They're all my favourites! These are what I took Kevin back to the Public Garden in Halifax to see. I'd never seen such a richness of dahlias before! And such variety. Obviously I don't know much about them or I would have expected as much. It's always kind of special to "discover" something you didn't know anything about.

Aren't they pretty? The bees sure like them!



















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The Public Gardens In Halifax

This is a beautiful little oasis in the middle of Halifax. When I was there it was very busy with people strolling about, sitting on the many scattered benches, and art students drawing. I also appreciated the signs at the gate indicating that there is no smoking in the garden! YEAH!

As I understand it, the garden was decimated in a hurricane in 2003 when many of the oldest trees were destroyed. I would have liked to have seen it then just to compare. As it is, I think it's a beautiful garden and I could have spent the day there. It was so peaceful. A good place for one's soul.

The main entrance ... these glorious gates (that came from a bankrupt garden in Scotland, or so I was told) ... is on Spring Garden Road, the busiest street in Halifax ... so I was told. And it was a busy street when I was there. Under the circumstances, the peace and quiet beauty of the garden was especially pronounced. I took Kev back there in the rain just to see it and especially to see all the gorgeous dahlia's in bloom! You just KNOW I'll be posting flower photos soon, right? Kevin and I got soaked there before we caught a cab to meet up with Dan and Amy for dinner.

"Recognized as a rare surviving example of a formal Victorian Garden, the Halifax Public Gardens are a National Historic Site ... The public’s dedication to protecting the Gardens was demonstrated in a remarkable response to the damage caused by Hurricane Juan in 2003."

Read more about the garden and see more images at their website.














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Winston and the Birds

Poor Winston! Here he strolls in front of the Halifax Public Library while birds perch on his head. No wonder he looks so cranky.

Oscar Nemon sculpted this bronze statue honouring Sir Winston Churchill. The statue was unveiled on January 20, 1980 and is based on a photo of Churchill taken while he was walking in Halifax.

The front of the library on Spring Garden Road is a really happening place. At least it was the couple of times I walked past it. Chip trucks line the street on this block and there are benches and a long, stone fence just perfect for people perching all in front of the library along with a lot of green space. There always seemed to be lots of people hanging out there. I love to see a lot of people around a library. It makes me happy.


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Oak Island, Nova Scotia

While in Nova Scotia, Sailor Dan had a real hankerin' to see Oak Island ... the stuff of legends. So on our way to Lunenburg and Peggy's Cove, we stopped to see Oak Island. After taking a wrong turn we ended up at a dead end road where a beautiful little piece of property just happened to be for sale! So we explored and imagined ourselves living there!

Isn't this an amazing view?! What a wonderful gazebo at the end of a long, wooden pier. On the other side of the gazebo the pier slopes down closer to the surface of the water.

Don't we all look perfectly at home here? Just another little piece of paradise in the world.

If you're not familiar with the stories surrounding Oak Island and it's "treasure", it is fascinating! And ongoing! Read about it here.





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I Won An Awesome Giveaway

Look what arrived in our mailbox yesterday! WOW! I mean ... WOW! Just LOOK at this very large stack of beautiful fat quarters! They are "A la Maison", designed by Terri Conrad for Robert Kaufman Fabrics. You can see a better photo of them here at Margot Languedoc's blog. There's also a photo of these very fabrics made up into this Frosted Squares pattern. I've read the pattern and I think it's something I can do! Once I master that quarter inch seam that is, which means AFTER I get my new sewing machine ... probably early next year.

If you're interested in quilting, you should look at the many patterns designed by Margot. You can see them here. Margot is from Ontario.

Thank you so much, Margot!  You can count on me to "pay it forward".
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Cancer Researchers Say Blueberries May Control Breast Cancer Tumor Growth - MarketWatch

Did you think I'd been exaggerating a little when I refer to blueberries as "medicine"? Yes? Well, stand corrected! And then go buy a freezer full of blueberries and eat some everyday. I'm not eating two cups per day but probably average half a cup or more every second day of various kinds of berries, but mostly blueberries while trying to avoid strawberries from California because of the heavy and controversial use of some particularly nasty chemicals used on those strawberries not stamped "organic".

Cancer Researchers Say Blueberries May Control Breast Cancer Tumor Growth - MarketWatch:

Eating blueberries may inhibit breast cancer tumor growth, according to a recent study by researchers at the City of Hope in Los Angeles that is published in the October 2011 issue of The Journal Of Nutrition and featured in the September issue of Food Nutrition and Science.

The study resulted in tumor size reduction by 60-75 percent. In addition, molecular analysis revealed that blueberry consumption altered the expression of genes that are important to metastasis, suggesting that cancer risk would likely decline from blueberry consumption. The blueberry dose required to achieve these results was equivalent to two cups of fresh blueberries per day.
Read the rest of the news release at the above link.
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Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Lovely Lunenburg

Lunenburg is a picturesque little tourist destination in Nova Scotia not far from Halifax. Dan, Amy, Kevin and I went there after Peggy's Cove. We happened to pick a day when no cruise tours were in town and it was late afternoon when we got there so we almost had the whole town to ourselves! It's a very pretty little place with boats of various types and sizes scattered about in the harbour, which reminds me of old drawings I've seen. Because as a landlocked prairie girl who is more familiar with lake country than oceanside communities, I couldn't figure out why the boats weren't all tied properly to docks instead of left way out there in the water. And then someone explained tides to me. Ahhhh. Now I get it.

There were some very cute houses, many of them made into shops or restaurants. The detailing on some of the Victorian style houses is beautifully done. And I loved the bold colours of some of the buildings. Thank you, world, for people who use bold colours and who do things in ways that I mostly don't!

Sailors, it seems, sometimes use rope the size of which I've never seen on a prairie farm! Scroll down to see a pile of ginormous rope! If you made a rope rug out of that you would need a handrail on the edge just to step up onto it!

Those marble columns beside the red buildings commemorate lives of local people lost at sea. So many names over the years and so many with the same last names.

Shortly after we arrived in Lunenburg, Dan somehow got separated from the rest of us. Kevin went to look for him leaving Amy and I ... and our credit cards ... to look through the many lovely little shops on our own. Tee hee! As it was, Kevin was the only one with a charged cell phone on his person so that didn't do us much good in terms of finding each other. But eventually eagle-eyed Amy found them both! She claims it had nothing to do with her "eagle eyes". She used simple logic. Whatever it was, we found them and joined them for drinks on a deck overlooking the harbour.

Lunenburg is very pretty. It's true. But it's very different than Peggy's Cove. Peggy's Cove doesn't appear to be prettified in any way. It's more stark. More rugged. More rustic. Less conventionally pretty. And smaller. I have to say I really fell in love with Peggy's Cove. It felt like a lovely place for one's soul and I could have spent the day there just soaking it up. The peace and, despite the tourists, the sense of solitude it somehow maintains is so appealing. It's one of the first times I have ever truly felt any "lure of the sea". It's how I imagined I might feel if I were to ever set foot in Ireland.
















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