Nova Scotia, week 3: Hurricane Teddy not as advertised

Hello Everyone, I wouldn’t say that I was hoping for a hurricane, exactly. They cause a lot of damage and can hurt people. And that’s bad. But I am a fan of seeing a little action, so when they were predicting quite a storm for us this week, the 9 year old part of me was quietly hoping to see some fireworks with the wind and rain. It was stormy, to be sure, on Tuesday, but nothing that would warrant giving it a proper name. We watched the weather pretty steadily in the lead up to this, so yeah, I was a little disappointed it didn’t live up to its billing, not going to lie. The adult part of me recognizes that we escaped what could have been a bad situation and thus am grateful. We are also now prepared should another storm come our way, another very mature thing to appreciate. Which I totally do. But still, a few toppled trees and lawn furniture thrown about would have been cool. On Saturday we went apple picking at an organic apple farm in the Annapolis Valley. It was a gorgeous day and the fall colours were coming in, so it was the perfect time to be there. Also, it wasn’t crowded, so it was easy to let Arthur roam around. We didn’t end up buying that many apple, just 10 pounds of Cortlands and some Gravensteins, and a few pears. We don’t have a lot of storage room in our little cottage. It was more about the experience. After lunch at a brew pub in a converted church in Wolfville, which is almost a stereotype of a craft brewery, we took a detour on the way home to dip our feet in the Bay of Fundy. It was nice, but a little muddy. Because the tide goes out so far, at a certain point, you aren’t walking on the nice sandy part of the shore, but basically the bottom of the ocean, which is a slimy kind of mud. But it was a fun experience. I went on a 60km bike ride on Sunday. That’s about as long as I’ve ever done in one sitting, as it were. It’s a bit of an odd distance. For road cyclists, 60km is nothing. They easily do a hundred or more on sunny Sunday. But for mountain biking, there are a lot of bumps and climbs and so on, so 60 km is a lot. The only way to make it work is to do what we did: some weird combination of both. We were mostly on forest service roads, ATV trails and even a bit on regular roads. I was with some friends of one of Emilie’s friends, and was riding a speedy rental trail bike. We stashed a van with food for lunch at about the 44 km mark. Let me tell you, those sandwiches tasted good. I was pretty sore by the end of it all but still standing. Felt good to know I still have it in me to do those kinds of things. Regular workouts have been tough in these times. And where was Emilie while I was out gallivanting around the Truro area on a bike? Well, she was at the local café, the Ploughman’s Lunch, that offers a ridiculously good gluten free brunch menu and is only steps from our cottage. It’s sparsely populated around here, so I have no idea how they stay in business, but I’m glad they do. The place is a gem, the kind of find you write home about, and that you feel smug knowing about because it’s so small and out of the way. I’m hitting the mark on both counts.

Wes Photos The first is a selfie with characteristic smile during our lunch break on the ride.

The next is a nice shot of Emilie walking through the mud of the Bay of Fundy.

The third is a few purchases we made at the local farmer's market here in West Dublin. Homemade pickles and bread, and homegrown glads and tomatoes.

The last is of Arthur napping on the front deck the other evening as I was reading my book.