We’re going to be slammed tonight and tomorrow morning by the end of Hurricane Teddy, but the past three days have been golden.

We started to clear a portion of our back acreage this summer and came up with some rocks, all of which we have not yet found a use for. I don’t pay much attention to the landscape back here but every time I walk out of the barn, I see this display of “weeds” (maybe ‘wildflowers’ is more accurate?). It strikes me as an ephemeral thing of beauty.

What’s the last unexpected beauty you’ve found?

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In April I decided to post a view from my office window on the last Friday afternoon of each month.

I was half-way across the continent last Friday afternoon (the last one in May) so I’m posting a photo from today. I didn’t want you to miss seeing the “May Effect”.

Nova Scotia came alive over the past month!

It’s still too cold for the beach (9C/48F now, at 10am, and the forecasted high for today is 15C/59C) but it’s gorgeous for yard work (like pruning that pear tree). And the lilacs are just beginning to open!

How’s the weather where you are?

A few years ago, I ran a series of pictures with the view from my office window every Friday afternoon. I stopped because I thought there wasn’t enough change week to week to bear recording.

What I’ve decided to do now is to post a picture from the last Friday afternoon of each month.
We’ve had a milder winter than a lot of places but April has been cold and spring is still slow to come. I maintain that it’s only the first three weeks of May that are spring in Nova Scotia, anyway.

I’ll be in Ontario for a couple of weeks in May, so I’ll miss a lot of it. Buy–hey!–it’ll be summer when I come home!

And what a difference a day makes: this was yesterday.

How’s the weather where you are?

A year or so ago, I ran a series of pictures with the view from my office window every Friday afternoon. I stopped because I thought there wasn’t enough change week to week to bear recording.

What I’ve decided to do now is to post a picture from the last Friday afternoon of each month. Since tomorrow I have a Giveaway Hop post scheduled, I decided to start for April with this Thursday view.

It’s April in Nova Scotia. We’ve had a milder winter than a lot of places but spring is still slow to come. The tree in the right foreground is a pear. No buds. The trees at the end of the driveway are tamaracks. No buds. There’s a birch tree across the driveway. No buds.

But just you wait. May is coming – and May’s the month that summer comes to Nova Scotia. Be sure to check in for the May 31st photo!

Our late winter storm: I don’t think there’s quite the 15 cm (6 in) they forecast, but there’s sure the ice pellets mixed with it, as they warned.

The bright side is, it’s been too cold (expected of this season) for many buds to have appeared so nothing’s been ruined by last night’s weather activity.

Let me guess: warm & sunny where you are?

This is my first time participating in the Saturday Snapshot meme, hosted by Alyce of At Home With Books. Visit her blog to see more great photos or add your own.

We woke up this morning to a winter wonderland. The whole world seemed silent and clean. The tree house isn’t quite finished (and not quite in a tree anymore since a storm took it down).

What’s it like where you are?

WINTER STORM COMING. HUNKER DOWN. READ!

Want to join the 6WS club? Describe what is going on in your life in 6 words and then link up with Cate at Showmyface.com

Pretty, isn’t it?

It’s been snowing lightly since before dawn – and it’s slippery out there!

Look how gray the sky is!

But for a few glorious minutes just before noon, the sun burst out from the clouds at the back of the house and made everything glow. You can see the shadow of the roof peak in the bottom right.

I’m so glad I captured this moment – have a wonderful weekend!

I know I’m a day late but I do have an explanation.

Heavy rain started here in Nova Scotia about midnight Thursday and continued on until supper time Friday. In all, about 56 mm (just over 2 inches) came down in that time period. I took this photo Friday morning from my office window, thinking that the rain was benefiting the view: making the sere colours of November deepen and glow.

We had a dinner reservation with some friends in Halifax (about a two hour drive) and were amazed to see the water on the way: ditches running white water rapids, streams flowing through fields and down hillsides where there had been no streams a day earlier, standing water making hay fields resemble rice paddies, but the roads were fine even through Truro which sits on a flood plain at the end of the Bay of Fundy (highest tides in the world!)

Truro is located at the far right end of the water in this diagram (just off the map) – past where it says tides are 49 feet (15 m).

Ah – but supper time was low tide. By the time we traveled home at 10 that evening, matters were different. We saw a car abandoned in the Sobey’s parking lot, water up to the middle of its doors. And we found all the access roads through & around Truro closed because of flooding, necessitating some quick thinking and back roads to get home.

None of my photos turned out because it was too dark – but trust me: what looks so benign in my front yard was anything but at high tide in Truro.

Our three-year-old grandson has a pretty happy disposition and not much gets him down, but he was in tears this morning. We’re having a bit of a blow here on the east coast – a nor-easter with lots of rain and winds that are gusting to 100 km/hr (60mph). The ‘breezes’ caught the tree that held the start of the tree-house that Grampa is building for Steven – and took it out by the roots. Tire swing’s gone, too.

The silver lining? As Steven, who never cries for long, says: “I can fill up that hole with water and jump in the B-I-G puddle!”

Summer is fast drawing to a close & I realize that I’ve not shown you a full summer view from my window. (Oh, I wish I had a new camera!)

Despite the warmish weather of the last couple of weeks, the grasses and trees are losing their vibrant summer green, so I thought I’d concentrate on the mountain ash tree in the front garden. It volunteered itself there about four years ago and this year, for the first time, displayed the glossy orange berries that characterize it. (And, yes, the sky is really is that blue.)

We spent yesterday afternoon at the beach but it rained all night and today it’s 13C/55F with a NW wind blowing at 60km/35mph that makes it feel much colder. But the sun is shining – which it’s supposed to do all weekend. Have a good one, wherever you are. I’ll be back with book-related posts next week.

There’s thunderstorms somewhere around here this evening – we hear them in the distance and every so often see a faint flash of lightning. The dogs are not happy, as unused to the sound of thunder as they are.

Meanwhile, sunset came and went behind the clouds, lighting up the western sky with these gorgeous colors.

I never tire of sunsets; in the city, we seldom saw them as the buildings blocked our view.

Last week, we were on a road trip to southern Ontario where (then) it was balmy and spring-like. While we were gone, most of the snow here melted too and the first three days this week were wonderful and left me full of hope. Then I woke up this morning to this–and still snowing.

Will winter never end? It makes me so down….

We’ve had rain and temps above freezing all week, and last night when I went to bed, there was no snow to be seen. I thought I’d show you a real contrast from last week.

Alas, this is what I awoke to. That’s a main highway out there. There’s a wind gusting to 50 mph from the south (?!), which is the other side of the house, that blowing a icy mist of snow across the roads.

Not being camera-savvy, I couldn’t get the picture beyond the window this week. The lens would record only the ice on the pane.

At 4 p.m., it’s as dark as night, the wind is howling and blowing the trees and the sleety rain horizontal.

What a change from last week!

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Hurricane Bill is barreling up the Atlantic coastline and due to brush Nova Scotia tomorrow. It is, of course, the talk of the town.

The year we moved here (2003) was the first year in a very long time that Nova Scotia had been affected by a hurricane to any extent. But that September, Hurricane Juan Read the rest of this entry »

Last night we were storm-stayed again–for the third time this month. Isn’t that a charming term? We’re made to stay inside by the storm.

In actual fact, all the doors are snowed in at least knee high and the path to the car is drifted to my chest. (If, indeed, the car is out there – we can’t see any sign of it anymore.) So storm-stayed we are.

All of our friends in urban, commerce-driven Read the rest of this entry »