how now brownpau
Some peaceful shots from around Birches Park in Portland Estates, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, on the other side of Morris Lake from the Kiwanis Park in Cole Harbour:
Plus maps of the park and connecting Portland Lakes Greenway trail system:
Bonus dragonfly!
Was a decent park with nice views, and for the kid, multiple playgrounds all a short walk from each other, including dual playgrounds at the nearby school.
Another Canadian October Thanksgiving at home, with this “naturally inspired” Butterball turkey for roasting. (As usual, just a small roaster kit-type turkey breast, as it’s just us and a full turkey would be too much.)
Serve with some Stove Top stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, peas, corn, beans, and a little croissant, and there’s Thanksgiving dinner for you.
Follow up with some freshly picked apples.
Happy [Canadian] Thanksgiving.
Returned to Noggins Corner for more apple picking. (Previously.)
But first, the much-anticipated children’s play area, and a walk around the corn maze (same as last year, we just did the kiddie mini-maze off in the corner, as the main corn maze was a huge all-day affair)
For actual apple picking, this time around we favoured the Cox Orange variety, a small, sweet-and-slightly-tangy, firm and crisp apple, great for dessert or snacking by itself. (Though I find after too many the mouthfeel starts to get a bit mealy, so all in moderation.)
A little nose note: there was poop smell in the area as the wind was just right to carry over odours from the dairy farm — pretty standard for any farm, of course — but we found that our CA99 masks for respiratory protection doubled as effective odour filters, perfectly blocking the fragrance of cow poop, so those were good to have.
More photos in the photoset, Apple Picking at Noggins Corner (Sep 2023).
Smoky and Amelia being nice and cuddling together on the IKEA POANG armchair:
And from a few days back, sharing an afternoon sunbeam:
And a couple golden-hour closeups of Smoky:
For no particular reason, I bought a pack of Bicycle brand Canadian Tire 100th Anniversary playing cards — ironically made in the USA. (Bicycle is a US company after all.)
Look at this inquisitive blue jay that landed on the swing set in the backyard and watched me for a bit while I was working outside. (They know I give the local crows peanuts sometimes and as fellow corvids will occasionally swoop in to steal some.)
Joined some friends in Halifax for a “CluedUpp” game, kind of a PokemonGo-like fairytale-themed augmented reality app scavenger hunt around the city. Amusingly the game producers appear to not have taken into account that the main quest giver’s virtual location on the Grand Parade was the site of a real life military ceremony the same day, making one of the waypoints inaccessible for a bit. (Note the homeless encampments.)
En route to other waypoints I paused a bit to appreciate this message on a traffic light pole.
After we’d finished* with the game we walked along the waterfront a bit, where souvenir shirts were on sale.
* We didn’t actually finish the game. The theme of this one was “Beauty and the Beast,” with a bunch of other fairytale crossovers, and it got a bit tiring with lots of tedious text-heavy storyline between the AR waypoints. At some point we lost interest and just went to get food and go for a walk. Seems other CluedUpp players were disappointed too, though others went all out and even dressed up in costumes.
At the Gardens to meet up with old DC friend Keith, I noticed the old Halifax coat of arms on the gates.
The city’s motto, “E Mari Merces” — “From The Sea, Wealth” — with a sailor and a fisherman flanking a kingfisher beneath a mayflower. Since amalgamation this has been replaced with the newer Halifax Regional Municipality arms but I still like the classic one.
Some shots from around Fort Needham Memorial Park, with monuments commemorating the Halifax Explosion: terraced walls with casualty statistics, a bell tower that chimes the time, and Vince Coleman’s last transmission.
Couple things I wish I’d also captured: the rusted steel walls with the names of the ships, and the labels for the explosive cargo engraved in the planks of the benches. More on the the memorial from its designers at Fathom Studio.
Got a photo of Smoky on our deck railing, in almost the same location and pose as in a photo I took of Martha outside shortly before her death last year.
Both of them being Joneses, I guess Smoky carries on Martha’s legacy in some feline way, just with a much bushier tail.
