The Last Week...Already!

 There are things we do up here that we never do at home!  There are things we can't do, things we don't have to do, things we don't have the opportunity to do, things we don't need to do and things we wish we could do.  Last week, as we moved probably the 12th and 13th mattresses of the summer I just had to laugh!  There would never be a 3 month period in my "real" life that I would have moved 13 mattresses!  It just happens to be the summer of the mattress!  In the farmhouse alone we have moved 6 mattresses this summer.  We have a lot of mattresses...plus the new one, which meant a bit of shuffling.  In the cottage we moved in a new one, moved the old one to another bed and moved that one to the curb.  We also helped friend(s) move 4 mattresses.  It was a 13 mattress summer!  We are all sleeping very soundly now...from moving so many mattresses!  Unfortunately, my back is paying for moving so many mattresses.  If it's not one thing, it's another!

One of many this summer.

Back home, at night, we have dinner and then usually watch tv.  We used to go out occasionally...pre 2020, then we just stayed home and watched tv or stared at some other screen.  Up here, we don't watch tv.  We go out!  We go out to other cottages and play games or just chat.  If we stay home we are busy watching the sunset, which for most of the summer comes late and lasts a long time.  Then we sit in the sunroom and talk.  Sometimes we play cribbage while watching the sunset.  Other nights, I catch up on my social media...because I don't do much of that during the day.  I have not watched a show in months!  Not complaining either, but don't ask me about anything on Netflix!  I don't know.  

Netflix North

At home, we go out to dinner at least once a week and sometimes more often.  In the two and a half months I have been up here, I have eaten dinner at a restaurant three times and had lunch out once.  I have however,  cooked A LOT!  I might cook more at home if I had a huge garden out of my backdoor that produced mass quantities of food.  Having so much produce is daunting at times.  Dinner usually consists of whatever was picked that day or whatever is giving us an over abundance.  Tonight we had stuffed peppers, because we had a lot of peppers!  I must say the garden really spoils us, when we go home and bite into produce from the store that is weeks old instead of minutes old we can't help but be very disappointed.  We also have dinner at other cottages.  Communal eating is very common up here!  When our extended families are here, in the busy part of the summer, we ate dinner with our kids and their families every night, as do many other extended families.  Once our kids and their kids leave, the cousins pass the baton for cooking and cleaning until everyone has had their turn.  This is one of the many things I love this about this place.  Maybe I should have lived in a commune.  

TJ, the great provider, in his happy place!

When was the last time you had dinner at home and then decided to just drop in on a friend or a neighbor?  At 8:30 at night.  It happens all the time up here.  I love it when people just show up to visit after dinner and I love it when we are welcomed to do the same!  I am starting to realize this is mostly a summer phenomena, as the days get shorter and the crowd is dwindling, drop-ins and drop-byes are less frequent.  The darkness seems to already be keeping us inside.  

Darkness...let's just consider darkness.  Our dark sky allows us to see so many more stars than ever possible at home.  Again, instead of tv, the night sky provides me with visual entertainment.  I have had a good time experimenting with night photography.  Although for every 10 photos I have taken, I have about one keeper, thank goodness for digital photography!  

Billions and billions of stars!

And that one in a thousand photo!

While there is so much I love about this place there is a lot I love and miss back home.  About this time every year, I watch the sun set farther and farther to the south and my inner migratory soul tells me it is time to go "home".  TJ does not have as strong a pull to home as I do and so he will continue to live his retirement dream and stay a little bit longer.  I will enjoy everything I love about this place for one more week and then this bird will fly south.  The summer was a real treat!  It was full of exactly what we love about summer up here.  We were back...and it felt right!  There were children who experienced the shore for the first time ever and I think they loved it!  To see the love of the shore passed on the yet another generation is heartwarming!  Our grandparents passed the love of this place on to our parents and them to us and we have continued the tradition and I sincerely hope some of them are the ones to pass it all on again!  

I will miss this serene view on my daily walk!

With only 3 more days up here and countless tasks to check off the "to do" list before I go, I decided to mindfully enjoy the day as much as possible.  I won't be walking along this country road with a view of the water for 9 more months, so I took an extra long walk today and soaked it all in.  I won't have those super fresh vegetables for much longer so tonight we had squash, potatoes, peas and tomatoes, all from the garden.  I won't have my favorite room in the world, my sunroom, for much longer so every time I sat down today I made sure to do it in here.  I wonder if everyone experiences this last melancholy week.  My head says to enjoy it for as long as I can but my heart already aches.  "Parting is such sweet sorrow", said some famous British chap.  How can one enjoy what they have and still feel a bit of sadness?  We say goodbye to another summer at the shore.  A summer that is now a unique part of history.  While it did feel "normal", it wasn't quite there yet.  There were still people we missed who couldn't make it up this year for one reason or another.  Seems there is always a slightly different crowd every year.  This isn't the easiest place to get to, which means everyone can't come every year.  Each year is unique in some ways and the same in many ways, which is part of its allure.  Au revoir, arrivederci, adios, so long, farewell...until we meet again.

These are a few of my favorite things....

Goodbye fresh bounty!

Goodbye beautiful flower boxes

Goodbye scenic drive from Pugwash

Goodbye cousins!

 

Goodbye sandbar walks

Goodbye perfect beach days

Goodbye farmhouse

Goodbye Canada

Party Like a Scotia Woman!

How to party like a Scotia woman:  Have a garden party and invite all your favorite Scotia women.  It was not your typical garden party, it was a more literal garden party. Each person got to choose a vegetable or fruit from our garden and then made a dish using her vegetable for a pot luck dinner.  We also decided to wear trendy second hand clothes we purchased from Frenchy's (a place every self respecting Scotia woman knows!).

Your host.....the garden

The ladies on the beach embraced the garden party idea!  Everyone made something interesting with their fruits and vegetables.  The garden provided peas, green beans, leeks, onions, potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce, artichokes, broccoli, Swiss chard, zucchini, strawberries and celery.  The women turned all of this produce into a fun feast!  Chocolate Zucchini cake...  Strawberry Pina Coladas...Onion Casserole... Broccoli Salad! Delicious!  Creative!  Resourceful!

These ladies know how to turn produce into a party!

Every summer around this time the garden hits it's stride and produces enough food to feed a village.   Unfortunately, the bounty also coincides with the time of summer when people start heading home so there are fewer people with whom to share the harvest.  Most people are in that winding down mode, when you have to start cleaning out the pantry and the fridge and try to figure out what to make with peanut butter, a lemon, ketchup, tuna fish, and some raisin bread.  Rather than leave all of that food on the vine or in the ground I decided to share. My other option was to spend my remaining days making tomatoes into tomato sauce and strawberries into jam.... a party sounded so much better.

There were 5 sets of sisters at the garden party!  

The garden party may just have to become an annual event!  Judging by the 14 empty wine bottles left on the kitchen counter, I would say the party was a success!  I never said Scotia women were teetotalers!

It's All About the Food, Isn't It?

Yummy lobster roll in Freeport, ME

As I sit here eating my breakfast and start thinking about what I'm going to make for dinner tonight I am struck by the fact that life around here revolves around food!  I just returned from a trip to the States to pick up my daughter and our dog and was treated to 3 days of eating out!  This was a nice little break in the farmhouse life of no eating out!  I did not have to think about what I was going to cook, or how I was going to cook it and I did not have to do dishes...the old fashioned way!  It was a lovely break.  I think we still started thinking about what we were going to eat for dinner while we were eating breakfast though!  Yes, it is all about the food!

One day last week I was struck by how different meals are up here compared to home.  When we sit down to eat, and often there are many of us at the table, we are not distracted by the TV being on or by the events that we have to rush off to after dinner or by people at the table texting and are seldom even interrupted by the phone ringing.  Meals are also often a  communal event.  Since there are no restaurants around we take turns inviting each other over for dinner.  It gives us an excuse to  cook a great meal and in return we get a night off later in the week! 

The conversations at the dinner table up here are far different than those back home.  When was the last time you just lingered at your dinner table and chatted about....  current global events?  Local issues such as when the bridge down the road, which has been under construction for over a year, will be finished?  Whether the local organic farmers are going to make it and how we can support them?  Your long lost relatives and where they are and how they were back in their day?  When will the sun shine again?  We have good conversations around our tables, without distraction most of the time.  It is  a lovely way to spend a couple of hours!  Is it all about the food.....or is it about the meal? 

How long before this can be on my dinner menu? Although I don't even know what it is, I'm just babysitting the garden.

As much as I enjoyed eating out for a few days,  I am really looking forward to the days that I can just go outside to the garden, pick whatever is ripe and create a meal.  This month will be a month of patience as we weed and watch the garden.  The faces around the table will be an ever changing cast of characters and I anticipate the conversations will be as varied as the faces.  The dinner table is one of life's simple pleasures and should be enjoyed, even if you do have to wash the dishes....the old fashioned way!