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Showing posts with label mussel fishing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mussel fishing. Show all posts

Sunday, 19 June 2022

The north shore

It couldn’t have been more perfect. We’d had rain which was needed for potatoes and other crops. Now the sun was out and the island breeze, which one can usually rely on, made the heat bearable. Don’t forget the sunscreen!


We packed a picnic and headed to the central north shore to meet Helen and Frank, our Australian friends who are visiting family on the island. Helen is a fellow blogger. They know Prince Edward Island pretty well, so we wanted to show them an area they hadn’t visited before. We met at the wharf at French River.


As we talked and watched boats return to port from their morning at the lobster traps, 





a local mussel fisherman came by and we talked briefly. He doesn’t have a long commute since the buoys are his workplace. 





His family can watch from the living room window.


We proceeded to the New London Lighthouse at Yankee Hill where the view over the dunes is familiar. 





However, the lobster boats returning to port add the human element to this gorgeous setting. 


Gulls and cormorants are usually busy in the area and many photos capture them flying by while the boats speed past. 





The Livin Large was one of a dozen or more boats making their way back to port while we walked the beach. Sometimes, like the Knot Inarush, they looked close enough to touch.





The pylons off-shore still stand against the onslaught of nature. They were certainly meant to last and the metal spikes which hold them together are visible today. 




The birds use the area as a perch.





On the way back to the car, we met two artists sketching the old lighthouse.





The view of the old sentinel was enhanced by the blooms which are bursting forth everywhere these days.





The north shore was in her glory!













Thursday, 2 September 2021

Picnic under the birches

Birch trees with their grey/white trunks make a pretty setting any time of year. However, the shade provided on a hot day is reason enough to have a picnic under birch trees. Besides, the leaves trembling to the breeze create a sound I love to hear and can imagine later as I fall asleep. Birches are a wonder of nature.





We have found several stands of birches on Prince Edward Island and my husband and I visited one recently in Green Park in the northwest part of the island. Of course a picnic was in order and we sat in the birch-provided shade on a hot day with the wind blowing through the branches. Perfect.


While we ate, we watched the fishing grounds in the inlet across from our location. 




There, fishers went about their day at the mussels beds. 





On the far side of the inlet, the floats of the oyster beds were visible on the surface of the water. 





Below the water, cages of oysters hang from each float where they are left to grow until October. Then the floats are sunk and cages fall to the sea floor as ice covers the inlet. The floats are drained in the spring, oysters checked for growth and redistributed to cages and hung from floats for another season. Three years growth produces marketable oysters. 


After lunch we walked along the shoreline where the erosion is obvious. 





The birches and other trees are falling into the sea at an alarming rate. It is sad to see these trees disappear down over the bank as the rich red soil is washed away. 





Camp cabins along one area of the shoreline are available for overnight rental in the privately run part of the park. Some people like these better than a tent for camping. 





Two Greater Yellowlegs walked ahead of us along the beach 




and Tall White Asters almost two meters high lined the trail back to the car. 




Overhead, the Mountain Ash trees were full of berries, known as dogberries in my native Newfoundland.




Time at Green Park is good for the spirit.