Home-grown and homemade

It is that time of year again when the backyard garden is producing goodies. Tomatoes, green beans, broccolini, cauliflower, peppers and cucumber are ready for harvest. Fresh herbs from the garden are always available. Beet will be another few weeks. Another crop of lettuce is growing too from seeds planted last week. What could be better than walking to your backyard and picking the vegetables to have for lunch and supper?

My husband and I eat vegetables and fruit every day. How we eat them changes with the season. 

Now, salads are the stars of the menu with homemade dressings. Quinoa salad containing roasted vegetables is delicious with such dressing and is a new favourite this year.

Fruit in combination with vegetables is new for us. Today we are having a pineapple, cucumber, avocado and onion salad. We quite like watermelon salad with spinach, onion and feta with a lime dressing too. The combination of fruit and vegetables is tasty and there are endless ideas on-line.

We always experiment with the combinations of course. Recipes on-line are a great starting point for your own combinations of favourite vegetables or fruit. We often add avocado and tomatoes. My husband likes cucumber. We prefer blanched cauliflower and broccoli to the raw vegetables, a bit of crunch but easier to chew.

Prepared salad dressing hasn’t been in our shopping cart for a long time. Making our own is so much better, leaving out the chemical preservatives and using combinations of fresh citrus, Dijon mustard, maple syrup, honey, olive oil and balsamic vinegar which have so much flavour. We go easy on the salt and use pepper liberally.

The garden produce gives the wallet a break for a few weeks. The prices in the grocery store are on the rise and our income is not. This time of year, with produce so readily available, one would think the prices of fruit and vegetables would be lower. That isn’t the case. A large package of cherry tomatoes a few weeks ago was almost $9.00, more than we paid last winter. Eating fruit and vegetables isn’t cheap. Our grocery bill will be lower for the next month with our home grown vegetables. Besides, time in the garden is good for the mind and body.

Restaurant food has lost its appeal for us. Every so often we eat out but we always enjoy coming back to our homemade fare. Time has made us less appreciative of convenient and easy, leaning more towards our own tastes and preferences, good old homemade! Home-grown is the added bonus.

Fun at the beach

A sunny day with a breeze made for perfect conditions after several days of rain. We spent the day with family at Chelton Beach Park and started with a picnic. 

This beach is on the south shore of the island near the Confederation Bridge, visible in the distance.

After lunch, we headed to the beach where it was low tide, creating tidal pools which we love to explore. 

We found seaweed, hermit crabs and small fish known locally as bait fish. 

In the distance, the lighthouse at Seacow Head looked to be enjoying the summer day too.

Down the beach, a dog looked to be experiencing the ocean for the first time. It was a pleasure to watch its prancing and dancing along the beach and into the waves. 

Any time we are at the beach, our grandson has his dump truck and digger with him. 

The children love the water but also enjoy playing in the sand.

Meanwhile, in the air, several species of gulls floated on the breeze 

and hung around with our family enjoying the water.

Nearby another family made a huge sandcastle which we watched for several hours as the Northumberland Strait reclaimed it.

And finally, you never know where you’ll see a Canadian flag.

On the trail again

The Confederation Trail was calling. I had fallen off my bike and hurt my ankle so I stayed off the bike until I felt 100% better and that took three weeks. Meanwhile the last section of trail, in the far eastern side of the island, was the last part of the 273 kilometre trail we had yet to complete. My husband and I were doing both directions and we had 46 kilometres left. My ankle had to be in great shape to finish this quest.

We started in Souris,

a branch off the main trail, rode to New Harmony where we had finished our last ride and headed east. This section of the trail was well groomed, taking away the challenge of the previous time when I had fallen. There was a challenge however. 

The previous day there was a short but severe thunder storm with torrential rain. The water on the trail was not dried up the next morning when we started. The water splashing up made us and our bikes filthy and it was slippery in several areas.

This part of the trail has sections which are under a thick canopy making one feel bathed in the green glow. 

Shadows dance along the trail as well, one of my favourite experiences.

We arrived in Elmira, riding beside an old section of rail bed 

as we cycled to the end of the trail. 

Nearby the old train station looked on, having seen thousands complete the trail now and the rail back when.

An old caboose is in great shape 

and the children’s play set provides the engine.

Back in Souris, we enjoyed lunch at a local restaurant to celebrate our completion of the trail. We enjoyed the meal but we enjoy our own fare and picnics just as well, sometimes better.

Souris is a pretty community by the sea. The old lighthouse stands its vigil in the outer part of the harbour 

while along the shoreline, above the cliffs, apple trees with small fruit, have roots dug in for this year at least.

Having cycled the main Confederation Trail, now we will ride the areas we particularly enjoyed and some branch lines. We look forward to autumn colour on the trail before long.

Birds around the estuary

Slowly, over the last several years, a love of birds, their appearance and behaviour, crept up on me and seeped into my bones. My husband supports my interest in every way possible. Everywhere we go these days, we watch and listen for the birds in that area. Sometimes I recognize the birds by sight and/or sound, other times, I need the reference book or a website check at home for identification. Usually, the camera is nearby for photos.

Recently, we visited our family at a beach house on the estuary of the Hillsborough River near Charlottetown, the capital of Prince Edward Island. 

We spent the day on the beach with the kids and enjoyed every minute. Some of our time was spent birdwatching with the family.

Bird listening is a better description when it comes to the Common Terns. 

The birds probably nest in the area and their in-flight acrobatics in the sky around the house and their voices were hard to ignore. In one area of the beach, they were loud and looked to be distracting us with aerial antics above our heads. I didn’t get any photos but their behaviour was amazing to watch.

One of the shorebirds, I later identified as a Willet, appeared to be nesting in the same area. We could hear noise among the grasses in the marsh and the bird put on a display a short distance from the noise. 

This bird stood on the beach and chirped its loudest as we approached and walked by. When we passed, it took to the air, the beautiful markings on its wings were easy to see but hard to photograph.

From our beach chairs, we observed the Willet and several terns being noisy and aggressive towards a Bald Eagle.

The birds flew towards the eagle, veering off at the last second. The eagle stayed around for a few minutes then flew to the trees a distance away. The smaller birds saw the eagle for the predator it was.

In the water, a flock of eleven Great Blue Herons caught our attention as well.

As the tide rose, the bird moved from one position to another, to shallow water. Eventually they flew off together. 

Watching the birds with family and sharing an interest with them was fun.

At the beach house

The beach house is on an inlet near the mouth of the Hillsborough River, with the capital city, Charlottetown, visible in the distance. A salt marsh and beach separate the house from the brackish water of the estuary.

Our daughter’s family rented the house recently and my husband and I visited. It is a lovely house in a beautiful setting and we spent much of the time with the family on the beach. 

The path to the beach goes through a meadow with wildflowers 

and Queen Anne had her lace spread about with abandon.

It was low tide 

and the Northumberland Strait having already receded, began to rise as we walked with the children and explored the beach. Plenty of shelled animals live below the high tide mark here. 

The kids enjoyed playing at the water’s edge and soon discovered they could cover themselves and each other in muddy sand. 

Why pay for a mud treatment when you can have this much fun for free?

Nearby a farm extends to the shoreline, reminding us of the connection of land and sea on our island home.

We had a wonderful day with the family and although it was overcast, it didn’t rain. We were lucky to have such a day in a week of miserable weather. If only we could share the rain this summer with western Canada!

Reaching for the sun

They reach for the sun along the pathways and trails, in the meadows, around rivers and ponds and along the seashore, anywhere they can get a root hold. A variety of colours, they give their best to creation, from seeds to plants, blooms, pollen and eggs. They colour our paths and brighten our days.

Wildflowers don’t need human prompting, they manage on their own just fine. Seeds, carried on the wind, by birds or other animals, sprout and reach into the soil. Before long, voilà! The leaves and showy blooms are reaching for the sun again.

Sometimes they stick with their own kind. 

What looks like one bloom per plant, such as bunchberry, 

or numerous clone-like blooms like yarrow are worth a look.

Various colours catch the eye, such as the yellow of St. John’s wort with the tiny stripes on its buds which look to be painted there.

The pink and white of bindweed is always a nice surprise as it climbs its way up and around shrubs. This may please onlookers but not the plant it climbs. 

One notices a white plant among the bushes but the details of this male Tall Meadow rue with the lemon anthers and white stamens are beautiful on closer look.

Blue Flag iris is always a nice addition to the banks of a wetland.

Even seed heads, such as this one of Yellow Goat’s beard, which resembles dandelion seeds, makes us stop for a look.

Pinks and white of Dame’s rockets fill the ditches and pathways. The natural beauty of the wild roses, rockets and clover along this section of trail by the sea is a seasonal treat.

And the most spectacular of all is the riot of colour when a variety of wildflowers share a space such as here

or here,

or here.

Mother Nature is an excellent gardener.