Blessings in many forms

Today felt like summer, in earnest; hot sunshine, little wind, and the garden smiled in relief, stretching towards the warmth. And the gardener smiled too. There's been a lot of wind and rain damage, and some plants are looking traumatized and threatening to rot because of all the wet. But others are doing just fine, thank you.

I roamed around the yard this morning for a little while and just looked around. Instead of fretting over the wet and the mildew and the slugs and weeds, I focused on the beauties we have. Like the delightful echinaceas that are beginning to get going, including 'Coconut Lime', which is pleasing in its vigour.


And 'Harvest Moon', which for some reason is one of the coneflowers that appeals to me the most in an architectural sense. Plus it's lovely, it smells nice, and it seems to do pretty well here.


Before we left this afternoon to attend our awesome Member of Parliament Scott Brison's annual Barbecue, I was out in the front porch and this coneflower caught my eye. Intense excitement! I hadn't noticed it this morning (in my defense, I hadn't had any coffee during that first morning walk), and I charged out to snap a hasty (and not colour-perfect) picture of 'Tomato Soup.' As Kylee noted in a post a couple of weeks ago, it really IS the colour of tomato soup.


To some people, this is a weed. To me, Queen Anne's Lace/Wild Carrot (Daucus carota) is one of the most beautiful wildflowers we have. I can (and do) spend a great deal of time delighting over the complexity of the flowers, the bees and butterflies and other pollinators that enjoy it, the sweetness of the fragrance, and later, the delightful seedheads. It's a pretty, pretty thing and it makes me happy to see; which is why I have a few of them scattered through the garden.


It's a good indication that I'm feeling much, much better that I actually want to go out and see people and do things. After puttering around here for part of the day, longsuffering spouse and I headed off to Cheverie, to go to the barbecue, and ended up seeing assorted friends, including the amiable Rob Baldwin of Baldwin's Nurseries (left, beside my LSS).

Our federal riding is called Kings Hants, and is a big, sprawling area comprised of the two counties of Kings (where we live) and Hants. Cheverie and other parts of Hants County are across the Minas Basin from us, which is part of the Upper Bay of Fundy, and as I've observed before is home of the World's Highest tides.

We are very blessed to live in this part of the world. Sometimes, I forget that when I get caught up in the morass of not feeling well or work challenges or other misadventures. But since I'm feeling much better with each passing day, I'm starting to remember just how blessed I am, and how wonderful it is to be able to live beside salt water. We get to harvest and enjoy treats like the dulse (yes, it's a seaweed) that my better half picked off the rocks by Cape Split (seen here drying in the sun outside our barn.)

After we left the barbecue, we went down the road a ways and visited the lighthouse in Walton. I know that Nancy of Soliloquy has written about this lighthouse and this part of the province before, and I'll just add that it's a lovely area and a wonderful place for a picnic, or just a stroll. The lighthouse and surrounding area is all maintained by volunteers, which just shows what a small community can do when inspired.

This beach is actually between Cheverie and Walton, and we happened on it because I said, "Let's go down this road and see where it leads." We knew it led to the water, but didn't know whether we'd have access or not. It was cool to find this shale-covered beach, though we didn't scramble down the rocks to the beach.We were a little too full of chicken, and pleasantly sun-weary.

All in all, it was about as perfect a summer day as we could have asked for. Suddenly all the unpleasantries and challenges of recent months seems to have cleared away like fog on a hot summer's day. Blessings take many forms, when we stop to consider and be grateful for them.