Photo of the Week milestone

A photo a week for 10 years!

It was one Friday in November 2001 when the idea of sharing one photo a week of Cape Breton Island came to mind. Everywhere I went, I always carried my camera and everywhere you look there's a picture perfect occasion to capture a slice of Nova Scotia's Masterpiece, Cape Breton Island.  

Road trip to Cheticamp

                                           

Someone else on a Sunday drive around East Lake Ainslie

Sunday morning we headed out for a little road trip from L'Ardoise to Cheticamp. First I checked the Environment Canada website which stated a mix of sun and cloud for Richmond and Inverness Counties. The sky was mostly cloudy at the start of our road trip, but later saw the sun, more clouds and sun again later in the day. First stop in St Peter's, we picked up a coffee and then headed out towards Port Hawkesbury. From there we got on the Trans Canada and turned off  in Whycocomah and followed the highway through East Lake Ainslie, Upper Margaree, South West Margaree and Margaree Forks. We are now on the Cabot Trail and heading for Cheticamp.  Once there, we had a little lunch, took some pitures (of course) and turned around to head back. On the way we stopped at Le Centre de la Mi-Carême in Grand Etang. Here we enjoyed learning and viewing a colourful display of artwork about the history of an old Acadian tradition (La Mi-Carême) that is still being celebrated in the Cheticamp area. The way back home, we traveled the Route 19 through the town of Inverness, Mabou, Judique, Craignish and Port Hawkesbury. By 4:30pm we were back in L'Ardoise, where we still had daylight time to sit outside and enjoy the day on this Labour Day weekend...

Little treasures from the beach

A couple of pieces of beach glass and other little treasures found during this morning's walk on the beach...

This old chair

A couple of years ago, I found these two old wood folding chairs at a Value Village store in Sydney, Cape Breton. They were both in rough shape, barely sturdy enough for an adult to sit on, but still good enough to display in the garden just for show. After a couple of years of enduring our maritime weather, the blue paint wore off and they ended up falling apart but I managed to salvage one chair out of the two. A couple of coats of white paint and picking the best slats out of the two chairs for the seat, it was good enough to bring one chair back to life.  I'm glad I didn't send them both to the dump but decided to recycle instead...

Yellow buttercups and purple clovers

I don't know if it's because the sun was shining so bright all day today, I couldn't resist finding that the wild flowers (or are they weeds) in the fields all around had such vivid colours. I gathered a few yellow buttercups and purple clovers and created a wonderful little bouquet, set in an old pottery vase that I found in the back porch. It's now the month of July and I can finally say that it feels like summer...

This morning's walk

For this morning's walk, at least the wind wasn't too brisk, just a soft breeze which was a little cool. On the way back it started to drizzle a bit, but with just a light spring jacket, it was still a pleasant stroll up Chapel Cove Rd. It's always a nice walk, either it being a bright and sunny day or a foggy day when you can smell the ocean in the air. I'm hoping we'll see the sun later on, maybe by the end of the week?  

With all this rain

Cape Breton Living's Photo of the Week, June 3, 2011. With all the rain we've been getting in L'Ardoise lately, the grass is turning a bright green. Again today, we are having drizzly weather and I'm sure the grass is even greener. But if we could get warmer temperatures and a bit more sunshine, maybe those little buds in the trees will bring out more of that green colour...

Webcams are back on..

We're back on track, the webcams are updating once again... on the Cape Breton Living website.

West view webcam

Here is a still shot of the west view webcam taken this morning. You might have noticed that the webcams on the Cape Breton Living website has not updated since yesterday at 11:55am. I'm hoping to have this problem resolved soon, so in the meantime, I will post an updated image of the cams here in the blog.   

Around the yard

Today, the sun finally came out after weeks of rain, drizzle, fog, wind and early this morning, thundershowers. In the last few weeks, well for all of our spring season so far, we might have enjoyed 4 or 5 full days where the sun did make an appearance. So finally when the clouds and the fog cleared up by late afternoon today, I grabbed my camera and got busy out in the yard snapping pictures of that beautiful warm sunshine making everything look so bright and colourful. My lilac tree (or is it a bush) needed this bit of sunshine. Soon I'll be able to enjoy a freshly picked bouquet of these purple flowers on my kitchen table. I'm hoping that the month of June will bring more sunny days than rainy and foggy ones...

Fortress of Louisbourg

Photo of the Week, April 29, 2011

Cape Breton Living's Photo of the Week is of the Fortress of Louisbourg.
This summer, why not visit and experience living history in the 18th century? I am told it's the largest reconstructed 18th century French fortified town in North America. It's sure to be the highlight of your vacation...  For more info visit these websites:
Fortress Louisbourg Association
Parks Canada - Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site

Muskrat or otter?

On our daily walk along the shore road by home, we came across this muskrat or maybe it was an otter. We stopped to look and noticed it was looking at us too. At the same time, close by was a frantically cawing black crow that seemed to have an issue with this little guy. As cute as the otter might seem, when it started to head towards us, I felt a little uncomfortable. Just then, the loud black crow got himself between us and the otter and scared it back in a hole in the ice. I'm not sure what happened here, but I was glad the crow did what he did 

It's almost springtime

Instead of going out to find signs of spring, I was out yesterday looking for snow, mountains of snow! We set out early Sunday morning and stopped for breakfast at the Big Stop in Auld's Cove before heading out for the Highlands of Cape Breton. Our road trip was to drive along Route 19, through Port Hastings, Judique, Port Hood, Mabou, Inverness then coffee at Tim's in Cheticamp. From there we took our coffee with us and headed for North Mountain, just past the picturesque community of Pleasant Bay. Lots of snow we did find, now that I got my fill...I'm looking forward to signs of spring...

Wintertime

Photo of the Week February 4, 2011 - L'Ardoise

It wasn't an easy task to make a selection of just one photo from the many cool wintry shots I have in my collection. After the second snow storm in two days, I couldn't resist but to get out there, with camera in hand and click away, finding a picture perfect scene all around me. You'll find this first photo as the Photo of the Week on Cape Breton Living website. I'm also sharing with you more wintry shots of wintertime in L'Ardoise -