Hello Summer!

Fairytale

Happy belated solstice to all!  I don't think I've ever counted it as my very favourite season (autumn still holds that title), but there is something undeniably magic about summer.  And despite the fact that the kids have one (not quite whole) week of school left, I think everyone feels as though we got a pretty great head start on summer vacation over the last few days.  Some cases in point:

1. End of routines:

This past week, school has been more of a party than anything else, and our weekly lessons are coming to a close.  In particular, the kids had their second to last piano lesson of the year last Thursday, and it was quite a treat.  The backstory is that we were lucky enough to snag our extremely talented friend Ian to give lessons to both kids this year. These take place in the cute little Parish Hall of the grand St. Paul's Church -- an iconic Halifax church where Ian is currently working as Musician in Residence.  On Thursday, however, Ian took the lessons to the church itself, which meant not only that the kids got to play on a gorgeous grand piano (in front of whatever residents and tourists were exploring the church at the time) - they also got to try out the magnificent organ:

Getting some lessons before filling the church with some enormous organ sound

2. Projects

I know, I know - we've always got projects ongoing.  But this past weekend, we did two things of particular note.  The first was a project that my parent's neighbour, Cathy Baker, thought I might be interested in, and therefore sent along pics and how-to's.  Appealing to my diy (do-it-yourself) nature, my thriftiness, and my need to figure out the muddy mess of our garden between the raised beds, I attempted to make rhubarb leaf stones.  Take a look!

Step 1: harvest nice big rhubarb leaves, and cover with cement (I reinforced each one with strong chicken wire)

Step 2: Wait patiently (about 24 hours) for it to cure, then flip it over

Step 3: Peel off the leaves

.... and - voila! 

Pretty cool, right?  I have not yet placed them in the garden, for a few reasons.  First, I want to make sure they are completely cured before I put them in.  Second, I think I want to make at least four or five more.  And third (this is by far the worst reason): I have a much decreased interest in physically being in the garden right now, as there have been a couple of RATS that have been visiting this past week.  I don't even want to talk about it.  It involves our lovely new compost bins (and yes - we were very careful about what we put in, but the rats were still clearly interested), and has now escalated to various traps. I really hope they just go away or die in short order, but that remains to be seen.

The second project is one that I have been chipping away at diligently over the last little while:  cleaning out our garage. This is a necessary thing to do anyway - the previous owner of this house kindly left all of his tools behind for us, but this also meant he left all of his accumulated garage junk.  The garage has, therefore, been in dire need of a sort through and purge since day one.  More importantly, however, I am attempting to claim the very back of the garage as a makeshift pottery studio, but can only do that when enough space is cleared.

A very willing little helper

This weekend, I finally got it to the point where I had identified and coalesced a pile of junk big enough to warrant a trip to the dump.  Carroll and Stephen VERY kindly let us borrow their truck, and it all just... happened!  The catharsis of getting rid of all that debris was tangible.

Loading the truck

3. The Beach
Nothing says summer like the beach, right?  Our weekend family adventure yesterday was a trip to the glorious Lawrencetown - home to both Lawrencetown Beach and Stony Beach.  We didn't even attempt to put on swimsuits (the water is still frigid, as was the breeze on this particular day), but that did not stop the kids from splashing and getting their clothes soaked.  Plus, it is possible to spend an entire day just watching the waves, playing with rocks, and observing the hoards of surfers and kite surfers that come to these particular spots.  I have never tried either type of surfing, but I can tell you that after watching the kite surfers, in particular, I was enthralled.  It looked like SO. MUCH. FUN.  Anyway, here are some pics from that adventure:

Sir Linden, ready to claim the beach

Those little black dots in the ocean are just some of the many, many surfers out.  There were some great waves!

Pretty profile

Summoning the waves (Juniper)...

... and running away from them (Linden)

Green grass, blue sky

Making a "rock house"

As we were trying to follow a path from one beach to the other, we got fairy led (ie, led astray), into this magical, mossy forest

It was fun, but soon impassible.  Just when we decided to call it a bust, and head back, we emerged out from where we had entered, and there was the real path, clear as day.  Fairy led, I tell you.

Back on the right path

At stony beach, with kite surfers in the background