May 31, Hot, Hot, Hot

Today's post is written by my husband, Paul.

Yesterday was rainy and foggy pretty much all day, with a high of 9. Today it was hot and humid with a high of 25. That is Cape Breton weather for you.

We started the day in the parking lot of the NSLC-not buying liquor-but buying fish. Every Tuesday a fish vendor comes to St Peters. He has an F150 truck with a generator in the back with about an 18 foot trailer behind, full of fish. On Monday he fills the trailer with locally caught and frozen fish in Louisbourg, then for the next five days he drives around to different communities on the island. Fortunately, St Peters gets the freshest fish of the week. For the last two weeks we have been getting haddock fillets and Brigitte has developed an excellent recipe for frying them.

When we got home my brother-in-law, Phillippe was waiting for us. At this point I must backtrack. Two years ago we bought a fifth wheel trailer and set it up on Brigitte's parent's farm. They are getting on in years and her father is quite frail. She has been going to stay there for the summers to help them. When we bought this house last fall we took the furniture from the trailer to put in the house. As my truck was delivered yesterday Phillippe was here to help me move the furniture back to the trailer. Last fall we had a bitch of a time getting the couch out of the RV and managed to do so by damaging the door frame and the couch-and anticipated more problems getting it back in. Today we were in no rush and worked out a plan and it went smoothly, with no damage!

Back home I had a quick lunch, then started mowing the grass for the first time. The house was used as a cottage and landscaping and lawn maintenance were not a priority. The lawn area has to be close to an acre and there is not one dandelion in it, the soil is so poor it can't even grow dandelions. There is much moss, some tufts of grass, lots of little alders coming up and wild roses encroaching. Again I must digress. I have a Lawn Boy hand mower that I have had for at least 32 years. In that time I have never had it in for repairs. That said, it hasn't been used very much in the last 22 years as I had a ride on mower to use for most of the acre of lawn. When I bought the Lawn Boy it was an expensive high end mower. But, she is starting to show her age so recently I went to the dealer to get some green touch-up paint. I was horrified to see that a Lawn Boys now sells for half the price I paid over 30 years ago! The dealer explained to me that the brand was bought out by Toro and is now an entry level mower. Such a dissappiontment.

The heron seems to come back pretty much every evening at about twilight. We see it in other places during the day, so maybe he has a route he follows daily as our fish vendor follows weekly.

Paul