Hay Fever

Last night we attended the Basement Theatre's opening performance of Noel Coward's "Hay Fever" at the Osprey. Excellent set (several Shelburne homes must be missing a few antiques for a while) and costumes, good acting, lots of fun!

Judy Day as Judith Bliss, Pat Melanson as Sandy Tyrell and Angela Johnson as Myra Arundel were particularly good, as was May Lee Gonzaga as the maid, Clara. Appropriate 1920's music was played beforehand and during the intermissions.

A wonderful directorial debut for Ian Anderson - thanks!

Cold and Sunny

Last night we went to a concert at the Osprey - The Hupman Brothers with the full band including Caleb Miles on guitar and Ian Sherwood on sax - Ian just won the Nova Scotia Music Award for best musician of 2010. A fantastic show - the Osprey was sold out. Ryan and Scott released a new CD - Loveseat Vol 1 - volume 2 is coming in the new year. Can't wait.

It was a cool, blustery night driving in to Shelburne and by the time the show ended at 11:00PM it was snowing lightly (not seriously). This morning I awoke to a dusting on the car roofs and the flatter house roofs and down in the shade at the bottom of the yard but it's all gone now. Sabine posted a picture of their deck in Sable River and it looks like they got 1-2cm - Jane in Truro says they got 2 inches and it's very pretty. Let me go on record as preferring green to white. Wayne and Tim both got up late enough to miss the first snowfall.

One of the great things about last night's concert was that so many of the people we know here (that aren't summer people) were there. Had some nice visits with folks, met another blog reader. Lester passed on the info that the pharmacy fire on November 11th was indeed caused by the pop machine which literally went up in flames - since it was close to the front door it was caught on 2 of the security cameras. Apparently there was smoke damage to things like the lighting fixtures, besides ruining all the stock. So it will be a while till they are back in the store - the temporary place at 16 Spruce, across from the Town Office seems to be drawing the "crowds" away from the Beech/North intersection - went to the bank and it was empty - the tellers say they have realized they are not the big draw - LOL.

I spent Friday in Bridgewater (or mostly in Oak Hill at Atlantic Fabrics). Wayne and Tim are rebuilding our North Parlour - walls, ceiling, trim and a new window seat. I was shopping for materials for the cushion part of the seat which I'll make next spring when we get back from Florida. Forgot a calculator and had a lot of brain stretching to convert the actual bench size into cushion sizes I could wangle out of what foam was available, particularly since I wanted firm foam. Then I had to recalculate the amount of cording needed for piping and the amount of fabric. Of course the fabric I fell in love with had only 4 1/2 yards on the roll and I needed 9 - so compromise fabric was bought - it's actually quite nice - a charcoal with white and gold mix branches pattern, I'm going to pipe it in gold and cover the buttons in gold too. There were a few flurries driving to Bridgewater as I drove through Sable River and again in Danesville - hope serious winter holds off until we can get back to Ottawa. I always worry about the Cobequid Pass drive and the northern part of highway 20 in Quebec from Riviere-du-loup to Quebec City, where the winds blow off the St. Lawrence, causing white-outs.


I've been gradually doing my Christmas baking - some to leave here for Tim and the rest to pack off to Ottawa to my family (kids and grandkids) there. Just finished the red and green pinwheel dough - once it chills and is baked I am done until we get to Ottawa in about a week and a half and I have to ice my cakes and bonbons - may have to make Bob more pinwheels too since the recipe I used seemed to make about half the usual amount of dough. My traditional recipe is in a cookbook in Ottawa, so I used one from one of my Mom's cookbooks that is 75 or so years old.

Lots coming up this week - my last hooking of the fall on Tuesday, Thursday we have 9 guests coming for our annual American Thanksgiving (thanks to Aunt Grace and my mother-in-law, Tommie, (both now deceased) for getting us started so many years ago). Friday we'll be back to the Osprey for a Basement Theatre production of Hay Fever by Noel Coward, Saturday it's Irish Mythen at the Sea Dog Saloon. Sunday is our 35th anniversary but we're celebrating on Saturday since Wayne has hockey on Sunday evening in Barrington. Our present this year is an Ottawa Senators game when we are back in Ottawa.

We plan to head to Ottawa on the 29th of November and I plan to arrive on the 30th (I just have to convince the driver (Wayne) we're stopping overnight instead of driving 16-17 hours straight). Tim is staying in Lockeport to look after the house and cats so I may have news passed on occasionally over the winter - otherwise you'll be hearing about Canada's capital and the Pensacola area.

November News

Well, as usual for this time of year, we are back to very few restaurants. In Lockeport, only the Parrot's Pins is open now (Tuesday-Saturday). The White Gull and Town & Country (A-1 Pizza this summer) are closed and both up for sale again/still. Although A-1 seemed to be doing well leasing the T&C, apparently the family member running it has moved to the Valley or something, so they gave up the lease. The Town market offers some take-out meals and the Lydgate Corner Store has some sandwiches and such

The Chef's Table in Sable River is closed and may not reopen in the spring since Zaari is opening a restaurant in Liverpool near the Best Western. The Bayman in Upper East Green Harbour remains open 7 days/week as usual (we won one of their excellent pizzas for our Hallowe'en costumes!)

In Shelburne, Lothar's closed in early September as Lothar was asked to return to Halifax to do the catering on a movie set - the restaurant is now for sale. As is the old Shelburne Cafe/Pastry next door (still). Charlotte Lane closed very briefly for medical reasons (Roland) but he's all fixed up and they are back in business until Christmas (Tuesday-Saturday). The Loyalist Inn has a liquor license as of late September and is now open for all 3 meals 7 days a week - and looks very nice since the renovations - of course it's for sale too.

The BeanDock, Luong's, Scotia Lunch and Sophia's are all going strong. Sophia's is closed Sunday, Luong's Monday and I think Monique closes the BeanDock on Sunday as well. The SeaDog is still open and presenting entertainment one evening most weeks - this is continuing until at least November 27th (Irish Mythen show). It will likely be closing down for a while as soon as Christmas party season is over.

The Quarterdeck and Seaside Seafoods in Hunt's Point are both closed for the season - very early for Seaside this year.

Port Mouton's restaurant seems to be closed - hard to tell when it's also the office for the cabins, the liquor store and a convenience store.

On the encouraging side, Peter Swim has bought the building in Lockeport between the Town & Country and the Legion and is renovating it - rumour has it it will be an ice-cream parlour next summer.

Yesterday, a new business opened in Lockeport - Vanessa's Flowers and Gifts - in the bottom floor of the building that housed the Little School Museum this summer (under Donna Crosby's apartment). Vanessa has fresh flowers and lots of very nice gift-ware - particularly candles, Christmas items, vases, picture frames etc. Lovely presentation - I hope she is successful. One thing that may help her this year is that there was a fire Thursday morning in the pharmacy and there apparently was a lot of smoke damage although the structure seems to be okay. It was an electrical fire and the shop was closed for Remembrance Day so I guess it smoldered for a while before setting off the alarm. It looks like Bevin has grabbed the bottom floor of the Masons' building to use as a temporary pharmacy - Bell Aliant and Lester (our electrician) were working in there this morning and an alarm company was there yesterday. Hope they get it up and running - we'll need to renew our prescriptions before we leave for Ottawa and Florida in a couple of weeks.

Recently the weather has been simply AWFUL - buckets of rain and very strong winds. The flooding has been terrible and who knows how much infrastructure damage will be revealed when it finally recedes. We went out to dinner in Liverpool at Lane's Privateer Inn (always open, thank God) last night with Gail who lives in Little Port L'Hebert down the East Sable Road - she has to drive through water to get out to the highway for the last week or so. The same is true of the West Sable Road and many others - not to mention the already obviously washed out roads in Yarmouth county, the washed away Tusket bridge and all the flooded homes and cottages. A theory is developing that the extreme flooding is a direct consequence of the interior clear-cutting in Nova Scotia - there is nothing left to contain the run-off.

Today is beautiful though - mid teens, clear blue sky, no wind - a very welcome break.

There was a meeting last week to discuss the future of the Little School Museum (it was going to be moved into the middle of town after the ravages of Hurricane Bill last year). Harlow's didn't seem to feel it was going to survive an attempted move and the front porch and back annex would not have been moved anyway. So the town citizens decided to go back to the previous plan to raise the building a few feet (above where the flooding occurs during storms) since it appears that the Town will be able to do some repair work to the rapidly disappearing dunes behind the Museum (and in other parts of the beach too) - permission for the work has been granted by the powers that be in Halifax and Ottawa, big rocks are available, now they're working on conning some level of government into funding the whole thing. Historically the Little School has always sat where it is and people really wanted to keep it where it is - time will tell if this is the right decision. The Town also plans to look at some pumping system to direct water to the back harbour before it can accumulate into deep puddles or lakes.

An additional item of interest at that meeting was that there seems to be growing support for a Lockeport Museum to house all the many items in storage that are not-school related and for which there is simply not enough room in the Little School. This would be good news for the Historical Society which is also looking for a more suitable home.

That's all for now folks!