honeysuckle from the old hotel

The first summer we were here I saw a honeysuckle vine dangling above the ruins of the old hotel in the field next to our place. Maybe the Perrys planted it there once upon a time, when they had the hotel. (Folks say it was more of a bunkhouse, really.) Or maybe it was planted by the Rennehans, who lived there after that.

The next summer I went back and took some cuttings. I rooted them over the winter, and planted them in the new wildflower garden. They didn't do very well, but one of the cuttings at least didn't die.

The next winter I re-read Evelyn Richardson's classic We Keep A Light, about her life in the 1930s on the island of Bon Portage, which is not far from here. She wrote that she carefully placed a honeysuckle in a patch of soil at the top of a big boulder, out of the way of harm, and later spied a lamb who had climbed up onto the boulder nibbling away at it. Ah ha! I thought.

So I stuck alder branches along the outside of the fence. Last summer they kept the lambs from reaching inside the fence and eating the asters. I hoped they would be equally effective for honeysuckle.

This year the honeysuckle is doing beautifully. I'm glad that it's a honeysuckle that's native to Atlantic Canada.

I can't really identify which of the many varieties of wild honeysuckle this is, but as you can see, it's quite fancy.

In the meantime, the honeysuckle is flourishing over at the old hotel, in places where no lamb could ever safely go. High up in a spruce tree, for instance. Deep down in the ancient cellar.

I have tried to take photographs of the old hotel before but they never came out very well. I have discovered that it's a challenge to photograph a jumbled pile of rotting boards, which is pretty much what remains. You need a focus.

A contrast.
Some tiny story, maybe of how a vine can plant itself in nothing and blossom where you least expect it, or will keep coming up year after year even when everything around it has collapsed and even when there's nobody left to admire it.
Though we are admiring it now.

a trip home

Here are a few sights of a trip yesterday from Fort Point to McNutt's Island.Sandy Point Lighthouse stands on the eastern side of Shelburne Harbour, opposite Fort Point. It marks the beginning of the inner harbour and the Town of Shelburne.McNutt's Island comes into view as you pass the conspicuous boulder at Fort Point.
View of McNutt's, from the northwest.
A view of the island's eastern shoreline, looking south along the eastern channel and out to sea.Shelburne Harbour Boat Tour's Brown Eyed Girl is coming home, too. Yesterday she sailed from Lockeport to Shelburne.
The captain of Chopper I.
The Fish House.
Coming into the dock. We are currently flying the flag of Queen Elizabeth. You are only supposed to fly it when she is in residence. She's not actually on McNutt's Island, but she is somewhere in Canada this week. So we are stretching a point here and hoping the flag police are distracted by bigger crimes elsewhere.

Happy Canada Day!

Yesterday, Canada Day Eve, the shepherds arrived for shearing. Here are more pictures from the day.

First, here's this year's crew who will work with Mary and Leroy.

Roland Belliveau and Joey D'Eon are the d'Entremonts' friends and neighbours from the Acadian villages of Pubnico. They will help gather the sheep and keep everything moving along once the flock is penned up.
Pauline Bolay is a master shearer from Manitoba. She spends the year travelling all over the world, shearing. She shears about twenty thousand sheep a year.
Phillip Woodward is a master-master shearer from New Zealand. I suppose he is a full professor of shearing. We gathered that there's a world-wide community of sheep owners and shearers that we were lucky enough to get a glimpse of.

After a three hour walk from the lighthouse, along the cobble beach, shepherds and flock appear at the cove.

Mary records information about each ewe and lamb. There's a great deal that happens besides the shearing. Each member of the flock is examined. Mary and Leroy are pleased with the condition of the lambs this year. Their decision last year to reduce the overall size of the flock appears to have paid off.

Joey and Roland will probably hoist every animal here before the day is over, maybe more than once.

A few portraits. Most of the sheep live on the southern end of the island, between the lighthouse and the point.

We don't see them very often.

And in close-up only twice a year.

The temporary red dye means that lamb has had its tick treatment and vitamins and whatever else it needed.

A few old ewes are being culled. The shepherds carry the portable pen down to the skiff where they'll be put on board and taken off the island.

The bags of wool will go to the woollen mill in Prince Edward Island.

The shepherds gathered fifty-six ewes and fifty-nine lambs. There are about fifteen others who ran off or otherwise missed the gathering. So there will be another, smaller gathering a few weeks from now. In the meantime the silly rams will have to go about with their hot shaggy wool coats.

For some more photos from the shearing, click on the Facebook page for Island Year: Finding Nova Scotia, in the column on the right of this post.