Share Your World 2016 – Week 23

Posted on June 6, 2016 by Mama Cormier

…..thanks Cee for hosting Share Your World

What was one of your first moneymaking jobs (other than babysitting or newspaper delivery)?

It seems to me that I’ve answered this question before so I will keep my answer short. When I was 14 I worked in my parent’s milk store. I did this till I was 16. That job ended after the night I was robbed. My parents gave up the business soon after.

What is your favorite month of the year?

I think my favourite month is October. It is still warm but the nights are getting cooler, the leaves are changing colour and the markets are bursting with the harvest.

What three things in nature do you find most beautiful?

I love being near water, trees in the fall and the first big snowfall.

List at least five of your favorite spices? (excluding salt and pepper)

• cinnamon

• cloves

• nutmeg

• curry

• cumin

Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

I’m grateful for time spent with Winnie and her mom. On the weekend the two of them came to the house and stayed overnight while Dad drove to Sudbury on a business trip. They had also come over the weekend before but ended up going home Saturday night and coming back on Sunday. We’re trying to get Winnie used to sleeping away from home so that the the trip to Italy won’t be so traumatic. I thought she did really well but our daughter was a bit tired because she was up more often while she was here.

A trip to the mall with Oma and Mommy

Checking out the view from the Food Court

Enjoying pancakes for breakfast made by Papa

It looks like the plans for the wedding overseas are going well. The dress, wedding bands and the suit and tie are purchased. The registry office in London is arranged and the pub for close friends has been booked. In Italy the rooms at the villa have been assigned, reservations for dinner in the town of Assisi the night before the wedding have been made and the meal for the actual wedding sounds yummy. Three and a half weeks before we fly to Venice.

Share Your World 2016 – Week 20

Posted on May 20, 2016 by Mama Cormier

….thanks to Cee for hosting Share Your World

When do you feel most connected with others?

I feel most connected to people during those quiet one on one conversations over a cup of coffee or tea. I like that intimate personal time with people where you can really get to know them.

Tea and Panettone

What daily habit would you like to introduce to your life?

I would like to do one creative activity every day. I paint and read sporadically now but I’d like to be more consistent. I’d also like to do some volunteer work.

What one mini-little-adventure would you like to have in the coming week?

This week I’d like to visit the art gallery or the museum. It’s a long weekend here in Canada and sometimes it’s a good time to visit places in the city because so many people head north to open their cottages.

List things or events that changed your Life: It could be as simple as a book or meeting a certain person?

• meeting my husband 43 years ago

• the birth of my children

• graduating from university and becoming a teacher

• the death of my mother

• meeting my best friends AB in 1976 and LC in 1989

• learning to drive when I was in my 20s

• my first art class where I learned how to paint with watercolour

• building a cottage next to my good friend DM

• the birth of our first grandchild

Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

I’m grateful for being able to continue on my weight loss journey and for the support of my husband and my friends at work. My husband has lost 26 pounds and I’m down 18. My new passport arrived this week and I can check off one more thing from my to do list before I go to Italy in July. I’m also grateful that my photo isn’t the worst passport photo that I’ve ever taken. I have to live with it for the next 10 years.

For the rest of the week I’m looking forward to our girls’ soccer tournament on Friday, visiting our daughter and her family in Hamilton on Saturday and seeing my older daughter on Sunday or Monday. Since it’s the long weekend here I’m also looking forward to planting some things in the garden and firing up the barbecue for a meal or two. It’s also suppose to be a spectacular weekend, weather wise.

Here are a few photos from this past week.

Cee’s Black and White Photo Challenge – Sepia

Posted on February 28, 2016 by Mama Cormier

…Cee’s black and white challenge this week is to produce any photo in sepia tones

The Beach That Disappeared

Posted on July 9, 2015 by Mama Cormier

….Saturday, July 4, 2015

I’ve been coming to this island since 1988. I’ve only ever experienced a long,wide and sandy beach. Apparently the year before I arrived the water levels were at an all time high and many cottagers, especially those on the waterfront were afraid of being flooded out. One cottager at the west end of the beach built a wall to keep the water back and it worked.

Like I said I’ve never lived through a summer where the water was lapping up against green areas and covered trees. My first summer here the beach had returned to normal and every summer after the water levels went down and the beach grew larger. Some of us were concerned that the water levels had gotten too low. There was talk of water from the Great Lakes being drained into the U.S.. But the beach was grand and people compared it to being in the Caribbean.

All that changed this year. Our long cold winter and late spring saw the ice on the bay melt at a much slower rate and therefore the normal evaporation of the surface water didn’t take place and consequently the water levels rose and the beach disappeared. It hasn’t risen as high as the summer of 1987 but many parts of the beach have lost sandy areas because of the marram grass that was planted years ago to protect the dunes. The grass is indigenous to Ontario but not this island. The roots have held so well that they’ve created mini cliffs along the water’s edge on some parts of the eastern shore.

When man steps in to protect one aspect of nature to keep a natural change from occurring, i.e., the erosion of the dunes, he creates a new problem. The newly planted grasses have kept the dunes from shifting but they are now green grassy knolls and the beach is overgrown with weeds, grasses and trees.

When going for my walks along the beach I now have to walk in the water or I find myself walking on a 45 degree angle and stepping over masses of roots that have been exposed when the waves push the water up the shore line. After my first stroll along the sloping beach my hips ached from having one leg higher than the other when walking along the 3km stretch of beach.

Since that first day I’ve walked in the water so that I can still get my walk in. The good news is that since Friday (it’s now Tuesday as I write this) I’ve managed 10,000 to 12,000 steps a day.

Next year the beach may return or the water levels could rise again. Nature follows its own path and there’s not much we can do about it except enjoy what we have and hope for the best.

For more information about the problems of planting marram grass check out Marram Grass: A Hazard to our Beaches