The Halifax Winter That Was Too Long

Winter is over.  This little guy came up to me and told me so.

So now I can come out of hibernation and talk about winter.  See, if I had blogged about winter during winter, I would have simply annoyed everybody...like rubbing more salt on our collective misery.  Maybe not.  Salt was a precious commodity during those dark months!

In fact, December had been pretty mild. We even had a green Christmas.  Come January, the scales tipped onto the other side and it started to snow.

And it snowed...and snowed...and snowed some more.

We were up to our eyeballs in snow and still it kept on coming.  Here is a picture of our deck.  See the patio furniture? :-)

The city did its best to clear the streets.  But we didn't know where to put the snow that had fallen on our property anymore.  

And the snow that couldn't be completely cleared turned into ice...and you just couldn't get enough salt.  We didn't have a cat in the house but I bought buckets of kitty litter and dumped them on the driveway for whatever traction they could provide.  

Some footpaths were lucky to get sand.

Six-foot high snow banks made driving tricky.  Blind corners on slippery streets everywhere!

The bobcat--our hero!  I would like to give thanks to all the snow plow and bobcat operators who were out there non-stop so that our city could at least have a semblance of mobility.

It was indeed one long nasty winter.  (That's the Halifax Common, by the way.)

Now, it is time to enjoy spring!

Nori-shio Potato Chips In Halifax

This blog post will only be meaningful to people in Nova Scotia who know and like nori-shio (seaweed & salt) flavoured potato chips...which I have found only in Japan...which is my most favourite kind of potato chip...ever!

Screenshot from: http://www.calbee.co.jp/chips/product/potatochips/norishio.html

I found the Fundy Dulse Sea Lettuce Flakes at the local supermarket...and learned a new word.  Dulse = "a dark red edible seaweed with flattened branching fronds".* The Sea Lettuce Flakes greatly resembles the Japanese aonori seaweed flakes, both in taste and texture!  And even better, it's a local Nova Scotia product!

*From the Oxford American Dictionaries.

So, I got a bag of potato chips, dumped a bit together with a handful of Sea Lettuce Flakes in a ziplock bag and shook it up!

 

Et voila...! My very own nori-shio potato chips!

I imagine not too many are as excited about this discovery as I am.  But, next time you make okonomiyaki, you know where to find the "aonori" without having to airlift some from Japan! :-)

Source: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqpdZaHWkRyoe4ndg1NZu4ap3z9XtfCYT9zyd3wD6Vu0kUC-3MtxancGpnKCxU0QO34v2HxUSJZ_VHgGdbWoYuAnKAKnx3vsmps-LslAOmnlcoTx-JjyuB2hRVpzElCSjzkjqo57-L5KM/s1600/kagura+okonomiyaki.jpg

Rainy Winter

The hectic days of the pre-Christmas shopping rush are finally over.  Halifax doesn't do Boxing Day...well, at least not on the 26th...which I like.  Some rest for the wicked!  :-)  

No white Christmas for us this year.  It was rainy.  I almost regret having the snow blower serviced.  I haven't touched it yet and December is almost over!

The weather gods have been kind...so far.  It was just wet, wet, wet!  ...at least that was the impression.  But in fact, we did get some great sunny days too...but human nature dictates that only "bad" things are worthy of being memorable!  Just kidding...I haven't succumbed to the Dark Side yet. :-)

What are we going to do with all this salt?  :-)

Some more images around town.  That's the Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation, where we get our booze.  It's the only game in town...except for maybe 3 or 4 other "specialty" wine shops in the city...which need the NSLC's blessing to operate anyway.

Zoom in to the letter "N".  Am I seeing things?    ºoº

...and here is where you could fill up with snacks! :-)

A Stone Village At The Bedford Waterfront

It's been a while since I visited the Bedford waterfront in Mill Cove.  Not the nice parts but the area where infilling is still going on.  The rocks come from the blasting up the hill where land development is still happening.  Are we in Bedford or are we on the moon? :-)

Somebody had fun with the rocks and created a village of stone structures!

I am guessing (as we're in Canada) that the idea was to make inuksuk like this one.

But some are more reminiscent of Angkor Wat or Ayutthaya! :-)

This is Ayutthaya (Thailand)... 

Source: Flickr.  Click to go to source.

Oh, and there was this Tim Horton's coffee cup tree too. Very creative use of garbage! :-)

Thank you to the person(s) who took time to create the stone village.  It certainly made the drab landscape more alive and interesting!

Walls Around Halifax

I like to ramble around town.  So this blog post will just be rambling along too. This time I am looking at "walls" around Halifax...i.e. any vertical plane structure perpendicular to the ground that separates space.  No story. No drama. :-)

Steps.

Apartments.

More apartments!

Cleaning or erasing?

Painting.

The last public phone...maybe!

Open from dawn to dusk.  It's soooo analogue.  I love it!  No need to get technical.  No need to bother with Daylight Savings Time!

Signs of autumn.

Ok...this one is a fire hydrant on the concrete sidewalk.  No walls.  I just like the image. :-)

Just Walking Around Quinpool

I like walking around our neighbourhood.  Quinpool (and its environs) is such an interesting place.

Athens Restaurant... I always get the lamb souvlaki there.

At the entrance of the West End Baptist Church, corner of Preston & Quinpool.

Some pics may look familiar because I have posted them on the Quinpool Road facebook page... like this lovely flower basket hanging outside the Thai Ivory Cuisine Restaurant.

The new Pizza Hut branch under the shadows of the Golden Arches! :-)

Hope the thief has a change of heart and returns the cross soon....or else there will be some pretty bad karma coming soon.  I truly believe that.  Read about the stolen cross here.

Service Canada is also coming to Quinpool soon!

On the side of the old St. Pat's high school building, this path looks less trodden upon.  The school is slated to be demolished.  Read about it here.

Lost In Victoria Park (Truro NS)

My wife read somewhere that there was a "hidden gem" in Truro's Victoria Park...waterfalls!  So, we put on our hiking shoes and off we went!  

It was verdant.

If you follow the trail...er, the paved path...past the picnic grounds, you'd see waterfalls in about 10 minutes.  

But if you're like us and got tempted by Jacob's Ladder, then you're in for a bit more exercise!

This 175-step stairway won't bring you to heaven (Genesis 28:10-12)...

...but it brought us to some trails that went around the park.

Actually, we got lost.  We didn't know where we were going and crossroads like this was anybody's guess.

Somebody was kind enough to rip off the map too.  <cough> A**hole! <cough>

Anyway, we wandered around, backtracked a few times...met a ghoul or two. he! he!

...until we found ourselves back in the mainstream.  We descended from those stairs at the back of the gazebo.

There were two wells.  The Holy Well and...

...and the Wishing Well (which was at the top of another steep flight of stairs).  I must admit I was not especially thrilled to see clumps of rocks but I did get to make a wish!  Sell the dream not the item! ;-)

I had wished we'd find the waterfalls soon.  It worked! :-)  That's the Waddell Falls.

And that's the Joe Howe Falls.  Many young people were cooling themselves there!

Ok, so they were more like water-trickles...but we were happy enough to find them!

Here's a creek-side view below a bridge.

On our way out, we caught the tail end of this Sunday's concert at the park.  So we listened to some fiddle and guitar music.  Bring your own lawn chairs!

The tree decorations were life jackets.  Publicity for National Drowning Prevention Week (July 20-26, 2014).  "Your life jacket won't work if you don't wear it."

Our hike took about 2 hours, giving us a good sweat!  If you're going, wear hiking shoes or sneakers and bring water bottles and insect repellent.   Or, you can ignore Jacob's Ladder and just go straight to the falls.  In that case, flip-flops and a bathing suit would do!