Lilacs and Anne

This evening I'm on my own as Tim is at a meeting. Long shadows stretch across the garden, and there is just an hour or two of sunlight left in today. Earlier I heard the summer sound of a lawnmower across the street. 

  
Yesterday I spent time in the garden, potting up annuals. This year there are white geraniums, purple heliotrope with its sweet vanilla scent, and blue and white lobelia. Our old white lattice deck railing is no more. Tim built a new one and I love its clean lines. Soon we'll get the summer gazebo set up and enjoy sitting outdoors. It's still a bit chilly for that in the evenings. 

 

When lilacs bloom here, I am reminded of Anne of Green Gables and of our visit to Prince Edward Island several summers ago. The lilacs bloomed at while we were there. L. M. Montgomery created such a full picture of Anne in her books; an Anne who changed and grew as any child does.

Anne's imagination took her to wonderful places - "But I just went to work and imagined that I had on the most beautiful pale blue silk dress - because when you are imagining you might as well imagine something worth while..."  

Old lilac bushes still surround Green Gables. They are grown tall as trees and when the wind blows, sweet fragrance floats through the air.

In my own garden the lilacs are not so well established. One bush is almost 16 years old, and from it we've planted two others in other places. The newer ones have just a few flowering branches, but will have more each year. All of them are taller than I am. Lilacs can last for over 100 years, and often remain as silent witnesses to places where homes once stood. I think of women from years past who planted a lilac bush and stood under it, breathing in the scent on a spring day.  
  

On days like today, full of blue skies, warmth, and promise, I say along with Anne, "dear old world, you are very lovely and I am glad to be alive in you."

Do you have lilacs in your garden? Are they blooming yet?

Color and Texture

On our trip to the Maritimes at the beginning of June, one thing that impressed me was color. Painted houses in shades of blue, red, yellow, green and lots of white dot the landscape. I can imagine how pretty they would look in the snow. Doors were often in bright contrast to the house color and I took lots of photos of those. 
In Lunenburg I discovered that others before me liked all the colored doors for there is a wonderful poster of them for sale in the gift shops.
 

While playing about in Picasa I somehow landed up with ALL the photos in one folder included in a mosaic. It looked fun and interesting, so I created something similar with photos of PEI. That's Cavendish Beach in the center, a place referred to in L.M. Montgomery's books. 
 

Passersby might have thought me a crazy tourist to be photographing peeling painted wood. I thought the photos would make nice backgrounds. Above I've combined them in a collage along with a photo of lobster pots.

The East Point Lighthouse sits at the south east end of the island. I've been re-reading my old Anne books, and in Anne's House of Dreams, she refers to a ship rounding East Point. Don't you love it when fiction and real life collide?

Such a pretty face on this fox. We were driving and stopped to look at the fox by the roadside. Tim snapped this photo along with several others.

I'm linking up with Mosaic Monday, hosted by Judith of Lavender Cottage.

Churches and Beaches

The prettiest churches dot the landscape everywhere on Prince Edward Island. On our first morning in Charlottetown we took a self-guided walking tour. This church gathers together many of the items that struck us as unique about PEI. 
 

First off, the sign does not say "church," but "kirk," reflecting the heritage of its 18th and 19th century inhabitants. The church is constructed, in part, of the red sandstone of the Island - it's very porous and glows warmly in the light. The church spire is wooden, not stone.

The depth of the pointed arch window gives an idea of the thickness of the walls. Also, note how the leaves on the plant in the foreground are still emerging. PEI had a very hard winter and June felt like early spring.
 

In the afternoon we drove out to Greenwich Beach. I never thought of PEI as having marshes and yet, there they were, full of scrub brush just like marshes where I grew up in the interior of BC. Doesn't the board walk to the beach curve nicely? 
 

Red sandstone, blue water, blue sky - lovely.

Tim and I each took a photo of the other. On a whim I put them together in this collage. Fun. 

I have more photos to show of our trip, but don't want to get into the "would you like to come and see our vacation slides?" trap. I take comfort in knowing that if you don't want to look at them, you can simply click out and not hide behind the curtains to avoid the vacation monologue. 

The garden exploded while I was away and I've been trimming, weeding, digging and picking raspberries and blueberries. Tim gets home this evening and he's diving right back into a very busy work schedule, poor fellow.  We're both still getting over the dregs of the lurgy that attacked us in the east.

Thank you for all the lovely comments on my postcard posts. I used just my phone for the photos and the posting and was quite pleased with the ease of doing so. The difficult part was replying to comments, so I did very, very little of that. I'm slowly getting around to your blogs and catching up with what's been happening. 

Spending the day with Anne

Even now, as an adult, I find it hard not to believe that Anne Shirley is a real girl. Anne and I first met in my early teens, I think, and we became kindred spirits right away. I did think she talked an awful lot, though.

It was with a little trepidation that I visited the setting for the Anne books in Cavendish, PEI. Would my lovely imaginings of Marilla and Matthew's house be shattered? Would I be able to see the landscape with Anne's eyes? Would my understanding of Anne be enhanced or diminished?

The home that originally stood on this site in which is now part of Prince Edward Island's National Park belonged to relatives of Lucy Maud Montgomery and LMM visited the home frequently. That home was replaced with this replica of Anne's home as described in the novels.

In the above photo, Anne's bedroom is over the porch. An electric candle burns in the window - perhaps Anne is signalling to Diana that she has something important to say.
  

The natural world provided much inspiration for LMM, who loved her native island with a lifelong passion. 

"In the garden below were lilac trees purple with flowers and
their dizzily sweet fragrance drifted up to the window on the morning wind." (Ch IV) 

It was lovely to be there when the lilacs were blooming, just as they were on the first morning that Anne awoke in Green Gables and dreaded being sent away because she was not the boy the Cuthbert siblings had asked for.

This gnarled tree with a few blossoms is perhaps a model for Anne's beloved cherry tree, the Snow Queen, that was destroyed by wind.

I've not read the books for years but memories were triggered at every turn. Above is Anne's bedroom, less austere than her first glimpse of it. The white bed, the sprigged wallpaper, the little touches of plant and candle bear Anne's imprint.
 

Hanging on the closet door is the dress that Matthew had Mrs. Lynde sew, complete with double puffed sleeves.

"All I want is a dress with puffy sleeves."

"It is ever so much easier to be good if your clothes are fashionable."
  

The spare bedroom - perhaps one of Rachel Lynde's quilts is on the bed.

"Below the garden a green field lush with clover sloped down to the hollow where the brook ran and where scores of white birches grew, upspringing airily out of an undergrowth suggestive of delightful possibilities in ferns and mosses and woodsy things generally."
 

I visited the site with a friend named Ann, without an e; a lovely, kind soul who lives on PEI and encouraged me to take all the time I wanted. We wandered through the Haunted Woods and Lover's Lane. White birches, moss and ferns abound. Mosquitoes, too, and I don't recall reading anything about those pesky critters in the Anne books, do you?

This washstand is in Matthew's room, which is downstairs, unlike the other bedrooms. You can see a shaving brush there on the corner.
 

A dresser with beautiful dishes reminds me of the meals Anne helped prepare - usually with some calamity attached. 

Details extend to geraniums on the kitchen windowsill - perhaps this one is named Bonny, just as Anne named the first geranium she saw there. 

In the evening, Ann and I went to the Anne of Green Gables musical in Charlottetown. The season has barely begun and in fact, we saw it on a preview night. It was delightful. I laughed. I cried. Not everything was true to the novel, but that didn't really matter - the spirit of Anne was true. I left with my heart full of emotion. The visit to Green Gables and then the musical was a girlish dream come true. 

Linking to Mosaic Monday, hosted by Judith of Lavender Cottage Gardening. 

All quotations are by Lucy Maud Montgomery. 

Postcard #7: Back on PEI

Thank you for all the kind words and thoughts and prayers regarding my last post. I'm beginning to feeling better and although we've adjusted some of our plans, we are still having a great time. 

Yesterday's postcard didn't publish so I'm trying a new one today. Tim is in meetings for the next few days. After a leisurely morning here at the hotel, the sister of a very dear friend from Ecuador took me to the Anne of Green Gables park. 

It was lovely. We wandered through the Haunted Woods and Lover's Lane (there is little scope for imagination while swatting mosquitoes) and of course toured the house. My illusions remain intact. 

A Morning Walk

We flew across the country yesterday without incident. Victoria. Toronto. Halifax. Charlottetown. 

Our arrival at our Air BnB was around 9pm local time - 5 according to our internal clocks. Even that was relative since we got up at 4 am. Dinner was at an ale house just down the street. Good seafood. 

I felt somewhat like an anthropologist observing locals in their habitats - it was trivia night - loud, raucous, and surprisingly fun. 

This morning we did a self guided walking tour around the historic district. Lots of pretty houses painted in pastel color, red sandstone churches and a chilly wind blowing off the water.