a surprisingly beautiful river day!

poor jambaloney was up at 5am this morning to take the truck in to our nearest big town of Port Hawkesbury. Port Hawkesbury is the first town you hit when you cross the Canso Causeway, which is the causeway that connects Cape Breton Island to the mainland of Nova Scotia. when cape bretoners are returning home from wherever they might be returning from, they always stop their cars on the causeway and "kiss the causeway". it's a real tradition here. we don't kiss the causeway because we love it, in fact, cape bretoners hate it. it has only been there since 1967 and we cape bretoners have always hated being attached to the mainland. we kiss it because we know we are now home.

just a little meandering history to introduce this post. i might be a little sunstroked. jambaloney definitely is. and he's wore out. he took the truck in to our dealership where we have an extended warranty and the people treat us really good. the back plate on the rear axel was leaking oil and needed to be fixed. the guys at the dealership took it in, drove jambaloney to the nearest grocery store so that he could pick up some preps and then they picked him back up when he was done shopping and the truck was ready. normally, we pay a deductible and labour. they charged him nothing. but that is how they roll in cape breton...something that always amazes jambaloney. someone once noted on another's blog that they had heard that the people here in cape breton were "backwards and clannish". mind you, this came from a person who has travelled very little, never been to canada and certainly never been to cape breton island. i suppose if you came from an aristocratic, rich european line of monarchs - you might consider the people of cape breton somewhat "backwards and clannish". however, if you spent most of your life living in the hicks, then you should probably keep those opinions to yourself.

jambaloney is amazed at how well he is treated here. no matter which shop or store he goes into, the people will try their best to help. we are an island of one city, a few smallish towns and a bunch of villages. he goes away every year, 1,600km away for several days, and i am never afraid. the people here are good people. and they are always willing to help. we get better services here than we ever did in ontario.

anyway, big long intro into a surprise day. by 9am the day was looking like this.

we thought jam would be in town most of the day but the guys at the shop fixed the truck toute-suite and jam turned and burned. he made it home by 12:45pm and he had the rest of the afternoon to ourselves - chores be damned. we put away the produce and dairy, put on our river shoes and were off! here's a beautiful field of fireweed on our way down to the river.

just the other day jam cleared us a path to the river - it was getting pretty overgrown.

here's some wild and natually-occurring st' john's wort which i will be collecting to dry for teas and salves. if you don't know the medicinal benefits of st' john's wort, you can go here, or just do a search. many survival blogs talk about stocking up on food, weapons, growing gardens, etc. - but i feel strongly about knowing what grows in your local area that you can use as medicine.

here's part of the road to the river....many of the older trees are dying off but look at all of the baby trees that have started growing. a forest knows exactly how to maintain itself.

this is halfway down the road to the river....look at the beautiful sky and the puffy cotton ball clouds.

agh. the river.

 looking down at the river.

the water is exceptionally warm for this time of year - about 20C/70F. we had several dips and lots of laying in the bright sun to dry off.

if you look close at the pic above you will see the top of my knee in the bottom left hand corner. i was laying down taking a pic of the clear sky and bright sun.

sometimes i nap in the sun but sometimes i am too wiggly and jiggly looking around at different things and taking pics. here's jam laying in the sun.

we spent a wonderful afternoon, did very few chores so tomorrow we will have double chores. no worries. when you get a treat day you have to "treat" it as a treat day. and we did. here are the pretty clouds above my gorgeous greenhouse when we got home.

we ate bean salad, cherries and grapes at the river. when we got home, we scarfed back 8 slices of baguette smeared with goat cheese, pate and jam had some kielbassa. it's been a fabulous day. back to work tomorrow - teehee.