Musings on a Small Life

"Adventures" in parenthesis, because it's not like I was away somewhere exotic or even doing anything "adventurous." Flowers outside a little shop. However, I'd had a day trip on the 18th to Merrickville , a tiny, touristy village northeast of here, my first-ever time visiting. While the pic below shows only one side of the street, that is, in fact, about all there is to Merrickville! Even so, there were tons of tourists and lots of neat little shops and cafés, so I see why it's a popular spot. A few snaps of some of the shops, below. Of the (presumably machine-made) quilts in the image, my favourite is the middle left one. Good thing it was a king-size, not a double or queen, otherwise I'd have been mightily tempted. Below: About half the case of home-made fudge. I'm not a big fan of fudge, so it was easy to pass on buying any. I was more tempted by the homemade chocolates in the ice cream shop, but I manage...

In this case, only two.  :-) (See http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0122e.html for three rather dark versions of the folk tale.) I had taken an early train to visit Robin for the day ( check her blog for awesome close-ups , far better than any pics I took), and our first stop was at Reid's Dairy, where they have a little "sanctuary." They have two resident goats, plus a miscellany of ducks, geese and turtles.       Robin noted that we actually spent 45 minutes there, snapping pics, but it seemed like only a few minutes to me. I'd love to have something like this, accessible, in our city, but I suppose if we did I'd constantly be there and would never get my errands done! There was a fresh "crop" of ducklings, so adorable!         And plenty of geese, too. Actually, there seemed to be two flocks, one on each side of the little bridge, and when the one group got too close to the other, lots of hissing ensued. ...

On Thursday I took a day trip via train to visit with friends, Robin and Chuck ( A Bird's Life ). They went above and beyond in the chauffeur department, picking me up in Belleville and then taking me back to the train station late in the afternoon--all through construction and detours, I might add. I was thrilled to finally see "Robin's" goats!       These are the goats behind Reid's Dairy, and Robin has taken a number of pictures of them since she started her blog in the spring. They're so cute, though definitely a handful. One of them started to munch on my jacket, but Chuck rescued it from being goat fodder.  :-) I also got to see her turtles, though didn't get a good snapshot, they were too far away. I got the grand tour of their lovely home; they've put a lot of work/renovations into it since purchasing it last year, and it shows. Gorgeous kitchen and bathroom, immaculate house. They live in an older neighbourhood with lot...