3 Years and Still Blogging!

Yes dear friends, Robert and I reached our 3 year milestone in Canada on Saturday...Time sure does fly! I think we have transitioned well and have amazed ourselves at every step of the way. Here's my top five challenges checked off the list!

1. We moved over here in the first place
2. Against the odds and with no jobs we managed to secure employment
3. We passed our driving tests...This was a major hurdle for me obviously as I don't like driving and get incredibly nervous.
4. We've made some excellent friends
5. We've sort of adapted to Winter...Although I still hate it!

And here's what's still on the to do list:

1. Learn to love Winter...Hmmm I don't think that will happen anytime soon.
2. Get our citizenship, this I think we will hold off doing until next year, so in the meantime we will renew out Permanent Resident status...More bloody forms and money of course.
3. Robert to get fully qualified!
4. Stop renting and start buying a house.
5. Give in to the fact that getting a decent family doctor around here is as rare as rocking horse poo!

Saturday Anne and I popped along to the HRM Greenhouse Open Day, home to all of the plants that get planted around the city. A few of the camera club members went along as it was a good opportunity to get some floral and foliage shots, something I haven't taken photos of in a very long time now. I was a tad out of practice and only got a handful of shots I actually liked.

Saturday evening Rob and I went out....to Wharf Wraps of course, to celebrate our 3 year anniversary in the only way we know how...with fish and chips and boy did they taste good.

Today Rachael and I went out in the afternoon, we were feeling a bit lack lustre but combed a nearby area looking for more abandoned gems, unfortunately pickings were slim and we were left slightly disappointed. Still there's always next weekend :o)

Until next time I leave you with some more rural and abandoned scenes from last weekend...And this thought...How do you confuse Canadian Co-Workers...By using the following expressions and words they simply do not know...Nearly all of the following I have confused people with this past week.

Iced Lolly - Popsicle
Kitchen Roll - Paper Towel
Boot - Trunk
Pebble Dash - Stucco (and I won't tell you as to why I was talking about pebble dashing, but I suspect those of you that know me might guess).
Franking Machine - Postage Machine
Jacket Potato - Baked Potato

Isn't it weird, we speak the same language and yet some things just don't translate.

Barn in the Orchard

Rural Windows



Under the Tree

Barn with a View (Would make a nice house eh?)

Long Weekend...Hooray!

Apologies if you checked in on Sunday to read any updates, but it's a Bank Holiday weekend here so it gave me the extra day to catch up.

The weekend was super long for me as I took Friday off, a much needed 4 days off I must say, but alas I don't feel any less tired thanks to my love of photography taking me out and about at the weekend.

Saturday Rachael and I headed to the Annapolis Valley to see what rural delights we could find and had had a surprisingly good day. Abandoned places a plenty and definitely no shortage of barns to catch the eye. I think in total we did about 400 odd kilometres, we left at around 8 in the morning and I was back home at about 7 pm, so a long day for sure.

Robert's exam he was hoping to take this month has now been postponed due to a load of red tape and government crap. They now say he has to sit it as an apprentice, which means in he has to pay $750 for the pleasure of sitting it. It's a bloody joke! He is not the only one peed off about this, he has found other like minded souls online who  are just dumb founded at their own experiences of trying to get qualified as a Gas Fitter. There are a shortage of them here by the way, so instead of the government cash grabbing don't you think they would want to encourage and make it easier for people to get qualified. Sadly this is the side of Nova Scotia I really do hate!

Monday Rachael and I went out again down to the South Shore, but stupidly I didn't check the weather forecast and in true traditional bank holiday stylee it rained, so we really didn't take many photos and headed home early.

The Old Pontiac - Find of the Day!

School's Out for Good - Abandoned School House
 in the Valley

The Animal House...Aptly titled as we heard something
 scuttling around upstairs!

Rain Stopped Play

Well after two wonderful weekends of sunny, warm weather it's back to seasonal temps and a whole lot of rain. I really don't have anything to write about this week as I have done absolutely nothing.

The only thing that I am pleased to report is that all of a sudden the leaves have started to appear on the trees. It never fails to amaze me. Now I know this is a common and regular occurrence, but here you tend to notice it more than back in the UK, I think it's because you are eagerly looking for any signs of Spring after the long Winter. It's so sudden when it does happen, it literally goes from 0-60 on the leaf front and the greens are so green. I should really try and document it next year.

My weekend has been spent on the PC, I have been editing some photos and trying to sort out images for the annual photo contest at our club. I don't know what is wrong with me, but I find choosing images so utterly difficult. I have been at it for 2 days now and I only have to choose 5. Drives me mad. I have 5 now but I don't think they are good enough, but quite frankly I am at that point where I am past caring.

Hopefully I will have more news next week, but until then I will leave you with some of my favourite, recent images from my Rural Decay and Nova Scotia Farm Series...Not good enough for the contest!
Please do click on these to view larger, I don't think the smaller versions here do them justice.

Praying for Time

A River Runs Through It - Click to View Larger

Roadside Red

Partially Obscured

And the Sun Kept Shining...

Yes indeed, A beautiful weather weekend Not a cloud in the sky either day. I also believe the UK is getting some much needed sunshine for this (bank holiday) weekend.

And so another week has come to a close and I am up late once more updating my blog, so I will make this swift as I really need to get some sleep.

Attended photo club on Wednesday. I wasn't going to, but there were a couple of things on the agenda that I was interested in. One being a slide show of the trip we did to the Lumber Yard a few weeks back and the other was a talk via Skype by a lady who shoots landscape photography in California. Well one of the two items was interesting...The slide show was very good, however the Skype guest speaker, not so much. Lovely lady and some great photos, very talented...But her talent didn't extend to public speaking. For every sentence there was at least 2 um's. She unfortunately had a very monotone voice as well which didn't help matters as I witnessed at least 3 club members drop off to sleep...which kept me amused at least. The Skype call dropped out at around 40 minutes in,  (thank god), which meant we could take a break and slap ourselves in the face to wake up enough for round two after the break. I think they must have told her to speed it up some for the second half as she rattled through it pretty quickly.

This week saw the finale of Big Brother Canada...and What a fiasco that was. I loved it, but oh how I cringed watching it as Camp Gary was well on his way to being the first ever winner of the show, the ex housemates, now jury members had to vote between him and Jillian from Nova Scotia. It was pretty obvious to see from who was on the Jury as to which way the votes would go BUT THEN....Topaz...Camp Gary's best mate in the house cast her vote and was too busy looking and talking to the cameras to notice she had pulled out the wrong voting key, so when they were tallied up, she had voted for Jillian, after much faffing about, an extreme amount of awkwardness, Topaz pleading for a re-vote and commercial break, a re-vote was denied and Jillian went on to win by one vote meaning that Topaz has cost her best mate Gary $80,000. Best TV I have seen in ages.

Saturday Rob and I went out shopping (oh how he enjoyed that with me...Not). I needed to get a couple of bits to wear as Summer's coming and my trusty old swimsuit's lycra has just given out and gone all thin on me. I seemed to take forever in the changing rooms, swimsuits here are a pain in the arse, all I wanted was a plain one piece black suit, and what I ended up with was a two piece tankini thing with a patterned jade coloured top half. Not impressed at all, and having tried on pretty much every damn suit in two shops over my underwear I was pretty frazzled. Funny thing was I woke up early Sunday to find one of the gusset protection stickers still stuck to the inside of my leg.

Today (Sunday) Rachael and I went out exploring again, it was such a nice day for it. Too nice really as some of our subjects really needed my grayness to improve the atmosphere. We went to a few places in the Valley, starting off in Windsor as I have wanted to photograph an old Textile Factory there for the longest time. It was to be turned into condos and you might be able to see in the image (below) that all the windows have been replaced, but the company renovating it ran out of money and it has just been sitting there like this ever since. I am so behind on here in sharing some of the many images I have taken over the past few weeks, that you might just start seeing them randomly now.

Truck-Stop...Taken today near Canning

Windsor Wear Textile Factory...Would have made lovely
Loft-Style Condos, Shame the Money ran Out

One of the many farms in the Truro Area of Nova Scotia
Taken a couple of weekends ago