Summer

One of the things I  like most about early summer.

Lady slipper

Last weekend I was up in the Laurentians celebrating my brother's 60th.  We went for a bike ride along the P'tit Train du Nord bike trail - it's an old rail bed so not too hilly!   Along side in one section were 20 or so lady slippers - a rare sight indeed.

We stayed in a lovely gîte in Saint Faustin called Gîte et café de la gare.  It was a nice set up of 2 rooms and a bathroom which was great for us, and our daughter.  A great breakfast.

And of course, the birthday party was great.

Parc Des Rapides de Lachine

Last week I went, with some of my French group, on  a walk in the Parc des Rapides at the foot of LaSalle.  It's a little spit of land that juts out into the river and was used by Hydro Quebec to generate electricity at one point.  It's now an ecological preserve with an enormous number of different fish and birds.  It's hard to appreciate the force of the water in these pictures - let's just say you wouldn't want to fall in.

The main tenet of the talk that was given is that Montreal would probably not be the city it is if these rapids had not existed.  They forced commerce - fur trade especially, to stop and go around - creating a place of commerce to handle the traffic.

 The park benches and garbage cans have been well designed - although not good to sit on when it's 30ºC as we discovered!

If you look very carefully  in the centre of this picture you will see a baby bird in it's nest.

I'm not sure this heron belonged this far north.  And judging by the bird watchers with their enormous cameras, it was probably an unusual sighting.

A kingfisher on it's perch.  

La Bretagne

Doors in Brittany.

This gives a little background to a quilt that I finished recently which is at the end.  This was a challenge that Hilary, Rosie and I had given ourselves - to do something based on the week that we spent together a year ago in Brittany.  The pinkish background fabric is rust dyed - something we did whilst there.  We did get strange looks going back to the car with handfuls of rusty nails and bolts.