The Canada I miss

February, the cruelest month of the year in Canada

When we lived in the Canadian Maritimes, I used to really hate February. Winter at that time of the year reminded me of a crow just waiting for an opportunity to steal any hope of spring.

By the middle of February, every phone call that we made to our relatives in North Carolina would bring some report of the imminent arrival of spring.

It is bad enough that folks in North Carolina get to enjoy pansies which bloom all through the winter, but when they start plowing the ground and planting stuff, it is really hard for a farmer to take especially if he is looking at two feet of snow on his fields.

This February 17 morning we are perched on a mountain near Roanoke, Virginia just beyond the southern end of the Shenandoah Valley. 

The south has endured a tough winter in 2011 but right now we are basking in some great temperatures and likely to see some 100 year records fall today.

This morning we awoke to 61F or 16C.  This afternoon we should make it to 75F or 24C.

Those are pretty nice temperatures for the middle of February.

The nice thing about living in the South is that you do get to see signs of spring in February.  Earlier in the week I noticed the first bulbs sticking their green leaves above ground.

Down on the coast of North Carolina where we spend most of our time, I recently saw some of the wild grasses turning green. 

Even harder to believe, in about four to five weeks, it will be time for the first mowing of the year in Virginia's bluegrass country.

Early spring bulbs will be blooming by mid to late March even in the mountains of Virginia.

While I think many eastern Canadians take the easy way out and fly off to a warm beach, and then have to face an abrupt re-entry into Canada's lingering winter, I have often thought that the best way to really appreciate spring and get away from the snows of Canada is to drive south through some warmer spots.

While it was only a weeks ago when 65% of the US was covered with snow, today the number is probably under 25%.  The national snow map shows that once you get half way through Pennsylvania, you will be out of the snow even in the middle of February.

And if you time your trip right, sometime between the middle of March and early April, you can watch spring unfold as you drive down Interstate 81 through the Shenandoah Valley. There is always a chance of spring snow storm, but you get even worse ones in Canada.

I can recommend taking Interstate 81 all the way down to where Interstate 77 heads south from Virginia into North Carolina.  North Carolina is an easy state to wander through.

The people are gracious and happy to see Canadians.  They might not know much about Canada, but they wrote the book on southern hospitality and cooking.

I can recommend swinging off Interstate 77 and heading towards Mount Airy, NC where you will find traces of Mayberry and the Sobotta Manor which is our old homeplace and now a wonderful bed and breakfast.  It you can't get in at the Manor, there is a very nice Hampton Inn there.  You can check out Goober's Restaurant, Odell's Drive-in, or Snappy Lunch.  Be aware, you might get asked for documentation in Snappy Lunch if you are there early.

After Mount Airy, I would follow Highway 52 south to Interstate 40 and stay on it until Greensboro where you can pick up 421 South to Siler City and then 64 East towards Cary and Raleigh.  It is a very pleasant drive through the countryside.  Try some barbecue or Brunswick stew at Smithfield's in Siler City.

You might want to swing off the road at Pittsboro and take 15/501 North a few miles to Fearrington Gardens.  They can be spectacular in early April. There are some fancy places to eat there.

Then I would head on back to 64 East which will take you eventually back to Interstate 40. An hour east of Raleigh, take exit 373 off of Interstate 40 and follow Highway 24 to Jacksonville where it exits towards Swansboro.

You can find lots of information about the area in my Beaufort, Swansboro, and Emerald Isle travel guides which are links on the left side of my homepage.  Make sure you take time to walk on the beaches and visit some of the area restaurants where you can enjoy some great fresh seafood. Nicky's is my current favorite unless you want some of the best grouper on earth, then you need to go to Riverside Steak and Seafood.

If you get to the area in mid-April, it is the perfect time to visit Tryon Palace and their amazing gardens. A dose of their tulips will keep spring fresh in your memory for a long time, maybe even long enough for spring to arrive in Canada.

If you are in the area in mid-April, you might just get to taste some fresh local strawberries.

From New Bern, Interstate 95 isn't very far, and if you are brave and clever, you can head north and maybe even avoid traffic around the DC area.

If you decide to stay, we can handle that also, check out my real estate page or my Crystal Coast Life blog for more information on the area.

Even more fun than the strawberries is the cascade of local produce that we get starting in May, and by the first week of June I will be enjoying my own ripe tomatoes.

A ride through a southern spring is much better than having the crow of winter waiting to steal away your hope of warmth.

 

 

Easier to appreciate Canada now

If you have been unfortunate enough to live on the east coast during the winter of 2010-11, you know that it has been exceptionally cold at least through the first three weeks of January. 

It has truly been a coastal winter to remember.  It is not often that the Southern Outer Banks of North Carolina gets real winter weather worth remembering.

Most winters we get to enjoy temperatures into the fifties, sixties, and yes, even into the seventies.

This has been a more difficult winter.  We have struggled many days to reach the mid-forties, much less our normal mid-fifties or twelve or thirteen degrees Celsius for the Canadians in the group.

We were even iced in for a while. In fact I felt so bad for our feathered water birds that I took our skiff on an ice breaking mission.

However with a more normal winter storm instead of a snowstorm just passing through the area, I hope all of that is behind us now.  I think Canada and New England have returned to their tradional roles as keepers of the "cold weather."

Through December and most of January the cold air just spilled out of Canada.  Now it is seems bottled up as it should be.

With Canada taking its proper role, it is much easier to be thankful for Canada's presence on our Northern border.

We southerners like to enjoy our out-of-doors four seasons of the year, and it was hard to bundle up enough to do that in December.  Of course we don't have real cold weather clothes, but it is the principle of the thing.  My winter boots are tennis shoes, and even though it was "cold" this winter, I have yet to need gloves though I seem to think I need them since they are often stuffed in jacket pockets.

While the winds have come rolling in after this first normal storm of the season, it was still a pleasure to get up this morning when the temperature was 54F.

Maybe if the wind will die down, I will manage a ride down the river in our skiff, it has been a couple of weeks since I checked in at Red Sixteen.

Of course that is not nearly as long as it has been since I lived through a true Canadian winter, but I manage to keep the memories alive by calling a couple of old neighbors just to feel their pain a little.

Today would be a good day to call, I just ordered my tomato seed so I can get my plants in the ground in late March.

No surprise that I am thinking of Canada

Since the end of November, Canada has really been on my mind.  First we had some Canadian friends visit with us on November 30. 

We became friends long ago in Halifax, Nova Scotia when I was first working for Apple in 1984.  Our children were not too different in age, the other couple was also American. 

Once in a while it helps to have some American friends when you are living in Canada and listening to all the negative things about the US.

Our Halifax friends visited us here on the Southern Outer Banks at precisely the right time.  Their first afternoon here was the last day of November, and the temperature was a cozy 79F. 

The next day was also a great one as the temperature managed to make it up to 76F.  Anytime you can get to the mid-seventies on the first of December is a huge victory for the forces of light and warmth.

I am glad our Canadian friends were here to enjoy our great weather.  We are a temperate climate here on the coast of North Carolina, and our average high temperature for December is 58F.  However, that does not mean much when a stubborn wave of very cold Canadian air decides to visit.

Later in the week some clients from California flew into the area on Saturday afternoon December 6. Our temperatures were in the thirties by dusk.  That evening when we picked them up for dinner, the temperature was hovering just above freezing, and it was raining.

Just about every place to the west and north of us got snow this past Saturday.  Some places in Virginia where we have friends got up to 4 inches of snow.  We were lucky the area's waters kept the temperature just above freezing.

By Sunday afternoon the temperature had managed to get into the forties.  The next two days were not as fortunate.  The temperatures  stayed in the mid to upper thirties. That is about as cold as it ever gets here.

Wednesday and Thursday we managed to work our way back into the forties, but we still have a lot of ice on the water.   Only this Friday afternoon did we manage to break back into the fifties. 

Fortunately for our fish those temperatures seem to have melted much of the ice.

By Sunday we should be back in the sixties, but it looks like we have some more cold weather on the way. Hopefully the warmth we have seen recently we be enough to keep our waters fairly open until we can get back to our average high temperatures.

Canada must be overflowing with cold air.  I think we should block the border.

Weather that even Canadians have a hard time loving

When I did my morning temperature check today, I was surprised to see that Edmonton was stuck at 34 degree Fahrenheit with rain showers and snow.

I can hope that the snow did not stick.  While Edmonton's weather seems to bother me, it certainly has not made news in Edmonton.  I guess if you live that as far north as Edmonton, you are used to cold weather in May.

I wonder just how much cold would it take before people started complaining?

In talking to some of my Maritime friends, I find that they are having a warm, early spring.  Many of their trees are already blooming, and there is even some talk of haying taking place in June this year.

My guess is that only people who have lived in Edmonton for years can really endure the late spring cold without going nuts. It is hard to imagine people bundled up for snow just a day after I enjoyed a warm walk along the beach.

It is even harder to relate to snow while I am tasting my first tomato of the season.

Canada, Land of no summer

When we lived in Canada, the popular notion was that most Americans believed that snow was to be expected on a summer trip to Canada. 

While I can remember seeing snow in Newfoundland in August and "enjoying" at least one September snow storm, in general the worst weather we saw in Halifax in July would have been a day when your down jacket might feel good.

It is a little hard for me to remember how cool it could be in Halifax since it has been twenty-two years since we left Halifax.

The North Carolina coast is not known as being cool in July so my memories are clouded by all the warm Carolina days.

The Southern Outer Banks or SOBX portion of the Carolina coast did have a couple of days last week when the temperature got down in the sixties at night.  We were able to turn off the air conditioning those evenings.  It was nice but it only lasted for two nights, then we were back to heat and humidity.

Most of the time I no longer mind heat and humidity.  It is to be preferred to cold and snow or ice.  Having salt water at eighty degrees is much nicer than having salt water in the forties.

We used to take our kids to the beach in Prince Edward Island.  While the beaches are beautiful, the blue skies often matched the blue color you got from staying in the water very long.  I am having trouble remembering, but I believe the mid-sixties were about as warm as the water got.

Of course there are advantages to cool Canadian maritime temperatures, you can do without an air conditioner most of the time in Atlantic Canada.  Then again on the Carolina coast we do without heat often in January and February.

I used to love camping on the shores of the Bay of Fundy.  Our farm there went down to the water.  It was easy to pitch a tent and build a nice driftwood fire for the evening.  The fire would feel good, and often you would awake to a foggy morning like we are having in the Virginia mountains this morning.

Recent reports from my college roommate who summers in Halifax are that Nova Scotia is suffering through a summer of little heat or as my old friend Harvey used to say, "We have eleven months of winter and one month of damn poor sledding."

So with that I will wish Canadian friends in Atlantic Canada luck on coming up with those late August tomatoes.  Our first ones this year came on June 5.  Our tomatoes are catching their second wind after almost taking over our counters earlier in the month.

As I recently wrote we are in the midst of Full Force Summer. I can highly recommend learning to live with a Carolina summer since winter without ice and snow is so pleasant.  If you are a Canadian still looking for a place to vacation, try the beaches of Emerald Isle, you might end up liking it and buying the new house up the street in Bluewater Cove.

Canada, Time to get with the program

We moved from Canada in 1987.  It would be fair to say that we have spent more than our fair share of time since then convincing Americans that Canada is not snow covered the whole year.

Do not get me wrong, doing a little work to help the Canadian tourism industry is fair exchange for the wonderful years that we had in Canada.  However, this May 2009 outbreak of snow in Edmonton is really hard to explain to Americans who are getting ready to begin their annual pilgrimages to the beach.

I can show nice pictures of trees, water, and sunsets and pretend they are Canada, but it does not do a lot of good if Edmonton is buried under a blanket of white.

Americans have a hard time figuring on why anyone would want to live as far north as Edmonton anyway.  When you add late May snows, Canada as country ends up being dragged into the snowdrift.

We have heard that Alberta has enough tar sands to heat the world, so why is it snowing in Edmonton in May? Have not Canadians had enough snow this year?  Is there some plan to store this snow and use it to capture the winter Olympics?

Why is there a place in the world over 30 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than we are this morning? I am sure our weather is suffering because of Canadian sins.  It may well be time to send in the Saint Bernards with their casks.

Is the snow in Edmonton an effort to share the spotlight with the hockey teams in Stanley cup semi-finals?  After all the Canadian teams are missing in action this year.

Maybe Canadian tire dealers are stuck with extra snow tires that need to be sold.  Whatever the reason, it is time to halt this mid-May snow madness.  We have had enough snow chilled air dropping below the border to cover us for the rest of the year.  Save it for August when we could use some cool air.

Think of the tomatoes that might be in danger of frost, spawned by all this cold weather.

Canadians are amazing people.  You can put 100 Canadians in a restaurant, and the noise level will not rise above a whisper.  It you put 100 Americans in the same restaurant, it becomes a mad house, and we will probably invade a country.

Surely the quiet resolve of our Canadian friends can stop this fiendish May snow.

If the snow does not stop, we can almost guarantee that Dominion Day, otherwise know as your one true day of summer, will be a non-event this year.

Since the opportunity is strong that this might actually happen,  I suggest all Canadian immediately make plants to evacuate to the south.  We are willing to take our fair share.  We have room for close to 100,000 temporary residents so perhaps you can send the expatriates from the Maritimes who are working in Alberta.

They will have cash and can help us settle the long running debate as to whether New England style clam chowder is better than our Downeast style chowder.

They will also fit in well with our fishermen and farmers.  It we get a cold nor'easter in the summer, all it will do is make them homesick for Halifax in July.

Any fog will make the folks from Cape Breton think they have been transported home.  I see it as a win-win situation.  With the continuing snow, you will probably have to shut down some operations anyway, and we would love to have some Canadians with their pockets full of money drop by for a visit.

Things are ready for visitors on the beach.  We can even find some nice homes if our imported Maritimers grow fond of the area after their toes and noses have turned from blue to pink.

I suspect Coastal NC will surprise most Canadians. Our Coastal Paradise is just that, a great place to enjoy with no threat of snow.  They will find it very close to Paradise.

If you have any questions about the suitability of the area for Canadians, just check this blog and its index.  If you want more information there are lots of pictures and links at this site.

Atlantic Canada, specks of land in ice water

Friday of this week I took our skiff out for the first real fishing trip of the season.  As the story behind the link details, we had a great time.

Perhaps the biggest difference from the last time we were out on the White Oak River in February was the water temperature.  In February the water temperature was in the high forties.  Friday we got consistent reading in the sixties on the water.

Today those sixty degree water temperatures made a huge difference.  While my friend in New Jersey and our grown kids in Northern Virginia were all suffering from ninety plus temperatures (33 C), we were struggling to reach the eighties.

It was still a beautiful day, and in fact it was much nicer here on the NC coast that it was inland. The water that almost surrounds us moderates our climate for much of the year.

You can actually say the same thing for Nova Scotia, PEI, and Newfoundland.  The trouble is that their water is like a glass of ice water.  We lived on the Bay of Fundy for a few years.  When the fog came in, it reminded me of opening a refrigerator door.  I am pretty sure that the only creatures who love the temperature of the Bay of Fundy are Labrador Retrievers and fish.

We ran our farm just north of Fredericton, New Brunswick for over ten years and never took a vacation.  When we sold the cattle and finally decided to go on a vacation to PEI, I was looking forward to the beach.  I can still remember that my legs felt sandblasted on our first beach walks.  While the kids could take the water along PEI's northern coast where the beaches are so beautiful, I could not do it.  We get similar winds once in a while here on the coast, but swimming in the summer on the north coast of PEi would be like swimming here in April.

While I absolutely love PEI and its rolling green fields which go down to the shore, it is just not a good place to go swimming.  The next year we managed to take the kids back to North Carolina and visit a warm Carolina beach.  I can still remember the trip down to that beach, my wife, who was born in North Carolina just like me, told me as we were walking across an almost ready to melt parking lot in Tarboro, NC that she was officially warm for the first time since we had gotten married fifteen years earlier.

 That beach trip redkindled a love of the Carolina coast.  We eventually moved back to the states as I worked for Apple Computer for nearly twenty years.  Two years after leaving Apple, we moved to Carteret County just six miles from the beaches of Emerald Isle.  I am officially in heaven.

While we had the coldest winter and first snow in six years here on the coast, we still never put on a heavy coast.  Our snow was right at one half inch and did not even stick to the driveways.

There is a lot I miss about Canada, but I really do not miss the cold waters.  There was once when we were living in Halifax that I did feel like were were trapped in a glass of ice water.  The pack ice got driven down from Newfoundland and filled Halifax harbor.  We thought spring would never come.

I am to the point that I enjoy a good eight degree day.  I love it cooling off to sixty at night, but I am ready for heat during the day.

If you are Canadian and are down our way, stop by our office in Cape Carteret, and I will tell you the best places to eat and personally welcome you to the Crystal Coast.

And if you have had enough of cold weather, I think we can find you a spot in the sun.

No reason to miss Canada in April

As I think back over my years in Canada, I cannot remember an April that was very nice.  I can dredge up April snow storms without any challenge.  I can remember the mud season which always threatened to swallow us.

In eastern Canada it was often the last week or so of April before things started to even think about being green.  If we were lucky, we got our cattle in the pasture by the middle of May. 

We would plant our gardens in June and hope that there would be no June frost.  Tomatoes were a mid-August treat at best in New Brunswick.  On the shore of Nova Scotia, it was sometimes close to September before we got a ripe tomato.

There are a lot of things to love about Canada, but April weather is not one of them.  Admittedly if you have chosen to live in Canada, you have made the decision to put up with a fair amount of cold.  Still April seems to be cruel and unusual punishment.

Here on the Carolina coast our early spring flowers are gone.  Tulips, dogwoods, and azaleas are in bloom.  I put my tomato plants in the ground on April 1, and if things go as well as they did last year, I will enjoy a tomato sandwich around June 1.

As much as I loved the cool Canadian air in the summertime, I certainly do not miss that those late spring snow storms.  In year like this where most of the continent as seen cooler than normal weather, it is nice to have some heat.

While we are about to get a dose of Canadian cold it will be short lived.  Even tonight as the cold starts to roll in, the temperature is still at 60F at 11 PM.  That would be a nice mid-summer day in Halifax. 

I have been wearing shorts for a couple of weeks now.  I might have to put bluejeans on for a day or two, but that should end it for the year.

When we are cooking in the summer heat in late August, I will write a post about how much I miss those cool Canadian breezes.

A pretty good summary of Canada

A former neighbor of mine from Canada sent me a link to the Globe and Mail article, "DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: WE'RE CONFUSED AND WE NEED YOUR HELP." 

The article really rekindled a lot of memories of why I loved living in Canada.  The thought that "mutual grievance" binds Canadian provinces together as much as anything brought a smile to my face.

We lived in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. I worked out of both Quebec and Ontario when I was employed by Apple Computer.  Between the two provinces I got a great feel for Canada.  I especially loved the all French sales meetings that I attended.  In typical  French Canadian fashion, the least bi-lingual person in the room was the only one ever to attempt to keep me in the loop.

Once I got transferred to reporting to Ontario so I could understand my management, I saw clearly why the rest of Canada usually had a problem with Ontario. As nice a city as Toronto might have been, I was always relieved to get back to Halifax and the common sense of my fellow Maritimers.  Somehow the idea that Ontario was God's gift to Canada got old fast.  It used to drive me crazy how some people looked down on the Maritimes.  I have actually lived in a lot of places, but Halifax was one of my all time favorites.

Maybe all those years running a farm north of Fredericton helped me to appreciate people who were not affraid to get their hands dirty.  One of the more popular commercials on television in our area happens to be one which starts with the premise of what would happen if delivery men ran schools.  From their demonstrated ability to make sure things are usually in the right place, you get the idea that school attendance would no longer be a problem.

I used to wonder what would happen if someone from the Maritimes ran Canada in the eighties? Certainly some humility might have creeped into government.  Now my thoughts are more towards what is going to happen now that someone other than George Bush is running the United States.

Somehow I think President Obama is going to need all the help he can get.  He is surrounded by a bunch of politicians who like all politicians have but one goal and that is staying in power.  They certainly have almost no humility so I was pleased to see President Obama actually apologize for an early mistake.

One of the best lines out of the whole article by Margaret Wente was the following.

We have absolutely nothing in common with the United States. Our nation is harmless and ignored. Yours is powerful and despised, not least by us.

With all my years in Canada, I can certainly relate to the statement.  However, there were many times that I thought Canadians did not appreciate themselves and what they had.  Canada, certainly when I was there through 1987, was one of the most civil places on earth. 

Perhaps this letter is a good sign that Canada has a strong identity now.  One of the stories I love to tell about Canada is the bank robbery that took place in Stanley, NB when we lived near there. Apparently the tellers convinced the robber that he had to wait fifteen minutes while a timer went off.  They offered the robber a cup of tea while he waited, and he accepted while they called the Mounties.  In a few minutes they gave him the money, and he was on his way.  Of course in that lenght of time the Mounties had been able to cover the three ways out of Stanley.  The robber was arrested without incident.  What a great Canadian solution to a problem.

It certainly makes a lot more sense than stun guns, but that is another story.  As we go forward in this challenging year, one of the things that gives me a little sense of security in my world of real estate is that the holding company behind Royal Le Page has purchased the GMAC franchise in the United States.

Somehow heading forward, I would much rather have some perhaps level headed Canadians working to help us market real estate instead of the people whose name only brings a reminder of the disaster that our Detroit auto makers face.

Having a successful Canadian company behind us is almost as comforting as the Canadian-like marsh pictured in this post.  The marsh and sound are actually part of North Carolina's Crystal Coast and located behind the NC Aquarium on Bogue Sound in Pine Knoll Shores, NC, but they still make me think of Canada each time I visit.

Now I just need to convince some Canadians to move down here.

Faulty snow fails Canadian standards

It is hard to be serious about snow that you cannot shovel, but yesterday we had the first snow storm on the Crystal Coast in six years.

I was not very excited to see the snow as you can tell from the post that I wrote at Crystal Coast Living.  The picture in that post was taken at 4:30 PM on January 20.  This picture was taken January 21 at about 11 AM. 

The one half inch or so of snow that we received was pretty well gone from the beach by the time I took the picture this morning.

Most area businesses closed yesterday at 3:30 PM.  Our real estate office did not open until 10:30 AM this morning.

I told the ladies in our office this afternoon that when we lived north of Fredericton, New Brunswick that it was standard policy for them not to plow the roads unless we got over six inches of snow.  Six inches of snow just made for a smoother road.

Of course southern snow and Canadian snow are two very different creations.  I doubt that even late spring Canadian snow behaves like North Carolina snow.  We lived on a mountain in Virginia for several years.  I can only remember getting decent driving snow a couple of times in those twenty years.

Most of the time the snow we got turned to ice after one or two cars drove over it.  I can never remember it not being attached to the pavement like someone used super glue.  In Canada, at least in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick where I lived, snow did not seem to be permanently bonded to the pavement.  You could hit it a few times with a shovel and generally fracture it.

Our coastal snow failed miserably as Canadian snow.  First it refused to stick on most of the driveway.  By eight o'clock this morning what little ice had collected on the driveway was melting even though the temperature was still stuck in the mid-twenties Fahrenheit.  What self-respecting Canadian snow would start melting just because some sun was shining on it.

Even the snowy windshield of my truck which was parked outside melted clean before I went to work at just before one.

All of these are good things since we do not have snow shovel or anything to clean the windshield on my truck.

I am not unhappy at any of these events.  I actually moved to the Crystal Coast to get away from snow and ice.  If this is all Mother Nature can throw at me, you can count me as one happy ex-Canadian.

Part of the reason the Crystal Coast is such a great place is that we do not have snow.  It you want more details on our snow event, visit my area blog.