Mum's birthday lunch at the Landmark Cafe in Victoria-by-the-Sea, PEI. Lovely town, lovely day.

Photos of the action around here since I last posted. Pretty typical, I'd say:

Some of these just beg for a caption contest, don't they? And somehow, they all just seem to flow together thematically.

Given that I'm developing Reader's Waist and Writer's Butt, I am making a concerted effort to walk more, particularly on work days (which are long and involve lots of sitting). The plan is to come in the door from work and instead of sitting down with a glass of wine, put on my sneakers and take Abby for a walk along the road (that's 40 minutes, a good walk).
Before I could head out the door this afternoon for the first walk of the new regime, Dwayne said, "You'd better check on your mother."
"What? Why?"
"She came in from gardening and said she was done and going to make herself a cup of tea. I think she might have overdone it. She looked really hot."
So I trotted right upstairs where she was reclined out fully in her chair.
"Are you okay?" I asked.  "What's wrong?"
"It's just my allergies acting up," Mum answered. "I'm allergic to hard labour."

I posted scenery photos on my Field Notes (work) blog but here are the more important parts of our road trip to Ontario: the people we visited.

In Maine, I made a new friend.

At the Gayman's in Uxbridge: Cousins!

Susan Beer and her mother, Colleen Ross, in Cobourg.

Find Mrs. Stinny!

After another fabulous dinner chez Shelagh in Cobourg.

So the latest problem around here are the vast lawns that we have. You don't think much about the lawn until  you can't cut it. I don't know how many acres (no more than a couple) but Dwayne says it takes 6 hours to cut it all, including the areas that need to be cut twice a week. 

BUT

he can't work the ride-on lawn mower with his right arm. Shifting gears (or whatever) hurts his shoulder. When he says he's not sure he can mow the lawns, that means it's REALLY hurting because this guy mowed the lawns the day after his foot surgery three years ago! 

What do we do now? He's not working so there's no extra money to hire someone but the grass is longer, going to get longer with a weekend of rain. 

My schedule -- absolutely no room to add six hours of lawn mowing. And I've never been a lawn mower. Can't imagine doing it, really, I can't imagine anything I'd like to do less. Outside of the flower gardens, my job, when I remember to do it, is use the push mower on Dad's plot. Which I don't like doing because it's sloped on three sides. 

Maybe...just maybe...Dwayne will now take seriously my perennial suggestion for dealing with all the lawn we have: SHEEP!

Dwayne is away on his annual fishing trip and Mum is in Georgia so they missed Archie's TV debut this morning when he walked through the last part of my community correspondent segment on CTV Atlantic Morning Live.
I also took a behind-the-scenes photo because I'd already planned to do a work blog post on doing the segment but today, CML posted the video on their website.
Point being: I wrote it all up on my Field Notes blog so click the "work blog" link on the right to check out the video and the photograph.

My Field Notes column didn't win in its category but we had a good time at the Atlantic Community Newspaper Awards gala on Saturday night.
Too bad I didn't win; the guy sitting next to me at our table (his wife was a presenter from Atlantic Lottery) vowed to give a big loud "Woot! Woot!" if the MC called my name.