The Scarecrow Invasion has Arrived!

 Every year for over 25 years Meaford has hosted the Scarecrow Invasion, a six week festival marked by numerous scarecrows decorating the downtown.  Most of the work is done by an enthusiastic group of volunteers, but households are also encouraged to participate.  I'll show you some examples after we see what's downtown.

The history behind the scarecrows certainly helps keep it going.

The main display downtown is of a wedding, a couple tying the knot on a beautiful sunny day!

There is also a Maid of Honour, of course.

And a minister to declare the couple happily married.

And an audience leaning together to watch the ceremony.

Not all weddings have court jesters, but this one does.

And another group peering into a crystal ball.

I don't know who this character is meant to be, but I do love her hair!  More tomorrow.

 

Keady Market Part II

 The market continued on for some distance, so we just kept going, though we did avoid going down any of the side aisles.  Mrs. F.G. knows particular vendors, so she looks for them specifically, picking mainly the ones who grow the veggies themselves, though for fruit sometimes it's plums or peaches brought up from Niagara.

You could certainly buy large quantities, like these bushels of cucumbers for pickling.

Yellow and green beans.

A different display of beans, with a few potatoes as well.

Peaches from Niagara.  We've had more peaches this year than I can remember.

Plums

Raspberries and blackberries.

Strawberries - It is certainly the season for fruit in our part of the world!

And then there were the clothes, the bed sheets, more clothes, popcorn, and these sunglasses.  I did speak to this vendor and learn he had been coming to the market for 29 years!

The Keady Market

 On Tuesday past, we went to the Keady Market, a crazy, crowded place that sells everything from livestock to strawberries, from baking to sunglasses!  We were there for the fruits and veggies of course.  Mrs. F.G. worked in a fruit and veg market as a teenager, and ever since she's had strong ideas about what makes great fruit and veggies.

The Keady Market is actually a livestock market, with farmers buying and selling all kinds of livestock every week, but it has expanded into all sorts of other things, and few people who visit are actually there for the livestock sales now.

There is sausage and bread.  We bought some nice bread here.

It wasn't far before we hit the fruits and veggies.  Not all of this is locally grown, some likely comes from the Toronto Food Terinal.

But if you were after fruit you could certainly find it!  Do you recognize the small orange berries to the left?

These are Sea-Buckthorn berries, said to have many health benefits.

But as I said, there are vendors selling many other sorts of items.

And of course there's a stand where you can buy you snack and a drink.  And we're barely half-way through!

And the Route Back Home Again!

 When I get downtown on my new route I'm opposite the tiny sand beach that attracts lots of mums (and occasionally dads) and their kids on hot summer days.    From there I can ride either direction along the harbour, and access the streets that take me to the coffee shop and the library.

I'm sure this little bit of beach was created years ago when that line of boulders on the left was installed, but it works and is crowded  on hot summer days.  The wheelchair 'sidewalk' only appeared this spring.  It was a chilly day when I took this photo, I was surprised there were any people at all.

This is Bayfield Street, the road that fronts the harbour.  If I turn right at the first corner I go to the coffee shop, at the second corner, the library.  This is also where the classic car show is held on Canada Day.

On this day the harbour was almost calm as glass.  You can see three of the student sailboats moving slowly across, fighting the almost total lack of wind!

At one corner of the harbour is the local museum which houses a fascinating collection of artifacts.

On another day I went the opposite direction and watched the students practice their moves out in the open bay, with a nice breeze to help them.  But a line of very big boulders to see past!

Heading back up Parker Street you can see why my original view of it on that hot summer day appeared shaded.

I noticed the second house on the right has put on this spectacular attic dormer.  It would enable them to see right out to the bay over the roof of the smaller house next door.

Then there's the crosswalk, not much of a picture, but this is the key that unlocks this entire route for me.  Without it to stop traffic on a busy road I would not not be using this route at all.

There's another block of Parker Street to ride, a brief detour west a short block, up to the back entrance to the Long Term Care Home, and then it's the meandering path behind the new Long Term Care Home, up the Collingwood Street hill and I'm home.  I enjoy my new route downtown so much that I haven't gone back to Nelson or Trowbridge Street in weeks!

My New Route Downtown

Earlier this summer I was downtown and rode along the harbour further than I usually go.  It was one of those blistering hot days, and I looked up Parker Street to notice it was all shaded, so I decided to explore it and see what the ride was like.  It turned out that Parker Street was smooth to ride on, much better than the other streets I have been riding, and when I came to Sykes Street, our busy main street, there was a crosswalk I could activate.

For these posts though, I'm going to turn it around and start from home. My drives downtown always starts by going down the Collingwood Street hill, a photo I've shown you before.

The daycare on the corner, Meaford's main daycare, is the landmark where I turn, though with my new route I turn left instead of right.

One block over is the new Long Term Care Home.  I've been in it for a tour, and it did seem very well done.  The old age home, built on the site of an old public school, blocks Parker Street for one block, so I have to drive around it.

But around two sides of the building it has this nice wavy sidewalk.  I quite enjoy driving down here.

My next landmark is this horribly pruned tree, a very tall tree so it stands out above the rest.  You can't miss it, although you'd like to!  How could anyone do that to a tree?

On the corner where I cross Sykes Street at the cross-walk, stands one of Meaford's beautiful old homes, which has recently been restored.

Looking back at it when I've passed it the restoration is more obvious.  I love the little porch under the attic dormer.

And then I'm down to the bottom end of Parker Street where it hits the shoreline at McCarrol Park, a much nicer ride than Trowbridge or Nelson Streets.  The pavement is simply smoother, with none of those annoying narrow cracks that have been filled in, cracks which you probably don't even notice in a car, but which are quite painful for me.  I've been driving this new route downtown and back ever since the first time tried it.

The Fall Garden - Part II

There are still several other flowers adding lots of colour to the garden, as well as seed pods starting to form.  At this point in the garden year besides harvesting veggies, Mrs. F.G. harvests seeds of particularly successful plants.  Other flowers are just fading away  but for others it's the leaves that provide the colour.

There are pretty Cosmos here there and everywhere.

The same goes for the Calendula.

Some of the Coneflowers (Echinacea) are fading fast.

 

Other flowers like the White Globe Thistles are forming seed pods as fast as they can go.

The Balsam is attracting flies, bees and the Hummer as I watch.

And some plants just provide bright coloured leaves.

The Fall Garden, Part I

It's always sad when the garden begins to fade, but there is still beauty to be found.  There are even new flowers blooming at this time of year.  Garden work has shifted to harvest, which has been underway for some time, and we're enjoying our own tomatoes, finally!

These two 'cherry' tomatoes, a yellow and black form, are sweet and delicious. 

There are some big tomatoes we're waiting for too.  Last year we had a chipmunk that developed a taste for them and would go around taking one big bite out of every tomato, but Mrs. F.G.'s trap and relocate efforts seem to have paid off.

The Gloriosa Daisies have remained spectacular even though they're starting to fade.

The most prominent of the new flowers is the Fall Anemones, a beautiful soft pink.

Tucked in a back corner behind those Fall Anemones is a small patch of Brown-eyed Susans.

And the last of the new flowers is this beautiful small-flowered Clematis, our last clematis to bloom.  At our last house a strand of this clematis caught an apple tree branch above it and we had a glorious overhead burst of small yellow flowers!  Here it's growing up against the side of the shed.