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If you’ve been wondering what happened to all the updates this last while – it’s been a busy and eventful week and a bit! We started it all off with a great big storm (hurricane force gusts! whee!), we got power back just in time for Alex and Emma to visit for a bit (yay to both!), then Justin had his allergist appointment, I got sick and Chad’s computer died (boo to all three).

I’ll start at the end and say that Justin is still allergic to the things he was allergic to before, Chad’s new battery is on it’s way, and I’m feeling better already! Prior to that, we had a fantastic time showing Alex and Emma around Salem and Boston. And before all that, there was the storm…

The storm was pretty crazy – our house felt like it was sitting on a water bed at times! Gusts were up over 90 miles per hour and we woke up to tree and roof debris all over the yard, but we were spared serious damage with only a small fence crushed by a tree branch (the roof bits weren’t ours). Our power was out for just short of 48 hours, though, so we spent a night in a hotel and had to restock our refrigerator. Luckily, our little gas fireplace kept the living room, well, livable, and we were able to stay in the house during the daytime. Here are some photos:

Storm, afternoon of Day 2 with no power (photo by Justin)

Tree damage

Fence damage

Tree branch

We braved the cold and wind on Saturday to spend a few hours checking out the ice sculptures and hot chocolate of the Salem So Sweet festival. Here are a few pictures:

The fall colours have been fantastic this past week, although high winds have brought most of the leaves down now. Luckily I took a bunch of photos before they all came down! Here are a few of my favourites:

Reflections

Low branches

Turtles

Justin and I love to walk into town every week and get fresh veggies, fruit and eggs from our local farmers’ market. This past week was the 375th anniversary of the original market’s opening day, and there was lots of entertainment: costumed vendors and musicians, speeches from important people and, of course, lots of great food. We loved every minute!

We took advantage of a brief break in the rain today to do a tour around the cemetery pond. The ducks came out to greet us, while a great egret (I think) kept an eye on us from a safe distance:

Justin was pretty interested in the ducks until they started to get close. The closer the ducks, the more uncomfortable Justin was with the whole thing:

Luckily for Justin, once it became apparent that we had no food, the ducks quickly lost interest… We saw a lot of birds today, including two new ones:

The first was all black, maybe a Western Reef Heron?

The second was mostly grey and white. A Black-Crowned Night Heron, I think:

If this second one is a Black-Crowned Night Heron, it may (or may not be) a second viewing of Emily’s mystery bird… or that might have been a Green Heron, or something else altogether.

Here’s a photo of the pond that we walk to quite frequently.

I’m sure it has a name, but I only know it as “the pond at the cemetery” – it’s really quite beautiful and positively teems with wildlife. There are many kinds of birds (ducks, geese, herons, kingfishers, hawks, and several we can’t identify with any kind of accuracy), and we’ve spotted a fisher cat and heard about a family of foxes, but what Justin and I really like to do is to keep tabs on the turtles:

We like to call them “Emily’s turtles” (hi Emily!)