Kingsport Nova Scotia

We drove from Moncton NB to Kingsport NS in Peter's Saturn SUV.  It's a fairly compact SUV that could seat five but that had seating for four only since Cragen had the back all to herself.  All luggage, camera gear, snacks etc. had to be stuffed into the passenger area so things were comfortable but tight.  We were off to visit Brian, Peter's cousin, who's quite the chef and a fantastic host.  We arrived in time for dinner and were presented with the proposed menu for our visit.  The picnic was relocated to Brian's dinning room due to the weather, but the other culinary delights occurred as they should.  We could have gained some weight...

Now that your appetite has be whet by the menu, let me show you a few delights that we sa along the way.  We stopped at a little store with a large garden named the Tangled Garden.  The store had all manner of dried flowers hanging from the ceiling.

We also stopped in at the Grand Pre winery where we walked around marveling at the endless rows of vines and the wonderful buildings.  Here are two pictures of the same window, note that the inside table-top is a single piece of wood!

 

Back outside, the grape vines were busy growing and starting their grapes on their way to glory.  The vines are trained on these wires and are severely pruned back every year since the grapes come on new wood as opposed to old growth.

Here you'll see a few clusters of very young grapes.  Many of these will be pruned away so that the remaining grapes get sweeter.  It's always a choice between volume and quality!

In the winery store, they cut up some barrels that were not suitable for wine-aging and made display cases for wines for sale.  Note the balls woven from old pruned grapevines.

Joan, Chris and Cragen enjoying some relax time beside the vineyard.

Brian is a retired Navy Officer with very interesting ideas about interior design; he designed and commissioned these arches between the living-room, hall and dining-room.

Kingsport is a small village of a couple hundred people and the last weekend in June is celebrated as 'Gala Days'.  No celebration should be without fireworks so we walked over to a neighbour's back yard that overlooked  small bay and saw the fireworks from the town pier.  Great way to end a wonderful day!  What fun!