The scavenger find….The paint…The end result….The pandemic picnic table is now ready for….The Guests!
PS. Although we’ve been having glorious weather lately, once the yellow-jacket wasps descend in September outdoor entertaining is basically over for the year. The slightest morsel of food or drink convinces these persistent visitors to overstay their welcome.
The paint is Lowe’s Valspar Seasonal Exterior color-matched to Michael’s Americana Decor chalkpaint in Serene Blue. Although it has a turquoise tint in different lighting, it’s actually more blue like the paint photo.I like the way it appears to change color depending on the time of day and amount of shade versus sun. I have an old blue and yellow beach umbrella to fit the center hole once I scavenge an umbrella holder.
In an attempt to hold onto summer for as long as possible, I’ve been walking along the waterfront recently. While none of these parks are close enough for my daily constitutional, they are more scenic options when I want to add a few extra steps to my exercise routine or work off some calories from the fall baking. Plus a change of scenery is always good, never more so this pandemic year.
Our first park was designated in honor of Canada’s centennial year, 1967, and occupies prime real estate along the bay – a handy venue for all those nearby condo owners.
Strangely, on this beautiful late Friday afternoon there are few people around.
Just a few seagulls preening for a photo-op. The flower beds in the park grounds have been sadly neglected this year due to the cancellation of most maintenance services, but the urns are still pretty.
There’s a fountain where you can stand in the mist and get cooled off.
And a cute garden bench/sculpture for the little ones.
If you follow the long boardwalk all the way around, there’s a boat ramp and a small marina on the other side of the bay, with an over-priced outdoor restaurant where I had one of the worst meals ever and never went back, despite the scenic view.
The big yacht on the right is mine…..someday…..
There’s a tour boat which offers lunch and sunset cruises up and down the river, although not this year.
Let’s hop over to the Beach Park now. While it may be unusual to have a beachfront park in the middle of a city, a few forward-thinking city founders, aided by a very generous donation from a rich benefactor back in the Great Depression, ensured that beach access would be available to all, not just those lucky enough to own a house with their own private beach. Of course at the time of the purchase, the park was at the edge of city development. In addition to the 3000 foot stretch of sandy beach, there’s a hundred acres of trees with walking trails, a children’s animal park and a small inland pond perfect for winter hockey. (We may return here later this fall for a leaf-peeping tour.)
This is a picture of the beach in the 1950’s before the parking lot was paved. Sadly there has been so much erosion from high lake levels in the past few years, they may have to un-pave the parking lot to salvage some of the sand.
I was upset to see that half of my favorite birch tree had collapsed onto the ground, it’s roots uplifted by the pounding waves.
There’s so little beach left at this end of the park that they’ve installed a new row of arbor stone to try and prevent any further erosion.
The groynes are all under water now, but the sailboats were out, and so were the kayaks.
In my younger years, many a summer weekend would be spent under a beach umbrella with a book and a cooler of snacks and beverages.
Let’s go further up the lake to a place I blogged about a few weeks ago inOn The Waterfront. While the dance pavilion may be long gone, you can sit in the gazebo or on a park bench and admire the view.
We picnicked in this park every summer Sunday when I was a kid, but the beach is washed away now and the waterfront shored up by expensive arbor rock.
The road in front of it is so narrow, that I wonder how long it will be before it’s closed and people won’t have access to their property. The waves were so wild during the winter storms last year they were lapping at the porch of my favorite house.
Switching venues now to the park where the river meets the lake.
The darker blue water denotes the deeper shipping channel used by the Lakers – the big freight boats.
This area is lined with park benches where you can watch boats heading out into the lake. It’s always a popular spot because of the refreshing lake breezes even on the hottest summer day, plus the chip trucks and ice cream parlors nearby.
Let’s follow these tubers downriver to the marina. (Note: tubing is a dangerous sport due to the swift current here but people do it anyway.)
This larger marina has berths for sailboats during the season. If I was ever fortunate enough to own a waterfront condo I wouldn’t want one with three floors though, even if I could tie my boat up out front.
I wonder if the condo owners ever worry about the high water levels, which is even more of a problem downriver. So let’s visit our last park downriver – unfortunately it was an overcast day.
The clouds get in the way…..
There are small strips of parkland here and there along the river road, with lots of ancient willow trees lining the banks.
In some places the water level is so high the grass around the tree trunks is swampy, and it’s only a matter of time until they are washed away too. Many of the docks are almost level with the water now, surely a worry for the homeowners.
These cheerful sunflowers are announcing fall….
My mother enjoys going for a Sunday drive along the river and looking at all the big houses, but we hardly ever see anyone sitting outside. I wonder if people who have waterfront property really appreciate it?
I’ve always felt a sense of calm being by the water, probably the legacy of two sets of water-dwelling ancestors. I could sit for hours with a coffee and just enjoy the view. Unfortunately the only park close enough for me to visit on a regular basis, is overrun by a gazillion Canadian geese, year round. The constant aggravation of having to watch where you step and/or clean your shoes is not worth the trip, although I did visit last March to take a picture of the two resident mute swans. They need to relocate some of the population and train the rest of them to migrate south like good little geese should.
I hope you have enjoyed this waterfront tour as we say goodbye to summer for another year.
My favorite picture even if there are clouds in the sky!
The expression “life is a bowl of cherries” translates to life is wonderful or things are going very well. For the sake of simplicity, let’s change this slightly to “life is a bowl of peaches” so I have something to write about this week and can experience first hand how truly wonderful this new block editor is supposed to be.
Peaches in a Blue Bowl
This months recipe is a peach galette. Galette (from the Norman word gale, meaning “flat cake”) is a term used in French cuisine to designate various types of flat round or free-form crusty cakes, with a combination of sweet or savory fillings. A fruit galette is a French tart made with one flat piece of pastry that is wrapped around a fruit filling. Being free-form it’s easier than pie and for those of us not adept at making rich flaky pastry, a store bought pie shell is perfectly acceptable. The aim is to make it look rustic, like something you would serve under the shade of a tree in Provence.
Photo from Victoria Magazine July/Aug 2018
As my favorite vendor is no longer at the Farmer’s Market, I made the trip to their farm to pick up a box of peaches for making jam. I’d ordered ahead and specified over-ripe seconds as I had already sanitized the jars in the dishwasher that morning. As in years past, the seconds were a bargain at $10 for a big box of peaches.
Canning Peaches
Except….I’d already paid for them and the clerk had put them in the trunk of the car before I realized they were small, cold and nowhere near being ripe. Where were their usual big juicy peaches? I might have gone back in to inquire but the storefront was crowded and there was absolutely no attempt at social distancing. (How much effort would it take to mark the floor with tape and only let so many people inside, especially with the higher COVID numbers in some of these agri-food areas?) So I grumbled and left and five days later they were starting to spoil and get soft and spotty on the outside while the insides were still not quite ripe, but cut up they were, and two batches of freezer jam produced, with extra sugar to make up for the lack of juicy peachy flavor. It hasn’t exactly been a stellar year for most fruit here, with everything behind due to the cold late spring and snow in May.
After making the jam I still had 24 peaches left so a small peach crisp was created and then some peach trifle, both with good results and more sugar (but no pictures as I forgot before they were consumed), and then the “piece de resistance”, the famous French galette, and there were still a few left over for eating. It was the box that kept on giving…..even if it wasn’t a vintage year.
Now the head chef (moi) was not above borrowing a recipe from another source, said source being the Lifestyle section of the local paper, so here’s the recipe.
The filling called for 5 peaches cut in half, pit removed and sliced, 1/4 cup brown sugar, 2 tbsp flour, and 1/2 tsp cinnamon and ground ginger. I doubled the sugar but it still could have used more. I left out the ginger as it had expired in the last decade. I made this at my mother’s and her spice rack is suspect and her oven temperamental, but she enjoyed peeling the peaches as it reminded her of life on the farm and canning every summer.
The Tenderflake deep dish pie crust I bought, did not look any too deep to me, as by the time the fruit was piled in the middle,
there was not much pastry left for crimping the border.
The pastry is folded over the fruit, aiming as I mentioned, for the rustic, not too perfect look.
The finished product was not pretty, the filling having bled a bit around the edges, and gotten rather burnt in spots while trying to brown the pastry, having to be scraped off by a kitchen knife before any photo-ops ensued. Plus the lighting in her kitchen is not good at all, not flattering to anyone, least of all a French galette. It did however taste better with some French vanilla ice cream.
It was by no means a Michelin five star job, but the best I can say is I tried and the end result was certainly rustic. Maybe next time with apples? The same can be said for the block editor. It’s certainly doable – but do I want to do it? I think I’d rather stay with the classic.
(This is the first post I’ve drafted in block and I seem to be using a hybrid of block and classic, with things popping out at me and the draft itself shifting from right to left to center for no discernible reason. If it was closer to Halloween I’d swear it was haunted.)
Last fall I attended a museum exhibit called On The Waterfront, where they displayed a number of old photos and postcards of the waterfront from days gone by. I thought I might share a few of these, for those interested in history and vintage memorabilia.
In this postcard, we see swimmers enjoying the beach in Grand Bend in the 1920’s. One hundred years later, it remains a popular beach resort, but my how bathing suits have changed, although these may have seemed daring in the flapper era.
Imagine paying five cents for a dance – if you ran out of money, you were done for the night and maybe went for a moonlight stroll instead!
Many of the waterfront amusements then involved dance halls or pavilions which attracted people for the nighttime entertainment, as much as the beaches did during the day.
My great-grandmother lived across the river from this resort and dance pavilion. One of my father’s earliest memories was of hearing the music floating across the water while being babysat – with the probability of a cookie and a reassurance that his parents were not too far away. Built in the the early 19th century, it hosted parties coming down river on steamships to attend the dances and stay at the hotels and cottages. Long torn down, it is now the site of a private clubhouse with a beautiful wood floor which would make a perfect dance floor.
Before there were bridges and motorcars, you, and your horse and carriage, could also hop on the ferry to get to the party.
Fast forward to the Big Band era…
Care to jitterbug anyone?
When my parents were dating in the late 1940’s, they attended the Big Band dances at this venue on the shores of Lake Huron. Opened in 1946, it had an outdoor dance floor, as dancing under the stars was very popular back then. It attracted big name bands such as Tommy Dorsey, Guy Lombardo, Louis Armstrong, and Glen Miller who played to crowds of up to 3,000 on weekends. My mother recalls going for a hamburger and a Coke at a nearby diner after the dance – hamburgers were 25 cents, a sum they could barely afford.
Moonlight Serenade – by Glen Miller and his Orchestra
By the 1950’s as musical tastes shifted, it attracted the likes of rock and roll’s Bill Haley and the popular crooner Pat Boone. I’m certain my parents did not attend this crowded Pat Boone concert, as I was born a few days later.
By the 1960’s when we used to picnic in the park there on summer Sundays, there was nothing left of it but some broken cement from the dance floor and a few crumbling walls. Now, it’s a tennis court, with a historical plaque marking the site, although a few years ago they held The Simply White Dinner(link) there, and dancing under the stars resumed for one enchanted evening.
When we see pictures of young people congregating on the beach this summer, partying and having fun in the midst of a pandemic, it seems crazy, but youth is ever optimistic. Although, looking back at these old photos, it does seem a much more romantic time. Perhaps music and moonlight never go out of date.
that I wonder how long it will be before it’s closed and people won’t have access to their property. The waves were so wild during the winter storms last year they were lapping at the porch of my favorite house. 
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