Oh, The Joy of Digging Postholes

At Sackville NB I reaped a reward for the archival efforts I display on Flickr. We enjoyed a lively alfresco lunch with third cousin Lori MacKinnon, who found me a few months ago via Google whilst looking for family history nuggets. It is best to suppress expectations in such circumstances – a first-time meeting with someone you know only through email – but I took to my new-found cousin like a Tea-Party zealot to Rick Santorum.

We reached a land where roadside stands offered baskets of picture-perfect strawberries; bouquets of peonies at no cost; chickens, either ready for the pot or alive and feathered. For a moment I considered taking a live one to Garth and Carole, then thought better of it. The land in question: Nova Scotia’s blithe Northumberland Shore.

Garth left Tom Sawyer in the dust. Tom managed to inveigle his neighbourhood pals into paying to whitewash Aunt Sally’s fence. Garth accomplished a greater feat: welcoming me with shovel in hand and somehow persuading me to dig a posthole. There is no chore – not even cleaning toilets or shoveling out the poophouse at Big Bras d’Or – I hate more than digging postholes. I know this from long, hard experience. Yet there I was, at the side of the road digging a two and a half foot hole to accommodate the new rural mailbox. The man is a magician.

The posthole dug and mailbox erected, the get-together reverted to a typically rich blend of food, wine and conviviality. It was hard to tear ourselves away from the Amherst Shore Shangri-la.

We drove on to Truro in rain so torrential Leo’s wipers were hard-pressed to keep up. We felt right at home. Doris looked splendid – fit and happy – when we landed at Edinburgh Hall. We’ll see more of the old girl today. Currently we’re shacked up at one of my favourite sanctuaries, Don and Nancy’s palace overlooking Cobequid Bay at the mouth of the Shubenacadie River.

Tomorrow we’ll ask Leo to do faithful duty one more time: carry us across the Canso Causeway to Cape Breton. We’ll open the cabin, ready it for the Friday arrival of great-nieces Hannah and Sara and their mom and dad. The nieces are my kind of kids: they like to look for salamanders under half- rotted logs, aren’t afraid of snakes and think kite-flying is a blast. I just hope the rain gives it a rest.