Vermont and Montreal
Bert's welcoming garden on
North Hero Island, Vermont
Another view of the garden,
bursting with flowers, tomatoes, green and purple beans, zucchini and herbs.
Liese and Bert went flower-cutting
in the garden.
They picked a bucket full
of color.
One of the arrangements we
were enjoying at camp,
when all of a sudden...
the Alburg
Passage, the section of Lake Champlain on which
Bert and Stephen's camp is
situated, was infiltrated by a "surface bloom"
of cyanobacteria, aka blue-green
algae, aka pond scum! (the real thing, not Republicans).
The water at camp, which originates
in the lake, actually turned GREEN!
Is this unbelievable or what?
Read about blue-green algae here.
You can see it was big
news that week in the Burlington Free Press.
Stephen rigged the hose to
the neighbor's town water supply
and was able to supply clean
water to the kitchen that way,
but we thought it best to
abandon camp and headed to the
valley
for a couple days while UVM
scientists determined if the algae was toxic.
At home, Dylan showed us all
the cool souveniers he got on his summer
visits to Veterans
Stadium in Philly and Camden
Yards in Baltimore!
We met Steve and he certainly
made a good impression by letting
Tim drive his Porsche! Dylan
acted as navigator around Warren.
In a couple days the UVM guys
said the algae WAS
toxic
and we couldn't go back to
camp till it was gone,
so it was time to pack up
and head to Montreal.
On the way, we stopped to
see "the projects" in Essex Junction,
where we lived in 1992. They've
painted the place and it looks better now.
That was our apartment right
in the middle, L-5, up and down.
This could easily be somewhere
in Europe, but it's Vieux-Montréal,
the old section of Montreal.
Place Jacques-Cartier
(1804) in Old Montreal, as usual filled with
flowers, artists, fire-eaters
and tourists.
The Nelson
Monument in the background.
It was only in the low 70s
in late August up there...
