'My Summer Vacation'

Not for the first time am I feeling great admiration (and a bit of guilt) as I visit my friend Larry's outstanding blog Making Eye Statements. It's wondrous for the original photographs, the insightful and scholarly writing, the literary links.  For me, an added source of wonder is Larry's discipline. A post a week. Photos, research, writing. All on time. Chagrin might sum up my feelings.

So, by way of apologizing to (possibly) no-one but myself, I will launch the Fall Season of 'ancestralroofs.'











It fits in a way, as our blissful summers are the time for warm-enough wanders along village streets and out of the way concession roads, admiring the history told by humble and grand houses, barns both serviceable and collapsing, old bridges, rail fences...Well. If you ever visit me here at AR, you know.

astonishing stone arch dam (1831)

And autumn is for thinking back. Sigh.














I fully intend to expand on several of the spots I zoom through here. But by way of 'putting a stake in the ground',  a particularly effective motivating strategy made famous by my clever brother, I'll start with a few photos from some of the spots that stole my heart this summer.

lockmaster's house, Jones Falls

Sure, it's not 'London, Paris and Rome.'

Pinhey's Point (1820s)

 But Newboro, Jones Falls, Chaffey's Lock, Manotick, Lansdowne, Delta, Westport, Pinnhey's Point and a Crosby to Morton driving tour (thanks to the good folks of the Heritage Advisory Committee, Township of Rideau Lakes) suited me just fine.









Especially when my home base for these junkets was our little hybrid trailer in several of Eastern Ontario's fine provincial parks.

Stone Mill, Delta (1810)

Newboro beauty

old Blacksmith shop, now Westport's delightfully full museum

 Now that fall is a few hours old, it's time to harvest my summer.