The many petals of this peony capture raindrops.

Favourite Things

Sometimes, pictures of pretty flowers are enough. I took these photos in a garden in Knowlton, Quebec that I visited last week. It was a grey, rainy day but the gardens were glorious! The flowers in one garden were the stars of the day.     Bright copper kettles are no competition for the WOW!…

This drawing from Wikipedia shows the layout of a typical seigneurie. The St. Lawrence River is shown in blue at the bottom.

La Seigneurie

In the 1600s, when Quebec was known as La Nouvelle France, land was divided into seigneuries, properties under the control of a seigneur, or lord of the manor. Fields farmed by habitants were arranged in long narrow strips fronting onto the St. Lawrence River, making it easy to transport goods by water at a time when roads…