Celtic Colours

Is it the first summer storm,
Is it the colours of Fall?
Is it having so little, and yet having it all?

Lyrics from "Love" by Sugarland

On September 25, I took a bunch of photos of the leaves changing.  It was meant as a kind of panorama of the garden.  It was a gorgeous day, summer-like, and the light was wonderful.  Today, October 3, I took a few more photos, and wow, what a difference a couple of weeks makes!  The colours are now almost at their peak, and the highlands and glens are shades of rust and gold.  Not to mention, the highways and hotels are packed full of leafers from as far away as California! 

Here in Cape Breton, the Celtic Colours Festival is a major annual event.  This year it runs from 7 - 15 October, and features concerts and ceilidhs, with fiddlers and guitarists, folk dancers and singers.  But here at Willow Retreat we have our own Celtic colours, right here in our back garden!  Here are a few photos to entice you:











These were taken September 25 ... now look at the difference:





Amazing how fast the leaves change.  The weather, as well, can take you by surprise; we had a long dry spell recently, to the point where the streams were starting to dry up.  We woke one day to a severe lack of water pressure, and thought there was a burst in the pipe ... but on further investigation, it turned out there was no water in the pipe at all!  When we walked up to the power house, the reason was obvious: the stream where we had our water intake was dry!  There was even a dead fish lying in the bottom of a dried out pool.  When you rely on water for both your household water, and your electricity, this is a bit of a problem!

After hiking up the mountain and finding that the source had not dried up, it was simply a lack of water in general, we moved the intake further upstream, and this did the trick.  (This sounds easy.  Rest assured, it was not easy.  Thank God for my husband, who knows everything there is to know about water and its temper tantrums.)  Several hundred curse words and a gallon of rum later, and we had water back.

Naturally, as soon as we had that sorted out, it decided to rain.  It's rained for about three days straight, and just started to clear a bit when I took this photo:



There's something very magical about the way the mists come down the mountain.  I guess the Celts have always migrated to the same types of landscape, whether it be the highlands of Scotland or here in Cape Breton.  Either way, it just wouldn't be Fall without the beautiful autumn leaves.  You should come and see them one day!