Autumn Leaves Must Fall

The tourists like the autumn leaves lingered but have now gone to wherever they were from. And now the fairweather residents have left us too. The hale and the hearty remain. The Farmers and Traders Market has moved indoors. The Market Square is empty. Some shops and restaurants have closed, others have reduced their hours. It is late November. The routine of daily walks is tempered by the rain , which, recently, seems endless. Yet there is a quiet beauty about it all. It is time for those of us who no longer have paid employment to put up our feet by the fire, to read, to write, to prepare meals for friends, and just maybe to have an afternoon nap.

Spring Awakening in a Small Town

Like many small towns in Nova Scotia, Annapolis Royal and Granville Ferry fall asleep in the winter. Perhaps not asleep. Perhaps one might better describe it as a comfortable drowsiness.

Many residents disappear to warmer climates for a few months. Many businesses close. 

But now, like the buds on the trees, the locality on both sides of the Annapolis River is literally springing to life. Shops are re-opening, restaurants too. People are out and about. Tourists are starting to arrive, with licence plates from other provinces of Canada and from several states of the USA being apparent. One can hear foreign accents too. 

Nevertheless, for those of us who have stayed during the long winter months, we still found a community and a vitality. It was just a different one, a quieter one; one might even say a gentler one.