Monday, April 21, 2008

Benefits of living (and breathing) in Newfoundland





I love living in Newfoundland!!! (I betcha didn't know that though, did ya?)

There are so many things we love about our new provincial home, but two have been in the forefront recently.

Crab season opened last week and our friend Paul (who used to be a full-time fisherman before the moratorium) went crab fishing today. We benefited from his hard work as he brought us some fresh crab. Caught from the Atlantic Ocean today --- can't get much fresher than that!

Mmmmmm......I can hardly wait to sink my teeth into it.

We had all kinds of questions for him, about how fishing on a large scale is done, quotas and how they work, when the different seasons opened and for how long they were open for......we just had so many questions. It was really interesting to learn, but I'm sure our questions seemed a little odd to him. (We keep reminding him we're mainlanders and all this ocean stuff is really new to us).

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I *still* love our weather too.

Saturday saw Toronto with summer-like conditions. Their temps. were in the mid to high 20s, while we were down around 4 degrees with some wet snow flurries thrown in. Brittney was quite disgusted that while her friend in Ontario had worn shorts to school, she still had to wear long pants and a coat.

A quick check of Environment Canada's website though, soon changed her mind. We saw the air quality health index for Toronto, that night (April 19), was 7. Wow - 7! (Anything from 7 - 10 is in the high range). Now, we're not talking a hot afternoon in the middle of July or August. No....we're talking an evening rating....and an evening in mid April nonetheless. Amazing.

Another check of The Toronto Star's website, noted Toronto had issued it's first smog alert of the year --- in April ---- Wow! I shudder to think what it will be like come July and August.

The above pictures were taken around our area, most of them outside our home. Three were in, March, the other in August. Whether it's March or August, the sky is very blue!

For me.....I'll take our clear, clean, fresh air (even if it is cooler). No question!

11 comments:

Linda said...

Sorry my comment about the weather ended up with Jake's poem.

Jacqueline said...

While I am a die hard Newfoundlander, I don't especially like to eat much at all that comes from the sea. :)

Anonymous said...

Just wondered why you compared the air quality for Toronto to Pouch Cove. Should you not have compared Pouch Cove to where you used to live?

At Home on the Rock... said...

Hi Anonymous -- Thanks for visiting my blog :0)

The reason I didn't compare Pouch Cove to where I used to live....was Env. Canada didn't give an air quality reading for where I used to live...it only gave Toronto.

Same as the Toronto Star...it only referred to Toronto.

We were close enough to Toronto that we were quite often lumped in together with them anyway....so if the air quality was bad in Toronto...it was also bad where we were (not *as* bad...but still very noticeable)

Anonymous said...

Hey wonder if you could give me some feedback. We are thinking of movingn to Nfld from AB, wondering if there is any 'your not a real newfie' attitude we will need to contend with.?

At Home on the Rock... said...

Hi Anonymous (2)

We haven't noticed too much of that where we are, perhaps a bit but for the most part people are very friendly and accepting(sometimes we feel more accepted here than we did where we lived). We quite often will joke, when we don't understand something or our ways are different, "Hey, we're mainlanders...give us a break." everybody chuckles and it's all in good fun.

There are very strong family ties here too, so if you have no family here you may sometimes feel like an outsider.

I find most people here are very curious as to why we moved to NL...it seems to be unheard of. We get a lot of questions about that. People can also tell by our 'accents' that we are not from here and that usually leads to telling our story....but again most of the time we've found everyone to friendly and accepting.

I'm not sure which part of NL you are thinking of relocating to.... that may make a difference...I'm not really sure. I see a huge difference between the cities and small towns here (much more so than where we lived). Perhaps attitudes are different toward outsiders in some of the smaller places but again...I'm not sure (and have never encountered that anytime we've passed through smaller towns etc.)

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the feedback. We actually do have family in the Glovertown area, which is where we are looking - I realize that you are 'down south', but as yours is the best blog I've found, thought I'd ask you. Seem to have a head on your shoulders. Appreciate the info again. Maybe c u sometime. Katie

At Home on the Rock... said...

You're welcome, Katie.

Good luck with your move...maybe we will see you sometime :)

Katie said...

Hello again, I was anonymous August 14th. Have just started our own blog and can't figure out how to put the visitor counter in the spot you have yours.. mine only seems to work at the bottom of the page! Any suggestions, I prefer your placement to the bottom.

At Home on the Rock... said...

Hi Katie,

I hope this is what you mean:

Go onto your blog and click on "Customize" at the top right hand corner
That should take you to the "Add and Arrange Elements" Page
(Assuming you've already copied and pasted the proper code to your blog for visitors), simply double click on the "gadget" you want to move and drag it to the spot you want it located.
"Unclick" (is that a word?...let go of the mouse button) and it should now be at your desired spot.
So if you have the visitor counter gadget at the bottom of your list of gadgets, double click it, drag it to the top and then "unclick"...it should be located where you want (don't forget to save your changes)

Hope that helps.

Banana said...

Thanks that was the trick!