Yesterday was day 3 of our isolation/quarantine after returning from Florida to Canada. My horse Biasini has remained in Florida so I do not have any horsey stories for you today. My husband David and I have established a routine of a morning walk and an afternoon walk. For the morning walk we went south on the road. We came to a trail but found it was closed.
This trail has a parking lot at the entrance and is frequented by more people than the trail we went on the day before so I think Parks Canada was closing it for that reason. So we continued to walk down the road. Then we came to a small cemetery. The Forsyth cemetery. The gravestones range from the mid 1800s up to the 1970s.
One small gravestone caught my eye. I could not read all of the inscription, as the years had erased the words, but I could see that this grave held a baby, only two days old, who had died in 1875. Two days old. What a brief stay on earth this little soul had. I imagined the grief of his Mother. Life would have been full of challenges then, for a farming family in Ontario. There were other graves for children aged 8 or 10. No antibiotics or vaccines then.
We walked a bit farther and then turned back to walk home.
This is Concession Road 2. When the farmland in Ontario was first settled the roads were set, north south, one and a quarter miles apart. As we walked I thought about what it would have been like in the late 19th Century in this area. What were the hardships the farming settlers had to endure. What were the joys they had farming their land in what is considered to be some of the best arable land in Canada. Now so much of it is being developed for housing. But in this area there is a restraining order on development, as it is a moraine, and an important water source.
At lunchtime we spoke via Skype to our son who lives in London, England. He was having smoked mackerel for lunch, on a bagel, with cream cheese! After lunch we had a Messenger video chat with our daughter and our five year old Grandson. We heard that in their neighbourhood people had put Teddy Bears in their windows and the neighbourhood children could go about and see how many they could find.
David has joined some others in the area and put the Christmas lights on at night. We have two evergreen trees at the front of our house and we had not taken the lights off them before we left for Florida. People in many places are turning on their colored lights again to bring some cheer in the Covid-19 gloom.
Stay well, stay home and stay safe!
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