Hey Hello Everyone

So finally youget the changeto read my weblog too, my list of non Dutch reading friends is getting to long and everyone wants to know where and what I am doing. This way you can read my stories and look at my pictures, I hope you will enjoy it as much as my Dutch friends. Buy the way you if you want you can get a reminder of this website every time I put something on it. It is under 'blijf op de hoogte' you can fill out your email and click on the button next to it and you're mail address will be in the system. The reminder email will be Dutch but if you click on the link it will bring you to the right page. O... and if you fill out your email address you'll get an email to welcome you to this website (also in Dutch) Anyway,I hope you enjoyreading my stories

My time with Iva and Ed has come to an end, on Tuesday morning I go and feed the animals for the last time and to feed Sam (one of the bay goats) his bottle. After breakfast I pack my stuff together and bring them to the car .... Euhmmm I don't know one way or another the trunk of my car narrowed or I collected more stuff than I thought. I try to keep my trunk as maximum space to keep for storage but with all my winter clothes I've not succeeded completely, well as long as the back seat is not full with stuff, I think it'll be okay. Before I leave, Iva gives me a piece of her first Camembert to taste, she made them a few weeks ago and it is Yummmmy .... Very delicious and I even got a piece to try that night with my new host family while enjoying a glass of wine. Witch we enjoyed very much buy the way. It is weird to say goodbye after staying here for 6 months, but it is nice weather and I enjoy the ride towards Quebec, towards new experiences.

The ride is some 550 km and I take the time to have a look around here and there. In Quebec, I see that there is still quite a bit of snow, which in Ontario already has disappeared. I am on my way to Cooshire-Eaton about 2 hours drive from Montreal and 40 minutes from the U.S. border, Chuck and Cathy have a Garden Centre in Sherbrooke which is only open during the season. And next to the house they have 5 greenhouses where they grow the plants to sell in the Garden Centre. When I arrive at the house I meet Chuck a friendly chatty guy and later I meet Cathy who was watering plants. What later revealed as her daily routine at the end of the day. The greenhouses are not of those large glass ones as we know in the Netherlands but round metal frames covered with plastic. During the day I work together with the staff which is very niceand friendly group of people in the greenhouses. Most of them speak English and there are 2 girls who mainly speak French. So during lunch when everyone is in the House seated at a table the conversation exchange the from French to English and the other way around. Which is kind of funny, however I don't understand much of it, but do have roughly an idea what it's about. I work mainly with Lee, a woman in her early 50, which does not act like that at all but we have a lot of fun together.

I soon learn a lot about the nursery and there is much more to it then I thought. The greenhouses are heated by combustion of sawdust, something a number of years was very cheap but now lately is becoming more expensive too. Most of the time we are working on the repotting of the plants. Most are grown from seed, others come as small cuttings. I am surprised at how quickly some plants grow, I'm here for two weeks now and see already differences of some plants. They have a large variety of plants, which are going to be sold, per piece, per dozen or as nice hanging baskets. In addition to selling in the Garden Centre they also have different planting jobs and contracts to decorate the downtown area whit nice and hanging baskets. And if you think watering plants is easy then you're wrong. One species gets water mixes with that fertilizer then the other kind of plants get different fertilizer which could kill other plant if they get the wrong fertilizer etc. etc. Then some plants have to be pruned during the growth so they grow in width more than in length. And small cuttings do not take up as much space but as soon as they become larger and repotted in larger pots it'll take more space. With the result that plants need to shift and moved. And you can't place them random because that can cause the other kind to have too little sunlight.Anyway, all is not as simple as it looks like but very interesting, in addition to the ornamental plants grow they also fresh garden herbs and all kinds of tomatoes and peppers unfortunately I will not be able to taste them because by that time, I am once again on the road to a new place.

In addition to work in the greenhouses, I haven't seen much of the area because of the weather. You guys in Holland have so nice weather to sit on the terrace but here the spring does not want to come. We occasionally have still some snow and much rain that it seems like the fall. Then we have a nice day again and we hope that the weather has finally turned and then the next day ....again rain. Anyway, send a bit of that beautiful weather this way please.

Chuck and Cathy were invited by some friends to visit the sugaring off, what seemed to me to be very nice to see but unfortunately the weather was not with it. A sugaring off is an informal social gathering where guests have the opportunity to help or to see how maple sugar is created. Quebec is the largest supplier of maple syrup, juice that comes from the Maple trees and is mostly tapped in the period when the night temperature is below zero and daytime above is zero. After collecting all the juice it is boiled down to syrup. And if you boil the syrup a little longer and then throw it in the cold snow you have a sugar sweets made of maple syrup.

Oh well, so far my little update on whatI am doing, I'll still beanotherweek whit Chuck and Cathy and then I go to following address but .... More about that next time.

Talk to younext time, Gabriëlle