Airbrushing Maud's Birthplace

LM Montgomery Birthplace, Clifton, PEI


A few years ago, here in New Bern, the State paid to have the electric wires at Tryon Palace run underground.  It sure makes a difference in appearance and ambiance, as you can see pictured above.

Bala Kindreds, Jack & Linda, ride in a Gray Dort (Like LM Montgomery's!)

Scenes from my summer on Prince Edward Island

Barnyard Green Gables

From the window of the Dalvay

Whimsical memories, looking forward again....someday

Now that I have a new Canon D3000 camera, and new skills from practice and a photography course at the Community College, I long again to go back and put my memories on print. Last year was good, but I wasn't properly prepared. In some ways, the Island is all that Maud claimed it, loved it, described it to be, and in other ways I can see the distractions, the changes, the movement away from the past...still, I tried to see the scenes as Maud saw them, as if through her eyes.

Winter time would be a good time for me. I would love to be there in a snowfall, it's cheaper to fly, to lodge. I will think on it...

Here are some photos, worked again, and probably will be again!!

The Haunted Wood

Leaskdale Manse at Youtube

Maud tells of an answered prayer

Ever since I learned that Edmund Fanning, Royal Governor of PEI and who also (a couple of centuries ago) owned a home up the road from me in Chapel Hill, used to visit Donald Montgomery at Fox Point, I have become very interested in the old house there, and in hearing of the times that Maud spent in Malpeque with her Aunt Emily and Uncle John.
Here is a passage from Journal IV, and one can learn here much about Maud and her place and her feelings of powerlessness . Poor Maud, it seems that no one in her life would have listened to her concerns about her beloved cat back home in Cavendish. She does not hold the power of "objection" nor, ultimately, of negotiation.  So Maud decides, what most of us would naturally do under the same circumstance - she prays!

The Selected Journals of LM Montgomery, Journal IV, p 234, Rubio & Waterston

"Today in one of Ewan's books I happened to pick up there was a chapter on "answers to prayer." Some of them were a bit ludicrous it must be confessed.

I have prayed many prayers in my life. Few of them were answered. I have lived to be thankful some were not. Some were answered after a fashion. I prayed only one prayer in my life that was answered absolutely by the book.

One day during the winter I spent with Aunt Emily in Malpeque Uncle John brought home a stray dog he had found and tied it up in the barn, saying that, if no owner turned up, he was going to take it down to Grandpa (our old "Gyp" was dead.) This worried me terribly. I had never been able to keep a cat as long as Gyp lived and this dog was a big black sleek-looking fellow who was evidently no friend of cats either. I had left a beloved kitten at home and the thought of this dog after it filled me with anguish. For several days I was a haunted creature. Then a day came when Uncle John took me and Aunt Emily up to an examination in the school (Fanning School?) and left us there while he went on an errand. I knew he meant to go to Cavendish next day and take the dog. Desperately I prayed "Dear God, please let Uncle John tell me on the way home that a man has come for the dog!"

Uncle John returned. Aunt Emily and I climbed into the pung and started home on the Malpeque winter road that ran through every man's field and back yard. As we skimmed across a field below the school Uncle John turned to me and said, "A man came for the dog today"!!!

"IF" by Lucy Maud Montgomery

"I read an article recently on "The If's of History."

After it I sat and thought of the "ifs" of my own life.

If mother had not died.
If Uncle John Campbells had been living next to us instead
  of Uncle John Macneill.
If I could have stayed out west.
If my application for the Lower Bedeque school which I sent
  in when I left P.W.C. had been accepted.
If I had been able to take an Arts course.
If Edwin Simpson had been a man I could love.
If Anne of Green Gables had been accepted as soon as it was written.

Probably any of these "ifs" would have changed my life beyond recognition. But there are no "ifs' in predestination--in which I have come to believe absolutely. We walk our appointed ways."

The Selected Journals of LM Montgomery - Journal IV, p. 235, Rubio & Waterston

Maud's Wedding Trousseau

Nice blogspot concerning LM Montgomery's wedding trousseau.  The dresses have been recreated in honor of Maud's 100th wedding anniversary.  Very nice colors!

 

Maud's Trousseau

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Happy Mother's Day

Going back to PEI in my mind and with a photo interpretation....

Well, I do long to go back.  The pull is strong.  The only thing that may be done at present is to go back to the photos and re-interpret the best that I can do.  Someday, I will return!!

Grandfather Montgomery's House is for sale!!

Here is a link to the "Lucy Maud Montgomery Museum" that is now for sale.  Robert Montgomery, Maud's 1st cousin-once removed, is retiring.  He is calling this a "turnkey operation"-which one would assume means that the famous green china dog, Magog, would be included in the sale.  It must be hard for the family to give up these relics.

Lucy Maud Montgomery Museum

Just an Anne feeling photograph from my hometown

Very Anne like photographs taken in my hometown

Happy St. Patricks Day from the Green Gables Fan Club

Gazing down the hill at Green Gables

Cavendish, PEI

The Cavendish Shore - July 2010

Park Corner, "Silver Bush" - Side View

Side view of Park Corner, home to Maud's Campbell cousins and the prototype for "Silver Bush"

"After Green Gables"

At Google Books:

"After Green Gables"

Above is a link to "After Green Gables" by Paul and Hildi Froese Tiessen which can be read at Google Books.  This book is also available at Amazon.com but is still rather pricey.  I very much enjoyed reading through some Chapters of this book, 1919 - 1920, and I must say that I find these letters to Ephraim Weber (Maud's long time pen pal) to be much more illuminating than The Selected Journals.  

So, for the LM Montgomery die-hards, the Google Books link is worth taking a look around.

Here is the link at Amazon.......  "After Green Gables" at Amazon.com

"Silver Bush"

aka:  Park Corner, PEI

Green Gables with new photo editor

I printed some of these photos at the local pharmacy print shop and they look pretty nice.  My new photo editor is certainly giving me something to work with (given that these photos are almost a year old.)  It really is time to return to PEI with my camera.  I will work on this.

This is the yard that runs between the Green Gables House and the barn.

A Cavendish sunset

Adding a water color effect.

Park Corner

It feels like it's time to go back there!!'

PEI Photos, reworked III

Dreams of Prince Edward Island - reworking photos II

I found the original photo CD from my trip.  Now, I will have more photos to play with and to dream of PEI.