Water Lily
Sandyland Ponds Re-Visited
Our property in Port Maitland is almost 50 acres as described on property maps. Our land was owned by my family way back in the mid to late 1700s, as it was a 100 acre 2nd division piece, granted to an original Yarmouth English settler, cousin Hannah Porter and her husband John Symmonds. In the early 1800s, a first cousin, Samuel Crosby, takes over the land and he eventually splits the property in half by giving what is now our piece to his daughter, Maria. Samuel also gives a two acre piece of this property to the Calvinist Church, and the receiving person who signs for it is my 2nd great grandfather Thomas Curry.
One of the things that interests me about the property besides the family connections, is that the land actually encompasses an 18 acre piece of wetland (named Sandyland Ponds on maps) that sits between where our home is now located, and the almost 900 feet of Atlantic shorefront we own. This pond and marsh, now a protected wetland, used to be a working cranberry bog – and so unlike most other watersheds in Nova Scotia, Norma and I actually own some of the underwater parts of our property, because it is designated as farmed land!
This past week, Norma and I went out in our kayaks and paddled around the pond, and found that while we haven’t had much rain recently, the normally brackish water was unusually deep and not very brackish at all. The reason became evident as we paddled to the Beaver River end of the ponds and discovered the exit of the system is totally blocked off by the shifting sand and rocks placed there in storms this Spring.
We saw the results of this – we witnessed nesting ducks, a lot of small fish – minnows which are probably Gaspereaux looking to go out to sea – and a whole bunch of beautiful waterlilies like the one shown this week.
The ponds are really an amazing little eco-system, ever-changing and always interesting to see. Kayaking is a wonderful way to do that – as it gets one down to water level and close to the action and the beauty.
On a soft summer morning, I feel blessed that we can simply paddle around and take it all in.
