“Well, that gives a whole new meaning to the great outdoors,” my husband quips. We’re on one of those summer day backroad explorations of Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley. As we turn a corner near Grand Pré and there they are standing stark in a field. Three doors to nowhere. Are they a statement on futility, eternity or just some rural fun? I’m guessing fun ‘cause there’s also the well-placed milk can and doesn’t that number “nine” look new?

Just a couple of winding kilometres on and we stop again, captured by the whimsy of a front lawn bursting with wooden flowers, the magical creations of Cora Mae Morse. Her decorative cedar chairs, tables, screen doors and garden gates are a hand-painted frenzy of pansies, irises, lupines, sunflowers and wild roses.

But now we’re getting hungry. We’ve already loaded up with artisanal cheese—havarti with fenugreek, gouda with cumin—as well as some local honey from Fox Hill Cheese House, a sixth-generation family farm deep in the fields and apple orchards overlooking beautiful Cape Blomidon. We’re also hauling home first-of-the-crop peaches-and-cream corn, some of the season’s last luscious raspberries and a flat of blueberries from a roadside stand. We’ve had double-shot lattes at fair-trade coffee roaster Just Us! Coffee Roasters Co-op and we want to leave time to wander the wildflower labyrinth at the Tangled Garden plus get some of their herb-flavoured hot pepper jelly. So we decide on the always-reliable fish chowder (homemade with haddock) at the nothing-fancy-just-good-home-fare café of the Evangeline Inn and Motel.

On another day, we’ll try winery stops, maybe a slow-food extravaganza or a hike to Cape Split. But this day, as the sun sets over the Minas Basin, leaves us singing. It’s been just perfect.

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