We don't travel much in the summer. We used to, but found it was too hot, too crowded and too expensive compared to other times of the year. Plus, we were always missing the "coming out" of all of our flowers while we were away. So a few years back we decided to do our travelling in either June or September and enjoy that so much now that we rarely go anywhere during July and August anymore.

But this year we'll be driving to Sept-Iles Quebec in July - if you look at a map of Canada, it's all the way up to the top of the St Lawrence River, close to Labrador. It's my husband's home town, and it's a beautiful (15-hour) drive along the river and such a lovely place to be in the summer. He still has three sisters living there and tons of cousins, so it's always nice for him to get back "home".

It will be a sad reunion this year though, because his fourth sister is very ill right now and not expected to survive the week. So there will be a noticeably empty chair at the table this time...