Green Gables

One last post about PEI and then this blog will return to its regularly scheduled programming (and I will finally succumb to the fact that my vacation is over and that I am stuck in the real world until further notice).

Who else has read and/or seen "Anne of Green Gables"? Those who have will undoubtedly share the same love for this red-haired, imaginative, clever, slightly rebellious, nature-loving orphan (and her friends Diana Barry, Gilbert Blythe and Marilla and Matthew) that I do. Those who haven't, I would recommend reading the series (even though they are lately considered "children's books") about Anne, an 11 year old girl orphan. Anne gets sent accidentally to a farm (Green Gables) on Prince Edward Island when brother and sister proprietors, Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, try to adopt a boy to help out around the place. But they decide to keep her (yay!), and she worms her way into their hearts as well as the surrounding neighbors/townsfolk of Avonlea. The books follow Anne's adventures on the island, in school, on the farm and are a great look into life on PEI in the early 1900s.

Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery wrote Anne of Green Gables in 1908. I read all the books when I was probably in junior high or something. And ever since then I felt some sort of special connection with PEI and the beautiful landscape that Anne lived in. I knew I someday wanted to go there. Apparently, loads of other people do too, since Anne fans and sites are one of the island's main sources of tourism. While we were there 2 weeks ago (check out pics of our trip here), we visited Green Gables in Cavendish, the setting for the popular Anne novels.

Green Gables is a circa 19-the century farm owned by Lucy Maud Montgomery's cousins, the Macneill family. Montgomery visited her family here on the farm as a child, and this is where she got all her inspiration for the books. It has been named a National Historic Site and is part of the Prince Edward Island National Park. You can take a guided or self-guided tour through the house and surrounding area (including the mile long trail "The Haunted Woods" and "Lovers Lane" - favorite stomping ground spots that Anne herself named in the books). Some of the farmland around the house has also been converted into a golf course (when tourism ranked higher on the priority list than conservation).

We took the self-guided tour. We had 2 boys (ages 9 and 14) with us - looking back, they might have enjoyed visiting Avonlea, the village of Anne of Green Gables more. It's a storybook town set up like things would have been back in the early 1900s, where characters from the book walk around and you can participate in activities like square dancing, horse and cart racing, oyster shucking, watch pig races, or dress up in period costume for a photo shoot. (This tourist attraction is in Cavendish too, just the down the street from Green Gables.) But I thoroughly enjoyed strolling along the same wooded trails that Anne did (ok, I know its all made up, but you know what I mean!) and seeing the farmhouse as it would have been a hundred years ago.

Here's some pics from the day...I really loved seeing the interior of the farmhouse. Amazingly, the inside rooms offered a lot of inspiration for current home decor...guess some things never go out of style!

{love this muted green painted trim and door}

{i wouldn't mind a hutch like this in my dining room}

{i was really drawn to this wallpaper pattern and color, and you can never have too many lovely white ceramics}

{aren't those wooden hat-box things cool?}

{according to Wikipedia this was Anne's room - it was so crowded in there I must have missed the sign that said this, otherwise I would have taken my own photo!}

{sorry its so small, but a panoramic view of Green Gables from Wikipedia}