Second Summer and Second Thoughts

 We have been favoured, these last few days, with perfect “second summer” weather. (I called it ‘Indian Summer’ for most of my life, but am aiming for political correctness in old age. And, indeed, the concept of lazy Indians waiting until a dose of cold weather set them to gathering winter stores is a horrid one. Once could almost buy into ‘Colonialism’, if that is what the pejorative is, when you think of how we all carelessly dismissed First Nation skills when we said that.) Hmm. More than usually in the bracket mode today. Apologies. Well, no, darn it. I like my asides. Shakespeare, after all, used them.

Anyway. Second summer weather was where we started. Sheaves of rustling leaves underfoot, but still a grace of gold on a lot of the trees, and the odd leaf drifting down, silhouetted against that incredibly blue sky. Warm wind and warmer sun. (Yeah, lots of nice bugs warmed up on the screens, too. We will not go there.) A huge harvest moon, now on the wane but still lovely. Stars, in quantity, before moon rise. I missed, sadly, the dance of the Northern Lights in our vicinity, but one of my neighbours caught it across her fields and has generously posted the photos. 

I got her mother’s permission to put this one up.

Courtesy Jessica 

I went to our first Snaps and Chats meeting last week. The dynamo of a chairman that runs our Hall applied for and got money to buy a projector and screen and has set up this twice-a-month meeting to take and discuss photos. One meeting on location and one in the hall with the photos projected. Unforseen, the projection was less than perfect when the photos we submitted were enlarged. Definition and contrast were lowered and some of the best features of several of the landscapes did not come through well. However red leaves did. As well as the location day, we get a monthly assignment; this month’s was ‘red’ and ‘old’. Next month ‘orange’ and ‘buildings’. If I stop posting it is because I have driven off the road while casing good barn shots.

Since writing the comments on ‘Indian Summer’ above, the term came up in a discussion with the YD, who was curious as to the provenance. She says she had never heard my take on it and so we googled it, to find that she was correct. Where I got that definition I do not know, but I suspect from somewhere in my extended family when I was a little girl. My mother’s family was ‘lace curtain Irish’ self described and a pejorative description to an extent, not unusual in my grandmother’s kitchen.

O'Neil Homestead

My maternal great grandfather left Ireland in the early 1800s, as a Catholic escapee (I rather think), but arrived in Canada ‘Church of England’ and thus qualified for a grant from the Talbot settlement. I believe he got 800 acres of virgin land and he ran cattle on it and gradually cleared it, building as a family project a home and barn for each of seven of his eight sons as they came of an age to be established. (The youngest got the homestead and the care of ‘Grandma’ after he died). ‘Lace curtain’ Irish were seen to be dead set on bettering themselves and were thus not ‘bog’ Irish labourers with no education or land. Hmm. I seem to be rewriting a family study I did for a course in Social Anthropology, way back when.

JG got out the equipment and sucked up a vast quantity of the leaves this afternoon. But there are still a lot on the trees and Wolf Grove Road, in particular, was a fine place to drive along today. What was not fine was the Queensway from the west end in on a sunny Tuesday morning. Not quite a parking lot, but close. I am so glad we no longer live there.