Waiting on Summer

 I'm freezing! In spite of the number on the calendar, how can it be June 5th when my thermometer on the deck read +2º C when I woke up this morning? There is a small huddle of bedding plants beside the porch, waiting to be transplanted. The frost-free date in our part of the world is supposed to be May 24th. We had a heavy frost on May 25th and things have not warmed up much since. I guess this is global warming weather, but where's the 'warm'?

However, there are compensations. I can work outside in enough clothes that the ravening hordes of black flies and mosquitoes don't have much of a target. I can work outside without sweating (except when digging up topsoil). And, in spite of the cool, cool breeze I am going to have to do that this morning because the poor little seedlings in the huddle need more room for their roots and I have to plant them, arctic air notwithstanding. Today.


Mostly at this time of year we have all the windows open and are greeted each morning with a chorus of bird song. (And at night we hear the barred owl whooing away as we go to sleep.) My favourite singer is the rose breasted grosbeak. We had four males competing - as much as these gentle birds do compete - at the feeder and I am sure we have at least two breeding pairs now. Their song is lovely. We also seem to have song sparrows this year, and a few American goldfinches, but no white throated sparrows so far. Even bundled up in a bug shirt, being outside is an aural treat. Not quite as amazing as an English garden in May, but very nice.

My two standard lilac are done - only skeletal seed pods remain - but the Japanese lilac by the kitchen porch, in spite of the beating it took from the snow last December, is just opening and the butterflies are starting to attend.

Thus the joys of country living in a Canadian spring. I wonder if it sounds pretty tame or even boring. Frankly, there are times when I am bored. Times when the job list does not look the least bit enticing, but there is no excuse to turn it face down and do something fun. As of tomorrow my wonderful friend, always good for conversation, cutthroat Scrabble or a 'run away' day, will have been dead a year. We had dinner at her home last night, as her daughter was in town for a two day visit, and it was fun. But not the same. It will never be the same. And there is no point in mourning, but the tears well up anyhow sometimes.

Speaking of Scrabble, I am being crushed in on-line games by three wickedly clever opponents. I think I am at about my sixth consecutive loss, and am trailing badly in two out of the three games I am playing now. Some of it is lousy tiles - a row of seven vowels, followed by a row with no vowels at all - but a lot of it is that they are just plain outclassing me. Sob.

And it has now warmed up enough outside that I have absolutely no excuse not to go and rescue my bedding plants. Ah well.

Down Town Time

It is May, and therefore the time when university professors go gallivanting around in the small gap between exams and summer school and research projects. The YD and partner are off to Brazil, and I am in the city looking after Miss M.

When she was much smaller, her parents would drop her off Chez G when they went to conferences, but she now has not only school but also gymnastics practice most school nights and so Grama is doing the driving to gym and the school drop off and all that. Grama does not have to do much else, though, as Miss Almost Ten M got herself up this morning, got her room cleaned and her clothes on (except for the odd tiny button), made her own breakfast and lunch and wrote her own email answer to her mother's morning message. Grama watched in amazement. They grow up before you can blink, almost. From mop-headed toddler to sophisticated, integrated young woman seems to have happened so fast and so soon. Not that I miss pushing the stroller for hours at a time. Much.

So, here I am perched, almost downtown, until the weekend, with very little to do. I did bring my Minute book because I have a set to write ASAP. I do have a fairly comprehensive shopping and errand list. But I also have two cameras, cardinals singing on both sides of the house, a very simple supper (hamburgers, please, Grama) to prepare and hours of time on my own when all the things I have listed under JOBS are undoable because unreachable.

I have just been paging through the archives of this blog and am amused to find that there is a post in May most years from the ED's home, celebrating emancipation from the home tasks and marking the grandkid's growth and behaviour changes. I repeat myself. Both the YD and Miss M point this out to me. I am quite sure this is going to get worse, too, as my mother and grandmother were very prone to retelling stories.

Meanwhile JG is at our home, dog and cat sitting and lamenting the fact that he thinks the dog has rolled in something noxious, probably bear shit. What a time for me to be away from home!

The YD is going out to our place on Saturday to pick up her (hopefully clean) animals and help her father dismantle my pool, since we are shutting it down and selling it. A sad decision, but a necessary one as we have to simplify some of the jobs that a rural home on three hundred acres of 'Managed Forest' requires. I gave up my Community Health Centre involvement almost a year ago, and the other committee I work on, the Active Seniors' Koalition, is folding up for lack of funding. We did get one last infusion of cash, though, to run a one day 50+ Activities Exposition and that takes place next week. The bulk of the JOBS that I have left behind have to do with that. The rest are either housework, or things that need to be done for the Hall Committee of which, lacking my wonderful friend Marion, I am now secretary, publicity person and (sob) baker of pies.

However, I have this break and we have rented a cottage for the whole family for two whole weeks this summer. It faces south, too, and I will have to photograph something other than spectacular sunsets. We're going to be on the Ottawa river this year instead of the Rideau canal system. The YD assures me that the water is usually warm since the upstream dams release top water. I hope she is correct in that.

Time to quit this quite boring catch-up and give Miss M's cat back her chair. And, I guess, get the white cat hair off my denim covered butt.

I have a three page instruction email from the YD with about the same amount of tasks to do with their menagerie as with care and feeding of Miss M. And, once I have pampered the pets, I want to find and buy plain white and good quality summer tee shirts. An almost impossible task.

Cardinal is now singing very close by. Time for the telephoto and some careful stalking.

Touring in Tel Aviv

 This is a composite view, taken from the Eretz Israel Museum, of downtown Tel Aviv, city of highrise hotels and flats.

 These are two views of the Tel Aviv shore from our hotel, on successive days. The first is a telephoto at sunset to show the surf at the breakwater.

 And this is two days later, with the wind down (some), showing an intrepid parasailor, squeezing out the last minutes of daylight.

 

 There is a wonderful brick walkway all the way from the modern harbour to the ancient harbour of Jaffa, the seed from which modern Tel Aviv grew.

I walked this promenade from the hotel to Jaffa and back, about two kilometres and explored the winding streets and height at Jaffa. Here are some photos from that walk.

From the hotel beach. The promentory in the distance is Jaffa.

Partway. The spray from the surf was breaking over the path ahead of me.

The start of the Jaffa wall with the bits of stone marking the very narrow harbour entrance just showing to the right of the buildings.

Looking back along the beach I had walked.

Part of the old Jaffa wall.

From the park at the top of Jaffa's hill.

And that is as far as the edits go today. Next installment includes Mary as a blue float in the Dead Sea.

Wind to Their Wings

When I was a young girl, back in the days of white picket fences, smocked dresses and pigtails with grosgrain ribbon bows, I had an aunt who was an art teacher, a very partisan and loving aunt who told me what a talented artist I was. In fact, I had good eye/hand coordination and lots of art materials my family gave me for gifts. As a teenager I took lots of art classes and was taught to paint in oils. I learned to produce (bad) landscapes in the School of Seven genre, and finally realized I was an averagely skilled amateur.

I think my experience, outside of the enthusiastic aunt, was pretty typical of how children are encouraged to learn the visual arts. A cursory scan of painting and sculpture from any age and culture will show 'schools', types or 'genres', ways of interpreting the world that are passed from teacher to student and are the accepted conventions of that place and time. As examples, the stylized silhouettes of classic Egyptian painting and the incredibly realistic male nude statues of classical Greece come immediately to mind. Technique and style are refined over generations of artists, reach an apex and sometimes decline into over ornamentation and bad copying, but are recognizably a type.

It is my speculation that this has been so because of a need in the human psyche to represent what is seen and to preserve what is pleasing, to make a record, to speak, so to speak, visually. People crave portraits, illustration of stories, colour and line to decorate their lives. And up until not very long ago, art was the only way to have these things. So children learned the conventions of their society and internalized them and followed them as adults.

Then came the camera and the artist's world changed. A photograph was not only a more accurate record or illustration, but also a less expensive, more accessible form of record or decoration. 'A picture is worth a thousand words', right? And photography, since its inception, has become more and more accessible. Most of us can now take photos and even videos of events as they happen by pulling our mobile phones out of our pockets. Our artists are free to fly, to speak in many 'languages', not just in the conventions of the time. And people who are drawn to the visual arts find themselves in a world of infinite possibilities, both with the conventional tools of pen and brush and the digital manipulation of photographic images.

So, where does that leave our children? How do we teach them now? What do we teach them? I have watched with fascination the evolution of my granddaughter’s expression with penand colour. She is a 'daycare' kid and a lot of her after-school time, because she loves it, has been spent drawing. Even as a tiny girl, her work reflected what she saw the older children doing, exhibited excellent eye/hand coordination, was controlled and precise. From a very tiny girl she followed the conventions.

A friend of mine from grade school, a fine and sensitive artist, has a grandson who is just learning the joys of art. She posted a painting he had done the other day and I was enthralled. It is unconventional, sophisticated and lovely. And the product of the mind of a kindergarten aged child who has the ability to see and translate to paper what he sees. My friend told me that he pointed out to her 'everything that was wrong with it'. She did not say what that was. I hope it was not a lack of conventional technique that worried him. I hope he can keep his own vision intact. And I know that she will support him in doing so.

So, back to my 'what to teach them' question. I think most of us need what both I and my grandkid have had - access to good materials and time to use them. And to be taught technique and appreciation. For some, the few with the seeing eye, I think that what we need to teach them is that the 'conventions', are not necessary for them. That it is good to try, better to fly.

Some of us are kites, others free, soaring birds. And both are good.

Whoo!

We have an ancient apple tree that overhangs the bird feeders. This morning, this owl took up a post just above the feeders, waiting for an unwary mouse or other burrowing animal. It let me walk right up and take portraits.

This afternoon there was a hole in the snow and no owl. So I guess it got its lunch.

What IS that thing?

Well, it's a golden swamp monster dragon, strayed from its home swamp.

Why?

That is a long, but wonderful story.

Some years ago my best friend ever and her family invited my family to a New Year's Eve party at her home. The family group consisted then of the parents and two married sons, each with their own home on the property. The senior family's home was placed at the bottom of a hill on the concession road, across from the family sugar camp, and between the road and the house was a large wide and shallow ditch. I left the party briefly and as I was returning I took the downhill too fast and slid, slowly and irrevocably, into the ditch, ending with my car nose down, back wheels in the air.

The slide was so slow that neither the car nor I suffered any damage, but I sat there in the ditch for quite a while gathering my courage because I knew that the minute the family knew what I had done, I would be the target of a lot of laughter and that they would never, never let me live it down. And that was the case. One of the sons plucked me out of the ditch with his tractor, a lot of comments were made, I drowned my sorrows and the party ended.

Shortly thereafter, when I visited my friends' home, there was a hockey net across the bridge side nearest the ditch with a sign on it reading 'Stay out - Mary's swamp'. On another occasion, the side of the lane way was blocked with hay bales. On yet another, signs appeared on trees between our home and theirs, giving the distance to 'Mary's Swamp.' And the incident was mentioned. A lot.

Well, there had to be some response to this besides turning beet red and spluttering. At the start of the sugaring season, on a day when the snow was wet and packy, I climbed down into the ditch and built a swamp dragon out of snow  - crawling out of the ditch and heading toward the camp across the road. I coloured it with spray bottles of coloured water and it was a handsome concoction. I may have put up a sign saying 'beware of swamp monster' - I'm not sure about this. Although the family may have known I was there, they were busy and only when the left the camp was the full glory of the dragon perceived. And I was gone by then.

Over the years there have been other elaborate jokes between our families. There was a plague of ceramic garden gnomes. There was a night when our lane way was lit with ice lanterns. The best one might have been at a party for our 45th wedding anniversary when my friend tried out a recipe she had been given where, if you buried condoms in a cake pan of soil with a puck of some substance at the bottom and then watered the soil, the condoms were supposed to fill with air and poke out through the soil. It didn't work quite as planned, however, as the condoms would fill up and then lose air, droop over and then refill. To say it was funny is not really a good report of the resultant hilarity and comment.

Anyway, this brings us to our fiftieth wedding anniversary. We went in to the city to have a superb dinner with the family and as we turned into the gate on our arrival home we saw two gold painted sap pails with a 5 and a 0 on them, hanging on the maple tree at our gate. I had expected something, I must admit, and thought that our friends had been remarkably restrained.

Or I did, until I heard JG saying urgently to his brother, who had come to stay for the festivities, 'Turn on the back door lights!'. Then he called to me, in a somewhat shaken voice, 'Come and see this!'. We turned on the spotlight and there, in all its glory, was swamp monster, promoted to gold and fashioned, now, out of 50+ gold painted sap pails with a green monster head and staring eyes. It was sporting a 'No Parking' sign. It was a spectacular construction. I think it must have taken them days to put it all together. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry - friends like this make life a marvellous adventure.

Only, now it is my turn again. I do have some ideas, too.

Just For the Record

Fifty years married on Saturday

In February of 1963, JG and I went to a Valentine's Day dance. The next day, as well as I can remember, we were married. We were at Queen's (University at Kingston) at the time, and the dance, I think, was the 'Levana' formal.  We were married in the Chapel in the Old Arts building - my mother bought my dress and borrowed the hat from my cousin. That's champagne we are holding, and I was the only illegal drinker at the dinner my parents held for us.

 Four years later, we were obviously attending another party or dance, but for the life of me, I cannot recall what it was. I was pregnant at the time and had made my dress, that I do remember. As well as what a big nuisance long gloves were. It's 1967 and JG is all decked out in his Centennial beard.

Here we are a few months later, getting set up to visit the Montreal Expo '67. The passenger in the baby carrier is the YD, age 3 months or so.

  In this shot, we've just come back from a Canada Day parade. That's the YD on the left, ED with the balloon, and JG with his hair grown out.  I think this would be 1970 or 71.

 A few years later, 1975 or thereabouts. At 'The Farm' with a beagle named Bugle. The kids are now old enough to take photographs.

 This is 1980 ish. A holiday dinner at the house of some good friends. Again, one of our kids took this. It was really difficult to find photos of the two of us through these years - either I was behind the camera or part of a group shot.

 Here's one that the daughters insisted on taking to mark some kind of festival or anniversary. Or, maybe they noticed that there were not many photos of the two of us. This is 1990, we think. I am now sporting the highly permed 'poodle' hairdo that the YD hated.

 Kids have left home. Empty nesters got some good travelling time in. Here we are in Holland with JG's parents; I think his father took this. We are en route to Africa, I think in 1993.

It is 1995 and we are building our 'forever home'. My father took this one, and it is one of several where my backside is both large and prominent. But it is one of very few shots of both of us that I could find for this period. We have just walked that piece of framing, called a 'knee wall' up the ladders and are putting it in position.

 2004 at Stratford, at intermission of a Festival play. We're out in the grounds, and the ice cream in my hand is one of the reasons shots from behind make me wince. And my hair is back to its normal spider silk thinness.

2012. A Christmas party. I don't think this looks much like me, but the others are worse. It is good of JG who is post cataract surgery and no longer needs glasses.

This was just forwarded to me by the YD - Christmas 2012. Yum!

Catknip

I seem to put up an inordinate number of posts about my daughter's animals. And (here we go), indeed, here is another one.

The YD is besnowed in Washinton, after a business trip, and we are cat-and-dog sitting. Yesterday morning, as the snow poured down, both JG and the animals took the morning off. Check the close-up to find Callee cat.

Last evening, all rested up, Callee cat was not inclined to have a nice nap while I worked on the scarf I am making for my grandaughter. When I sit in that particular chair, she figures it is cat petting time. Not reading, knitting or napping time for Mary. She has been known to pat my face with a scimitar-equipped paw, if I try to do anything but pet her.

 The start of the scarf - four repeats needed.

 Need a good caption for this - something like ' wool is catknip, isn't it?' Only better.



So, poor grandkid will have to wait a little longer for her scarf.

A Little Business

I have just changed the comment settings for this blog to 'moderation'. Too many spam comments. Sorry, bogging buddies.

There's a fairly gentle but thick fall of snow accumulating outside my office window, covering the tree limbs with a soft white coating and beginning to pile up on railings and deck. And, after our spell of cold, cold mornings (the coldest was -32ºC = approx - 25ºF), it is fairly mild and windless. The birds are back at the feeders; during the cold spell we had a few spherical chickadees, but not much more. And I am contemplating a list of tasks that I should be doing but none of which seem urgent enough to cause me to stop typing and go and actually do them.

In truth, very little seems urgent to me today. Maybe it is having reached my three score and ten, or maybe it is only winter torpor, but I find that I am feeling accepting rather than caring, disengaged, distanced, from the alarums and excursions ? of this weird and wifi world. It's rather a nice feeling, as if hearing bagpipes from far away, echoing through fog. (We went to a Robbie Burns Dinner on Saturday and they piped the haggis into a hall with poor acoustics, right behind our table. Oy!)

Those two paragraphs were written earlier this week, but when I tried to go on with it from the bagpipe interjection, the post took off and went in an entirely different direction than I had wanted to send it. In fact, I have the start of several posts that have done this to me lately, ripping the reins out of my (admittedly loose) grasp and galloping off in all directions. Although I end up in intricate discussions with myself when this happens, I usually have no idea how to get back to anything coherent.

And so - today we have real fog. We also have a 'temperature inversion' that is causing the fog and melting the snow into slush that will freeze into slippery lumps when the weather inverts itself back to winter tomorrow. I keep hearing thumps as ice breaks off the roof and falls or is carried into the newly thawed down spouts. It is also windy and since this type of weather can cause a tree to fall onto the power lines, I am saving text almost as I type it, lest the power suddenly fail, and my computer noiselessly die.

I am rotating between watching the wood stove, pouring melt water from a pail under the down spout into my plant water containers and looking at the weather radar. A storm with cold green and blue arms and an orange heart is heading straight for here. I suspect that in a short time it will be pouring rain onto the slush that the warm wind has made of our snow. Am I obsessing about the weather? I'm Canadian - of course I am.

Did you know that when there's a weather inversion, it is very hard to make the wood stove draw properly? If you didn't, I think I envy you. And my feet are now wet because I was pouring ice cold water while wearing Birkenstocks and socks.

And there went my morning. Does anyone have any good advice as to how to get the most out of Kijiji?

Post Holiday Feeble Musings

There was a watercolour dawn this morning - faint pink wisps of cloud against a sky washed with pale, pale blue. Later, as the sun cleared the horizon (and I trekked down the lane way for the newspapers), all the trees wore glitter and gold, the gold reflecting from ice rime covering even the tiniest twigs. Unfortunately there is some (more!) snow forecast, and the sky is now a murky white and the snow is shadowless. The only colours are the dark green of the pines (where the needles show through puffs of snow) and some golden brown leaves that have clung to their parent tree through all of the storms of the last few weeks. I suppose it is truly a winter wonderland, but it would be fine with me if the heavy snow came off the trees and our electricity stopped flickering every time there is some wind.

Last winter we had ice, the walking was terrible, and I longed for big falls of snow. This winter we have had several heavy, heavy falls and, although I am not longing for ice, I am quite happy with what we have and (weather gods, are you paying attention?) would like some clear, snowless days, thank you very much. Poor JG is clearing the roofs with a snow rake and shovel and he has had to take the tractor loader to scrape compacted snow away from the garage. And there are a lot of trees and limbs of trees down everywhere.

I think I was muttering a while back that I did not want a Christmas tree and sounding like Scrooge incarnate. Then in came JG with the news that he had cut a tree and would I determine the height I wanted. It wasn't a bad shape as Chez G trees go, but I messed up a bit with the height, and we ended up with the angel ten feet in the air. I also ended up with two poinsettias (I am a certificated poinsettia killer), a Christmas bouquet from my darling godson, and lots of decorations everywhere. Plus the YD's ménage between Christmas and New Year's. Now this is mostly all cleaned up and packed away, I have removed dog spit and cat skid marks from the hardwood and the only ghosts of Christmas Passed are the two frail remnants of the damn poinsettias, dropping leaves in a sad circle around themselves.

I also have the remnants of a horrible head cold that has kept me doped up and sleeping every time I sat down for the last several days. Today my head is actually clearing, I can breathe (cheers!) and, maybe, tackle the piled up laundry and sew up the crotch of JG's chainsaw pants*.

After I get another cup of coffee and post this. Maybe in a few days my head will have cleared enough that I can actually write something sensible. In the meantime, though, Julie Pippert has a really thought-provoking post about young girlsand cyber bullying up on her site. Parents and grandparents, go take a look!

* For urban readers, chainsaw pants are a nylon and padding sort of apron that fastens around the waist and legs and are supposed to keep the chainsaw from slicing up the wearer, should it slip during use. They do not come with a fly, but JG likes his to have one and so I take the front seam apart and add a zipper, sewed by hand because the protective padding prevents it fitting through the sewing machine. Hand stitching has now pulled out and I need to get out my sailor's palm and put it back.