... can make me very envious at times. As, for instance, when my
husband goes wilderness canoeing with his best friend, and that friend
sends me a handy little cellphone pic of them as they arrive at their
first camp yesterday afternoon. Ahhh, how I'd love to be there! Just a
bit more writing on this thesis though, and it'll be as done as it's
gonna get. I'll concentrate on that. Sigh...
There's not much I love more than gardening, and so as a way of
following up on my last post re: varmints, here is one showing some of
my favourite plants in the garden. We go for the "riot of colour"
effect around here! (Click for larger version of any pic.)
Above is a lovely group of roses from our Felicité et Perpetué, which
graces a chainlink fence and helps to give us extra privacy from our
neighbours.
Above is an arching rambler called New Dawn. It's so lovely and the
flowers have an incredible scent. I can't recommend this one enough.
What a pleasure!
Stanwell Perpetual finished blooming a bit ago, but I wanted to include
this photo to show how he outdid himself this year. That's my husband
rejoicing behind the bush, as well he might. Stanwell is a beautiful
old-fashioned shrub rose, and I can't get enough of the sweet scent of
its flowers.
Here's a close-up of some of those delicate Stanwell blooms.
Okay, enough of my roses for now. You may believe I have only
white/pink varieties, but of the 17 roses on the property, quite a few
are red/magenta, one is a lipstick colour warming to yellow in the
centre, and I have a gorgeous yellow Graham Thomas too. Oh, and
Minnehaha is a candy pink. So there's lots of variety.
This is an evening primrose that lives in our lily bed. Huge yellow
blooms. It's not my favourite since it's such a low-lying plant, but I
take good care of it anyway.
Close-up of some Monkshood flowers in our front garden.
I seldom plant annuals, but I had some gaps in the garden this year and decided to fill them with warm begonias like this one.
Here is a lovely begonia with a kind of a fractal leaf -- had to get it because it was so curious.
A random lily, one of dozens. Our final oriental lily, a beautifully
scented white one, is just opening now. My husband knows the name of
it, but he's off camping now so I can't ask!
I hope you enjoyed this little stroll around my tiny oasis of green.
CG
I thought I'd post a couple of pictures I managed to take of some of the many animals that love our yard.
Here I present our resident chippie. In a friendly altercation on our
neighbour's driveway yesterday, various neighbours proclaimed that this
chippie was "theirs" -- one even opined that he had christened it, and
so it was definitlely his! (We didn't inquire too deeply into this
whole chippie-christening thing...!) However, Dave and I know that
although this chippie may visit others, he resides with us. Besides, we
found his little house behind and under our old metal shed... so there.
Here is a nest of three robins to be found at our front door on an old
wreath. Well, you won't find them now, since they just fledged. We
can't believe how late birds are venturing to raise young this year.
This was the third successive family to be raised on this spot.
Needless to say, we removed the wreath right after this one. Poor Mrs.
Robin deserves a rest, we feel!
These three fuzzy snapshots are all that I have to convince you that
friendly redbreasted nuthatches have been raiding our feeder. They are
no bigger than chickadees, and like to swoop in from the nearby spruce
tree, grab a seed, and swoop on out again. I have observed them also
doing that great nuthatch thing of wending their way down various tree
trunks.
Hope you've enjoyed this little backyard outing. Cheers for now!
CG
... well, real ones, that I almost owned. I hereby wish them lives filled with love.
Jellybean
Jujube
A couple of entries ago, I linked to an article
about how powerful
North American people are secretly and undemocratically arranging to
eliminate Canada's remaining sovereignty and self-determination and to
give its assets to the United States, effectively
ending Canada's period as a country. Both Americans and Canadians should be
deeply concerned about what is going on.
A friend of mine has written further on this subject,
explaining why Canadians must never think that this would result in our
becoming "the 51st state." That would have many more official
repercussions than the stealthy sellout which is in fact taking place. Canada will not gain any status by these dealings.
Here's another article about it,
from the same source as the one I posted earlier. There is more and
more out there about this process. The people who are doing it are less
secretive about it lately, and are representing it as just a boring
business thing that nobody should take time out from their busy TV
schedule to think about. What shall we do about this? We have a right
to
object and to prevent these initiatives from going forward outside our
established democratic institutions, which are in place so that our
elected representatives will act according to the will of the people.
We need political leadership that will help us to expose
these practices for the treasonous theft they really are, end them, and
effectively prevent them from happening
in the future.
We live in truly shocking times. Where are the leaders who will work for us?
Next time you read an article about how a bunch of unruly protesters
were abused and arrested outside a conference with an innocuous name
like "Atlantica," consider: what could be making people feel that they
must take up placards and risk life and livelihood like that? Why does
the media highlight violent protest (about which most people
disapprove) and seldom explain why the protesters are so concerned? Maybe protesters are doing what's needful.
Maybe we should all be doing this work before there's nothing left for
us to protest about.
Hi, everybody.
Since moving home after my last year of university, I've been pretty
much blissed out in my husband's perennial garden, which is blooming
like mad right now. I swear there are more blushing pink blooms on the
Stanwell Perpetual than there is foliage. Can it be seen from space?!
However, today I thought I'd write about a gift I gave recently that
meant a great deal to me. There's a backstory to it, and here it is:
I was eight years old when my parents finally saved enough money to buy
their own home. We were to move in the summer, only a few miles, but it
might as well have been across the country, in my opinion. I went
around saying goodbye to everything I knew.
Sadly, I don't remember very much about my next-door neighbours, the
Cuttresses, except that they were elderly and nice to me. They always
said hello over the hedge. One day, just before our move, Mr. Cuttress
came over with a small green book in his hands. He told me that he
thought I might enjoy this book one day when I was older. I thanked him
and regarded it as a pretty serious gift. It was called Palgrave's Golden Treasury, and was the first "adult" object I was ever given.
I asked my father to read it to me at bedtime. I read it over myself
very often, even when I was too young to understand much of it.
Rhythms, rhymes, and images filtered into my subconscious, it seems. I
now know that the Treasury is
considered a significant anthology of poetry in English, containing the
best of the best from Shakespeare to Shelley to Tennyson. I believe
that this book made a big difference in my life, in the way that I see
the English language and its literature, and in my love for poetry. I
am well aware of all the arguments nowadays about the traditonal
literary "canon" -- what is the "best" writing? who gets to decide? --
but Frances Turner Palgrave knew what he was about, and his choices
remain dear to me today.
When I was a few years older, I decided that one day, I would give a copy of the Treasury
to another little girl when I grew up. At first, I thought that it
might be my own daughter, but since I didn't have children, I hoped
there would be someone else in my family or among my friends to whom I
could give this book. No one appeared until one day a couple of months
ago when a friend from university brought along her nice
eleven-year-old daughter to a dinner date one Friday afternoon. I felt
right away that this was my chance to extend Mr. Cuttress's
thoughtfulness.
I couldn't give away my own copy of the Treasury,
so I went out on the Web and found a beautiful one (illustrated here).
I tried not to make a big deal about the gift, even though I was so
excited about it, because I'd like her to read it with a sense of
delight rather than out of duty. In any case, I feel elated that I was
able to enact, 35 years later, my old neighbour's kindness to me, and
make it my kindness to Jenna.
That gift also taught me another important thing about kids: They are
capable of stretching and should be given opportunities to reach for
what they can't quite grasp yet. Experiences needn't always be geared
precisely to the age of a child; I benefited in so many ways from
receiving this very grown-up book!
Important reading for all North Americans and anyone who cares about democracy.
... a bazillion tasks left to go!
Just finished my analysis of Patricia Rozema's 1999 movie Mansfield Park -- specifically her interpretation of the main character, Fanny Price.
I do recommend the film, but not if you are a stuffy purist who wants
novel adaptations to be "faithful" to their source texts... cuz Rozema
likes to get out there and take chances!
Off to the next item on my huge list. Wave!
CG
There's a sweet bun hiding in our still-wintry garden!
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