Category Archives: Thoughts

If A Tree Falls

“Autumn wins you best by this its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay.”

Robert Browning

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Yes it is fall.  It doesn’t hit you, it is very sneaky. The bumblers are hanging tightly to the last of the bee balm. So cold they are some times motionless. I have to touch them and breathe on them to get them going. Smoke is coming from the neighbors stacks; the sweet smell of burning fir or birch. Mist hovers over the lake in the morning and a sneaky frost covered the car windows this week. Not a killing frost just a light sparkling announcement card that winter is coming. That’s the problem with fall. It is a downward spiral of decay that it sugarcoats itself in brilliant colours, is respite from blazing hot summer days, and offers a reward of harvest before throwing us knee-deep into winter.

I have written before on how much I love trees and the relationship I have with them. I always find it sad when we lose or have fall more on our property. We lose them to disease and a combination of disease and weather.

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This summer we felled three trees. One from a lightning strike, and two from disease. When a tree falls  it makes a horrendous thump. Here, nothing goes to waste. Branches cut and mulched, the tree bucked for  fire wood.

Fall is all about preparation. Hay, straw and feed in the barn. Frost blankets to get the most from our vegetable garden. Cutting back of the perennial garden, thinking about how we can change it or make it better next year. Fall has an element of hope in it.

With my twice weekly walkabout in search of errant thistle I was surprised by these lovely white flowers and the beautiful coloured lichens and moss.

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Psst…you gotta come and see this!!!

Said the 4-year-old. It usually meant, “look what I am doing or have done or what the cats and dogs have done: but this time it was special. “Shh “she said as she motioned us to come quick and be quiet.

wild deerIt was a beautiful female deer, down by the creek at the back of our property. We had a perfect view of her from the deck. She was quietly munching on rose hips and false Solomon Seal berries. She might be the same doe from last summer, she looks similar. What a treat.

And……. what a treat for the 4-year-old. A year ago she was afraid of the tiniest bugs, creatures, and animals. A clear case of NDD (nature deficit disorder). Today she embraces all. The telling point was when she requested help saving a frog who was hopping through the grass just before a dog training class. We had to help him through the fence, in case he got stepped on, maybe his mom was looking for him. Empathy training doesn’t come any easier.

 

Transitions

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“I love borders. August is the border between summer and autumn; it is the most beautiful month I know.”
— Tove Jansson

August that month when it’s not quite fall but summer is getting tired. The annuals are starting to fade and the fall flowers are coming into their glory. The days grow shorter and even if it is 30 degrees in the daytime its seems the nights cool down quickly and come upon you faster. The night lights come on earlier and the solar lights are all that we see in the garden.

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“Every year, the bright Scandinavian summer nights fade away without anyone’s noticing. One evening in August you have an errand outdoors, and all of a sudden it’s pitch-black. It is still summer, but the summer is no longer alive.”

— Tove Jansson

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Happy Birthday Tove Jansson!
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Purple and Red

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“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.”

Jenny Joseph   (the poem is called “Warning”, the story is very funny!)

Its been a red and purple summer so far!

Practicing Imagination

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
Albert Einstein

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My granddaughter Stella has a diet heavy in television. Some age appropriate and some not. She had a hard time with the fairy garden. New houses appeared overnight, fairies borrowed things. Sometimes the whole street scheme changed. When the two ponies and the barn arrived, she was beside herself. She kept asking if the fairies were real, how did we know, she would ask. How did I know about fairies. “They live in my imagination” I said. “Anything that is in my imagination is real for as long as I want it.”

Stella asked me last week if she could crawl into my ear. “Say what?” I said. “I want to see what’s in your head” “The pictures you see, in your imagination”

“Well,  I see a fairy, practicing riding her dragonfly, kind of like your riding lesson today. She has to be very good at handling the dragonfly so she doesn’t crash-land”

Today she was in my studio helping feed my canary. She suddenly asked how I could make my dogs fly. I was a little perplexed until I realized she was looking up at a memory board of pictures..

echo-agilityPractice, sweetheart, just practice!”

Don’t forget to practice your imagination today.

“Everything you can imagine is real.”
Pablo Picasso

Flea Market!

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I’m late, I’m late!

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Wind

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Barn Art!

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Burl art, signed 1997

Since I was small I have been enamoured with flea markets. new to you tables. garage sales, second-hand stores and especially second-hand book stores.

I can spend all day hunting for treasures. I learned thrift (what a beautiful word) from my mother “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” , also from my daughter who told me “the world doesn’t need another toaster”

My first apartment was completely furnished in flea market, 2nd hand, hand me downs. Even the piano was used.

For all you thrifters, happy hunting.  Remember, it’s not a bargain if you don’t need it, and you never “save a lot of money, spending money you ain’t got”

Mom

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“The woman who bore me is no longer alive, but I seem to be her daughter in increasingly profound ways.”

Johnnetta Betsch Cole

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It is 10 years  today  that my mom died. Not a horrible death; she was 95 and went in her sleep. She told the nursing staff when she went to bed that she was leaving, going home to her daughters. She had five of us. I was number four born late in her life. She had me at 43 in the 1950’s and another daughter two years later. The grandchildren started in between my younger sister and I. Yikes!! 45 years old and two little ones and three teenagers. Those teenagers started getting married and having children of their own. They were always at our house. Free babysitting. 45 was not the new 30 in 1955.

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My mom was beautiful, talented, creative, a nurturer. She was also human and vulnerable. Life was not easy when I was growing up. My dad was very ill with at that time untreatable bleeding ulcers and there was no national health care yet. He died when I was 18 and my mom was 61. I had just started university.  She never remarried but worked until she was 69; running a senior’s residence no less.

My mom didn’t teach me to cook or sew or knit; all things she was excellent at. She was busy and I am sure that I was a challenge for her.  My god it was the sixties and I was a teenager. The world was changing rapidly. I pushed the envelope many times.

There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about her in some way. My mom baby sat my kids always. Now that I have my own grandchildren I remember so much of what my mother did for me and my children. They had the best relationship with her.

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I find myself saying the same phrases I heard from her.

She had a song “that’s okay Rose would say, don’t you worry none, we’ll have good time by and by in the fall when the works all done” . It was like one of my favourite quotes from Julian of Norwich, all will be well. Or this one from Karen Maezen Miller “your baby will be okay”

 

Miss you mom, all your babies are okay!

“Your child is a boat on the ocean. There are clear skies and calm nights. There are storms and rain and fog. You cannot control the course. Every time you exhale, the boat is carried safely toward the horizon, its distant harbor and home.
You are the breeze.”

Karen Maezen Miller

Hand Made With Love

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Just watched the documentary on Knowledge Network about the Cowichan Sweater made by the Coast Salish Knitters. I am totally in love with these sweaters. When my mom moved to the coast in 1933 to a small island from the land locked prairies I don’t think she was aware of what was in store for her. She was ingenious though. Her first home and no electricity or running water. As a sewer and knitter she did her sewing on a treadle machine and her knitting by gaslight. With no supplies and two little ones, she took apart her own beautifully knit and handmade clothes to make outfits for her first two girls. Her love of knitting stayed her entire life. During the winter the only regulars on the islands were native or loggers and their wives. A love of knitting brought them together. My mother learned to knit the “Cowichan sweater” and in turn taught the knitting that she knew best, Scottish and Irish cable. My father always had a Cowichan sweater and we all had Irish cable knits. My mom knit an Irish cable knit coat, blanket and leg warmers for me.

The Cowichan sweater is perfect for our weather, warm and water-resistant. Without my mom to knit me one I went on the hunt. I am an addicted thrifter, ready to rescue beautiful things that people no longer have a use for. I have had some beautiful and valuable finds. My search  for the sweater was not in vain. I found one for myself on Etsy. I wanted to find one for my son to duplicate the picture of my dad holding me and my son holding his daughter.

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I also found one for my grandson and a vest for myself. Cowboy wants to know when I am going to find one for him.

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You can buy these sweaters new. They were very “hot” here during the Olympics but really, wouldn’t you rather have something hand-made with love?

New Year Resolved

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Quote from Uppercase Magazine Issue 23

This week so many blogs, Facebook posts, and tweets  were about new year’s resolutions. I deleted them all. Who would spend the beautiful relaxing week between Christmas and new years rehashing a year that hasn’t ended, cleaning , purging, making lists of changes needed; one even suggesting it would be like a performance appraisal.

“I keep turning over new leaves, and spoiling them, as I used to spoil my copybooks; and I make so many beginnings there will never be an end”

Louisa May Alcott

You see I do this, thank goodness because if plan A doesn’t work, the alphabet has 25 other letters.

I never  wonder what the new year will bring? I know, 365 more do-overs.

My life is simple, every day I collect the eggs, feed the animals and clean the barn. I try to write, paint, or create, and if I don’t get any of these things accomplished, I do something else equally important.

My son-in-law texted me this picture this morning, my granddaughter playing  the french horn; my old french horn. It was a leaf I turned over at 10 years old.

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I stopped after about 2000 of the required 10,000 hours. Should I have resolved to practice more? Maybe if my goal was Carnegie Hall. This was my last official “gig”, my high school graduation. I used to play the french horn.

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Used to be, new leaves turned over or used to do are good. I hope my granddaughter has lots of them. From one of my favourite bloggers today:

“Used to be,” is not necessarily a mark of failure or even obsolescence. It’s more often a sign of bravery and progress.

…Seth Godin

 

Have a great day, turn some leaves over, scribble and throw out some pages, remember all your used to be and do. Tomorrow is another day.

Moon Babies and Grandmother Moon

I was a very interesting child. Weird in fact now that I look back. Introverted, thoughtful, sensitive ….. spent a lot of time in my head. I anthropomorphized many things. moon baby

This is a picture of my Christmas doll Elizabeth. She was a Moon Baby. It was the 60’s and the race to the moon had started. Her eyes seemed to be looking at you no matter where you looked at her from. Very “spacey “. I thought she was beautiful. My older sisters liked my sister’s doll better. She was Mollie and was very much like a newborn. I felt very sorry for Elizabeth. I even cried for her and her hurt feelings: or were they mine? Like I said, strange.

I did get over my doll’s feelings, but I have never stopped anthropomorphizing. I give human qualities to most everything, live and inanimate. All my pets have distinct names and personalities. I talk to them like I would talk to anyone. I can carry on a conversation with Vegas, a cat, he talks back. I don’t dress my pets up as humans or pretend they are like my children. I just have intuitive feelings about things. I have spirit animals and plants.  I always get excited when I see an eagle especially when I am traveling. I just feel safer. I love to hold bees in my hands in the garden. I talk to birds all the time.

Anthropomorphizing is definitely frowned upon in some circles, mostly psychiatric.

I love the sight of the moon through my sun roof when I am driving at night or when it comes in my bedroom window. I always acknowledge her as “grandmother moon” and ask for her guidance in my grandmother role.

I am so grateful that my husband’s practice of native spirituality gives me the space to connect with everything and anything.

Like this old coffee table from nearly 40 years ago. It could have been a candidate for the thrift store, but I didn’t have the heart to throw it out.

Once I sanded the top, it was like a blank canvas waiting to tell a story. A moon story. We had fun helping it.

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You know what they say about stories?