truly grateful

Our Thanksgiving long weekend is over, but can thankfulness ever be over? Can we afford the blindness of thinking that we exist in complete isolation, immaculately free of any support, islands unto ourselves?

In a state of romantic nostalgia, Wally made his father's green tomato soup,

which turned out to be stewed tomatoes, thick and somewhat tart. ok...

I think it wasn't quite the way Wally remembered it, but you know what? It was worth the try.

 

 

We spent a good chunk of the weekend  continuing with our fall clean up, tidying the garage, trimming hedges as well as taking advantage of the beautiful weather to hang laundry and open windows. No sooner had I brought the laundry out than this unusual stripey bug was sitting on the first item I went to hang. I scrambled in the house for my camera.

 

By dusk, I was drawn out to take a few parting shots of the hayfield,

 

the colours glowing in the failing light.

I took a picture of the tomatoes with their guardian

 

then the dark beauty of the hollyhocks that have made a last stand,

or rather droop as they have grown downwards.

I lay a hydrangea stem down on the bench by the composter

 

as I photographed the green tomatoes that are thriving inside the composter,

 preventing us from using it this year.

 

Here is the hydrangea stem in a vase of Ninebark that Wally pruned.

It spent the night in the vestibule to keep the cats from destroying it, 

as if it was in a florist's refrigerator.

 

Are you still feeling the wistfulness of autumn as I am? This is a time of contrast, great beauty, abundance and loss. This quote by Mark Twain keeps helping me to put things into perspective:

 

"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble.

 It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."

 

The ego resides in our attachment to sadness, timidity and false modesty as surely as it does in arrogance, disdain and pretense; the trick is to catch it before it does more damage. My impression is that "it's what [we think we know] for sure..." that gets us "into trouble." Once we realize we can never know the ultimate "Reason", whether it's the proverbial missing the flight that goes down, or losing the chance of a desired job that will be made redundant 6 months later, we eventually learn to "roll with it". 

 

Identifying the ego in most of what we "think" suppresses its importance.  

This makes me truly grateful.

 

 

 

nature walk in town

Hello again. Plunked into September and still no sign of colour change in the trees.  Despite being on a similar latitude to Ottawa, the Season always arrives late here and stays later as well. The wildflowers, however,  are doing their Autumn dance.

I stepped into the garden before going for a walk to check in on a few favourites.

This beauty has flowers that unfurl from the pod as shown here, kind of like a Jack in the Pulpit.

 

The smaller clematis that took off after our violet ones died out are still going strong on the composter trellis.  They leave these beautiful fluffy hearts when their petals fall.

like little starbursts

 

We had a record growth of Echinacea this year, but now they are past prime.

This little bumblebee is napping on a petal.

The cement sheep went into the garden a while back when Wally began staining the deck.

 

 a red chard is bravely growing through the clover

Our 7 Harelson apples didn't fare too well despite our keeping the deer at bay as we didn't spray them for bugs. But these 2 have hung on. We will celebrate the day we eat them, probably fresh off the tree as we did last year. Just below them you can barely see the cement sheep in the garden.

 

This lovely forest floor scene is immediately across the road

 where our neighbours keep their property wild, much to our delight.

 

There's always some bug in a wildflower.

 

If you look closely you can see the ladybug on this Queen Anne's Lace gone to seed.

How similar she is to the seeds (minus their "millipedes").

A lovely stand of yellow Tansy.

Aha! Who's this?

 

a Locust Borer it turns out, named not because he is a locust, but because

they lay their eggs in the bark of Locust trees. It turns out that they like to feed on Goldenrod.

I guess the colour confused this one.

 

I was happier not to know the stats but to admire their lovely jackets.

 

Another stat that drove me absolutely "buggy" was the name of this plant. What was worse is that I once knew it, but try as I might, I couldn't find the right words to narrow down my search.

I even knew that it started with an "S".

Eventually, knowing it had a somewhat succulent leaf, I found it in domesticated rock garden plants even though I always seem to find it growing wild.

It is called "Sedum"!

 

I will take a break here as I continue to go through the 120+ photos I took that day,

a lovely nature walk right here in town.

peace

july morning

Using that same upside down flower idea, I made a birthday card.

"Out of the tree of life I just picked me a plum.

You came along and everything started to hum.

Still, it's a real good bet, the best is yet to come."

by SHANNON GREENE / TERRY TODD

I just love how the top 2 leaves make a natural collar

The hydrangeas are blooming with a vengeance

the shrub of many stalks is about to take over the garden

moving in for the attack

I love the green blossoms

even greener prior to blooming

glorious spring green, the colour we are trimming our house in

here's a hint of it around the basement window (more pictures to come)

This is where I sit in late afternoon to read a book. I've got 4 on the go right now.

across the little deck I have this rescued chair with its visiting potted flowers for company

I was surprised to find the miniature wild roses blooming.

 I found them by following their saturated rosy scent.

on the screen a startling red visitor

a mixed media spread I started last night, not quite finished

a detail of the queen

are you stopping to smell the roses?