winter evening drive

There's always a heightened sense of anticipation as Christmas nears. Sometimes it takes an extra effort as one gets older to keep the spirit of Christmas intact. It's been a discouraging year in many ways, but there have been wonderful highlights that have rekindled my faith in human nature and reassured me that good prevails.

Wally had a day off on Wednesday and unearthed me to go to Greenwood to top up our health food supplements, most importantly magnesium  which we all, cats included, take. A trip like that would leave us free to enjoy Wally's coming 4 days off.

I really mean it when I say "unearthed" as we left quite late in the afternoon.

I didn't find out til later that evening that the reason I was feeling so sluggish was because I was fighting a low grade cold. Still I enjoyed having some clear weather for this trip - a change, as it always seems to be crummy weather on the Saturdays that we've gone.

Clear weather aside, the light was already getting low and I lost quite a few shots taken from our moving car. This is a little farmhouse scene with a barn in the back that has a roof so low it appears to touch the ground as the property dips downhill also indicated by the addition on the garage in the foreground.

This was a sad little blue house that sat for sale since before we moved here over 5 years ago.

This summer new owners repainted it and put new windows and a driveway in. The wind has clearly played havoc with their Christmas decorations, but it's nice to see the house being cared for again.

This has been a treacherous week for ice with some awful accidents on the highway. I nearly fell a few times myself.  Wally slowed here as he negotiated this icy on-ramp where one is normally obliged to speed up. This is the highway on which he might normally come home on a good day, but he always takes the slow and easy route, knowing what goes on out there.

The early evening light (it was almost 4:30pm) made even this industrial area not so bad. You can see the range of the north mountain (beyond which is the Bay of Fundy) in the background.

Heading northwest here, you may be able to see all the black specks in the sky, a small indication of the thousands of crows that do an evening migration around here.

Dressed in peaches and mauvey violets, the clouds were almost iridescent.

more crows flying over this snowy cornfield.

the sun going down and it's not nearly 5 yet.

Backlit by the sunset, I suspect by the size of it, that that's a raven in the uppermost branches

of that tree to the right.

I was lucky, for all the shots I lost, to have a few decent ones of the sun setting over the farmfields.

the clouds backlit in mauve in a peachy sky

You may remember this wonderful farm scene with the 3 silos from past trips.

Though blurry, the colour is so painterly that I had to share it with you.

So many shots lost in a blur on the highway, I just barely caught this favourite house of mine as we slowly came to the corner in Kingston, Greenwood's sister town.

Looking closer, we can just make out the choirboy on the front porch. 

The eagle emblem over the door makes it look somewhat American.

Like a fuzzy1940's Christmas card, I'll end here, with more to show you over the weekend.

Have a jolly old time of it dear ones.

This festive season takes some careful negotiating sometimes. That's easy to do when we set our expectations aside and remain present to the wonder and glory of what IS.

breathing gently into this moment

remembering that the best present is presence

birdland

Welcome back to Birdland. I don't remember such a proliferation of birdies as this spring has brought. The little sparrows are nesting in the hedge, starlings in the cherry tree, crows a few houses up the street (thank goodness, the noisy things), and the robins seem to be next door.

Meanwhile, "back at the ranch", the orange crested warbler

is still going at it

staring at himself in a window of the cabin

knowing there's an intruder there 

"Yes, I'm certain! There you are!"

He continues to scrabble at the window

(my shots of that useless on this sunless day, at this distance)

the wind made it a good drying day despite the low sunlight

The little warbler takes a rest in the honeysuckle

then on a pipe leftover from the shed deconstruction

Meanwhile the pheasant is out in the field

and a starling surveys his world from the cabin roof

he hops to the crest of the roof

and begins to sing

the song of his people, all the while fluttering his wings like a wind up toy

and the gurgling

One day we listened to him do a dozen or more different musical phrases,

a private concert while we picnicked on our side porch

hopping over to meet a newcomer, such social creatures

On a sunnier day I ran for the camera just in time to get a rare shot of the female pheasant

It's the male I usually see

and I do mean usually as they are out every day,

finding this spot in the field where the old hay lays easy pickings for a hungry pheasant

starlings are picking loose grass in our yard for nests I suppose

the yard is lush, the little apple tree in the foreground with more blossoms than in years past

yesterday, another lucky sighting of the female, though you can see how ghost-like she appears

blending with the old hay

the male is magnificent. Can you see his feather "ears"?

It's tempting to apologize for these blurry shots

blown up from images much smaller than this

I'm just grateful to have this new view opened up

(see the warbler in the right hand window?)

On Monday, Victoria Day, here in Canada, I painted the garage doors of the cabin.

This shot taken from my studio window where...

I put the finishing touches on my robin girl

(paint pens, coloured pencils and fountain pen)

How could I not finally draw a bird after all this influence as if the Universe isn't trying to tell me something!

Gratitude. It is heightened for me with loss. That's ironic in this western world where we have so much. But it is loss that puts a fine point on our overview. It becomes our duty; yes, we are obliged to remember the abundance in which we live, and in gratitude ...

clarify

ice storm and handmade book

January. It's been a month of re-setting.
It's always like that after the holidays

Muji watches Wally take down the Christmas lights.

(Yes, our books are over-flowing.)

The ice storm  on Tuesday was so beautiful, making this end cap on our deck post bedazzled.

I carefully wended my way onto the icy lawn that was so slippery I was sliding on the grass!

Here is the sage plant done up like popsicles.

the sparkling hydrangea

a crystaline mantle

I regretted not video taping the sound of tinkling branches

but I was getting covered in icy rain and had to make my way back in.

The next morning was mild, almost 10C, but foggy

which made my little boys schleepy.

With Muji's paw on Babu's throat, I don't know how Babu can sleep like that.

Last night, Wally couldn't see the eyebrow hair hanging over his eye so I took a picture to prove

what I have to look at. We laughed at the preposterousness of him letting me do this to him.

He is so good humoured about himself,

bless his heart.

This morning the sun shone so bright it woke me, but now it is another dreary day.

A lone seagull wends its way south.

Babu keeps me company, curious about what I might see.

I debated with myself about showing you my handmade book started over Christmas.

It's not my practice to share reproduced images as I like to share my own work here.

But who doesn't love to play with stamps and collage? It's what hooked Wally as he saw the possibilities.

This book measures 5 1/4 in. x 8 1/2  in.

Coffee stained and distress inked papers and sewn pockets.

The page on the right is rough cardboard stripped of its plastic coating from a coffee can, distress ink stained to match the coffee stained envelope that I handstitched into pockets. A little folded paper book sits in the lower pocket, a piece of beautiful folded cardstock in the upper.

coffee stained baking paper that I tried to emboss

with some stamping, "Near to my Heart"

The centre of the book with handstitched coffee stained pockets. The tags are an assortment of bought and punched tags. We went nuts for tags pre-Christmas, scouting office supply and craft stores,  distressing them and adding stamping and collaged book and scrapbook papers and cardstock.

Such fun.

Post Christmas we found a lovely paper punch, drastically reduced, which Wally showed me how to line up to get a repeat pattern. I stamped this coffee stained paper and...

tipped it in, an expression for adding a page after the book is sewn.

I used some washi tape, a kind of printed masking tape, on each side to attach this paper to the last page of the book and then to the back cover.

The back cover of the book. This is the first time I saw the black ink splotches on it and I love the serendipity of the distressing, done without intention, adding to the "found" look I was going for.

and so we find ourselves wrapping up January, another day above freezing,

but it ain't over yet!

I think I can squeeze one more post in before it's over.

holding this moment in our breath,

present for all it's magic