Showing posts with label reflections. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reflections. Show all posts

Tuesday, 21 November 2017

a tour of Halifax harbour


And now it's officially the third week of November and I'm still playing catch-up from the first day when we went to pick my friend, Connie, up at the airport. After proceeding directly to Pier 21 in downtown Halifax, at Connie's request, Wally and I left her there to explore her past while we proceeded to Pleasant Point Park.

We went by way of the industrial docks, an extension of the public docks that have been made over to everything from the Nova Scotia School of Art and Design to a grand farmer's market, Pier 21 and a brewery, a convention centre and restaurants. These massive silos are part of the "real" world of the harbour.

This pile of building blocks that houses P & H Milling Group dwarfs the train car below it.

This extensive walkway to the silos may also be a track. What do I know?

Four silos deep, this massive structure fascinates me.

The harbour is full of huge structures that I imagine have something to do with loading and unloading the containers to and from the trucks that bring them and/or carry them away.

I often forget that these containers that come overseas from all over the world are the very containers we see on trains and trucks. Just around this corner lays the prettiest park...

Point Pleasant Park
This is where we often come to eat our lunch as we did that day.
(Connie ate hers on the way to Pier 21). 

Wally pointed out a container ship beyond the little island that houses the lighthouse,
rising out of the ocean like a massive apartment building sized mirage.
A buoy to the right of the island also marks the way.

Another container ship is leaving and will round that point and go out of sight before we leave this scenic vantage point.

After checking out some art galleries along the piers where Connie was, we picked her up and carried on to our rendezvous with a seaside restaurant

. Here we pass the old Alexander Keith's Brewery now turned offices for rent. What a fabulous old fortress of a building.

Just a little cool, it was a beautiful evening, a Wednesday, to walk along the boardwalk.
We found this fabulous Maud Lewis background for a portrait, Dartmouth across the bay.

To our surprise and delight, we found some...

starfish in the water!

and more!

Now we've come to that small ship(?) (I never know when they go from big boats to small ships)
This is the one you can see in that previous picture of Connie. Wally is in an excellent mood, finally on a mini holiday with the prospect of eating out.

Here a man is boarding the Acadia.

reflections of her and the ropes in the water

more reflections of a pier just beyond

I guess I'm just in a reflective sort of mood. 
These pigeons have found a safe place to roost.

We arrive at our destination only to find that the restaurant is closed on Wednesdays.
Of course; it's November.
But that doesn't stop the seagulls from having a buffet on what I can only imagine are barnacles.

This seagull sets up a warning cry.

"Get off my roof!" and he chases this pretty girl away.

What a lucky shot of these boys on a sculptural bump.

This handsome pigeon waits for a handout

as does this female

posing for the camera

Wally and Connie are off ahead of me in their hunt for an alternative restaurant.
We cross the road and find this outrageous construction site.  I don't want to think about all the old buildings that had to come down to make way for it.
Looking through glass, please forgive the reflections.

About to turn into an old group of buildings turned shops, one last view of the street with restorations going on beyond. It is truly a lovely city.

Remember that buoy out in the harbour to the right of the lighthouse?
I'm sorry I didn't get Wally to stand beside this one to show you the scale; they're huge!

Well, that's all for this installment. It's getting harder to motivate myself for all this photo prep I must do if I want to get these pictures up on the blog. I hope it was of interest to you.

til next time

peace in our hearts


Thursday, 25 February 2016

perception

Hello friends, on a dreary mid winter afternoon in Nova Scotia. The wind and rain do take their toll.

Babu and Muji are having a cozy respite last week.

Muji hasn't been well- again
 
but happily, he is somewhat stabilized, with a healthy amount of energy
 
Babu was in a good mood and stretched out in front of me

The snow in this picture from that day has all but gone
 
as we endure the rumbling of wind all about the house
 
the boys in their usual mid afternoon repose

It occurred to me that I could capture Forget-Me-Not Cabin in the raindrops on the screen.

Seeing the cabin in surreal distortion,
 
without the screen, it dawned on me how common it is for us to mistake

our limited perception for all that is
 
one last look at the boys, still dozey, who went right back to sleep.
 
It is our duty to extract joy from life, as humble and dreary as our individual experiences can seem at times.  "Seem" is the operative word.  Looking for the beauty in the most commonplace things- presence- can elevate our experience of our lives to a level of miraculousness. 
A sense of wonder and gratitude and joy complete us as we honour our experience and the experience of the lives around us.
 
 
"What you're looking at is a myosin protein dragging an endorphin along a filament to the inner part of the brain's parietal cortex, which creates happiness. You're looking at happiness." (image source unknown)
(thank you to Jenny Mendes where I retrieved this GIF)

Saturday, 26 December 2015

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

 
Christmas found us on a sunny, almost balmy morning.
 
So I opened the windows
 
for the cats to take some sun
 
 It was late afternoon when we headed off to the bird sanctuary for our Christmas Day walk
 
just as we did on a warm drizzly day last Christmas, but with the whole place to ourselves

This year there were many people out taking photos and walking about this beautiful place.
 
Bullrush mounds

wild rose bushes stripped of their leaves
 
mostly
 
but still a lot of wild rose hips on their brambley vines
 
They almost made up for the lack of snow, set against the pines

Here we found some ducks bobbing for greens beneath the still pond water
 
It could get almost mystical as the sun begins its downward arc

and here a fine fellow

serenely glides
 
back to join his mate
 
Many photo ops for still water reflections
 
But this one took the cake: a Sundog
a prism phenomenon where refraction takes place in a cloud far removed from the sun which is actually to the upper right, out of the camera's view
(wish I could have got a better exposure; it was quite beautiful)

 we round the path looking back at the bridge from whence we started
 
Now the whole Christmas experience seems somehow far away after a month of preparing, like a big meal that took longer to prepare than to consume. If you're one of those people who enjoy the kitsch of Christmas, apart from its symbol of hope and rejoicing this next section is for you, and if you're not, this may seem like too much dessert: a batch of pictures I took on Christmas Eve and forgot about til late today, Boxing Day.
 
We drove to Berwick and here are shots from along the way, there and back in no particular order.
 
A little floss and sparkle of other folks' creative efforts.