last days of september

It is a dark and gloomy day ...

but Boy! Is it welcome!

It's been quite the drought these many weeks. I don't remember the last time it rained. July?
The irony is not lost on me, considering the devastation that wind and rain have brought to so many this last month while we have waited longingly for a bit of that rain. Nature, for all her beauty, well, I have my reservations.

One can't help but admire her, keeping a huge amount of respect in reserve.

Here, one evening, we pass the Agricultural Centre on our way into town. This is where I saw a fox nosing around on the lawn a few weeks ago, oblivious to the cars; a rare sighting.

New Minas is a big box town, full of little plazas and a mall. 

Since this is one of the few pictures that turned out on this balmy evening after the heat of day, I thought I'd share it, especially as the moon and the sweet light lend a beauty to almost anything.

A grand Victorian that stood on the market for quite a while

is most wonderful when it is decked out for Christmas. The rest of the time it is a little spooky as some Victorian houses are wont to be.

Little houses like this one on the main drag get bought up for business,

this one by a discreet professional.

I've been promising myself to remember to bring my camera when we go out in the evening as we see the most amazing sunsets across the wide expanse of parking lots, this one at the mall.

The primordial roar of triumph!

After Wally assembled the first wall unit, we searched for months for the dowels, bolts and brackets for the second one til Wally finally searched the hardware stores for the missing pieces, even travelling to Berwick for them. In the meantime, he stripped wallpaper, patched plaster cracks, sanded, primed and painted the room, researched the best way to preserve our vintage linoleum floor and proceeded to clean it as well.

Imagine his chagrin when he realized that he had assembled the first unit with a top part on its bottom and now had 2 bottom parts with which to assemble the second unit. Patient, dear Wally replaced one of the "tops" with a bottom on that first unit and proceeded to assemble the second unit with a proper top and bottom. Hence his out-of-character rejoicing! He holds my father's mallet that came in handy for pummelling the dowels into place.

This narrow room once was our guest room. Then it was where Wally set up oil painting. It began to fill with more and more random supplies til it was a holy mess. I measured the units, each 6 feet long to run the length of the room, but it only exaggerated its narrowness and created a corridor where a planned table is to go. It is actually an "L" where it turns to the left by the half revealed window and opens into a closet that creates the ceiling of the stair landing below. How to keep it open and welcoming, functional and cheerful, that's been the question. I'll show you what we come up with as it progresses. I have a feeling I won't love it so much as I do when it's empty.

Now we move onto my boys. Babu looking most fetching.

Muji admiring my art,

then hunkering down for a nap

Babu on another day, licking his chops after breakfast

Try to get this boy when he's not moving.

oh-oh, two little monkeys squaring off. These little tiffs don't last long and often break up with a licking session or just plain obliviousness. You know, the cat kind where "it never really happened".

Muji was feeling particularly needy this day and needed lots of cuddles.

I forget just how small he really is until I see him in context like this.

I've been pulling out my watercolours lately. This one embellished with white details with the uni-ball Signo and outlined with a fine Pitt pen in black india ink. The busyness of the washi tape border gives me a Persian miniature vibe that I really like.

Then, as often happens after I use a lot of colour, I turned to the monochromatic palette of a mechanical pencil, but ended up adding some paint pen because I can't help myself. It was interesting going over the bright pink roses in her dress with more graphite to help them recede.

And now I must continue restoring the new studio. Hopefully I'll have some pictures to share of it by next week. Til then, be well, be centred, be present for everything you do, you see, you hear.

It is the gift.

what's snew?

SNOW!

It was really looking like spring over this last week.

We were seeing the deer grazing quite regularly, and finally caught sight of the piebald yearling

that was just a baby last spring.

We usually see the deer at day's end when the light is low, hence the poor shots.

This past weekend we headed off to Greenwood again to my favourite health food store, Valley Natural Foods. My order of kelp was in.

The spring runoff was pooling in the low parts of the farmfields.

As always, I took particular pleasure in the line up of trees on field edges.

This fan of pines was particularly sweet.

But then, so were these lovelies.

Some of the farms we saw as we drove through the Annapolis Valley

with the North Mountain in the background

another stand of trees bordering a somewhat overgrown field

Coming into Kingston, this super stand of firs greets us

Aha! My darling little house that I show you each time we come

Well, Greenwood and the health food store have come and gone and we are driving home again

past some cultivated blueberry fields with an out-of-place subdivision bordering them.

past a little creek with a pretty stand of stunted trees or, as we would say here, "scrub"

The evening sun finally shows beneath the clouds, casting its golden light across the fields

lighting our way like a stage

I had to include this blurry shot for its drama

We got off the highway at Coldbrook looking up this commercial patch of road towards where Wally goes to work. This is sub highway #1  that traverses the Annapolis Valley called the Evangeline Trail.

We could have taken it to Greenwood, but it would have taken three times as long.

We turned left into Kentiville

Which has some pretty nice properties, this one being another favourite of ours.

I also love this Leave It To Beaver/ Father Knows Best house, a 1940's beauty.

Again, please forgive my blurry shot in the low light from a moving car.

It isn't unusual to see these giant houses on a hill

A poor shot of the Kentville "castle", the Cornwallis Inn that operated from 1930-1973 was on par with the finest hotels on the continent. It contained ninety guest rooms (including four luxury suites) and ten sample rooms for commercial travellers. The hotel had a head porter, bell boys, maitre d’hote, accounting department, chef, maid service, full kitchen and dining-room staff, clerks, stationary engineers and drivers.  English Royalty has stayed here.

Now it is rented out as apartments and offices, some of its façade compromised with commercial signage. My hope is that it is maintained well enough that someone some day will restore it to its former glory.

We decided to stretch our day and carried on past our road.

I love this old house too- so quaint.

This almost-a-castle house sat on the market for quite a while til the colour was changed from a drab all over green to this contemporary palette.

We come to the New Minas 4 corners where we proceed to do a little grocery shopping in town before going home.  The next day we debated about whether to keep our nasty old tin shed and revamp it as a greenhouse, but decided against it as I couldn't bear the idea of an eyesore makeshift structure to match our makeshift deer barrier. So the shed will go.

By day's end I saw a crocus!

Now I did tell you about snow. It has snowed in succession over the last few days,

interspersed with freezing rain.

I stepped out the front door yesterday and took this shot in our lily garden.

Such hardy little flowers

What an amazing thing Spring is

This impetus of Life

I still love the muted beauty of winter

There is an elegance to this palette that soothes me

Perhaps that's why I get a kick out of looking at my pictures from behind.

Here I am holding up that drawing I showed you in my last post to the late afternoon sunlight.

Here it is right side up, on a real gold kick, using a Sharpie paint pen.

And here is Muji carrying on the gold theme.

“Did you know that wherever you find fool's gold, real gold exists somewhere nearby? This also goes for relationships and friendships. Real gold is found in the heart. For every piece of fake gold that you discard, remember that true gold isn't too far.”   Suzy Kassem