Friday, April 29, 2011

Some pictures of the farm. This is the original house that
occupied the homestead. Built sometime around 1912 it is a small
long cabin. Helen's family did not own the land then.


This is the second house on the farm. Built in the 1920's some
vistors have suggested it was a kit house from a catalogue and
shipped out by rail we are not sure. Some older vistors claimed to
have attended dances there. My wife lived there as a child
until the new house was built.



Willows by the drive


Bales in the pasture



Country Roads



"It seems I must content myself to be
a poet of quiet places and gentle hands
of sun-streaked sky and rough-edged voices
dusty prairies towns and wind-burned faces
eveything so commonplace and familiar"

Sitting on a high bank
                        over the South Saskatchewan River

                     Glen Sorestad

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

My wife and I spent Easter at her family farm.
We have 80 acres of mostly aspen parkland
that we purchased for a cabin.
This trip we laid out where the posts for the
cabin would go with her brothers. Actual
construction should start in July. I had hoped
for a few shots of birds and maybe a wild flower.
There were no flowers, it was pretty brown yet
but I did see an number of butterflies talk
about tough bugs. There were small flocks
of robins moving thru, hawks and some warblers
but it was pretty quiet. The ducks and geese were
back but a lot of the sloughs are still frozen.
These shots are from our property. We have
some nice views and a fair bit of water.

I will be posting more for the trip in
the next week or two.

















"The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods --
Let them think twice before they use their powers
To blot out and drink up and sweep away
These flowery waters and these watery flowers
From snow that melted only yesterday."

                            Spring Pools
                                          Robert Frost

"But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,"

                                             Mending Wall
                                                          Robert Frost

Taken April 17th, 2011

Monday, April 25, 2011



"May the bare sticks soon

live, and our minds go free
of the ground
into the shining of the trees."

                          The Finches
                                       Wendell Berry

Sunday, April 24, 2011



"It has to be loved as if it were embroidered


with flowers and birds and two joined hearts upon it. 


 It has to be stretched and stroked. 


 It has to be celebrated. 


 O this great beloved world and all the creatures in it.
 It has to be spread out, the skin of this planet.  "

                                                  Planet Earth
                                                                     P.K. Page

Friday, April 22, 2011






"Did I believe I had a clear mind?
It was like the water of a river
flowing shallow over the ice."

                              Breaking
                                              Wendell Berry
 



Wednesday, April 20, 2011

"Why wait? The squirrel beats his torch-tail
on the pine tree's bark.
The half-moon with its peak sinks down
into the sun that snuffs it out. It's day."

          Motets
                             Eugenio Montale




taken April 17th 2011

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

                                                                       


" It is another country
There is not speech there such
as we know; even the colours
                                                         are different"

                                                      Out There
                                                                          R.S. Thomas

Taken April 17th, 2011

Monday, April 18, 2011



" O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul."

                                 Sailing to Byzantium
                                                    W. B. Yeats

Sunday, April 17, 2011


"My streetllamp is so glacially alone in the night,
The small paving stones lay their heads down all around
where it holds up its lightumbrella over them
so that the wicked dark will not come near."

                                               Light Pole
                                                     Rolf Jacobsen

Friday, April 15, 2011

Wednesday I was taking some photos at a
lovely pond with ducks and geese and it looked
like spring. Wednesday night 6 inches of heavy
wet snow with lots of slush and we were back
to a winter wonderland.


Thursday I dropped by the pond a little
after seven. One brave feathered icebreaker
was making some paths.



Some folks were just looking iconic. 


I went back at lunch.  It looks like interpretive
dance has broken out



And back in the parking lot some of us
are still sprucing up for spring.


" Calling softly to the fixed lakes

As earth gets up in the frosty dark, at the back of the Pole Star
And flies into dark
Through the precarious crack of light

Quacking Wake Wake"

                                        The Wild Duck       
                                                Ted Hughes






Thursday, April 14, 2011

Wednesday at lunch I went to a pond near my
office. Last week it was ice covered, now it
has melted and the mallards and geese are
enjoying it, which involved chasing each other.
The pond is fed by pumps that
are not actually turned on until May to
discourage nesting. Either the policy has
changed or I think this may be melt water,
we have had a lot of snow this year.



I suspect someone has already been
feeding them, they get pretty chummy.


"When the geese come back in the Spring
And they learn that their friend has gone,
I wonder will they take to wing
And try to follow him on?"

 

"There were hunters wherever they flew,
And snares for the careless wing.
Now, they'll grieve for the friend they knew
When the birds come back in the Spring."

both verses from a
Tribute to Jack Miner
                  by Edgar A. Guest

 While Canadian Geese are not popular I was
raised in Southern Ontario and made many trips
to the Jack Miner Bird Sanctuary.  A hunter turned
conservationlist he worked a great deal with
Canadian Geese and was nicknamed Wild Goose
Jack. Some claim he was actually so successful
in attracting geese to his property that he
changed the flight paths of the migrating geese.



Tuesday, April 12, 2011



An indulgence after a long week.

"in your dream there had been a pencil
or a pen or even a paintbrush
if only there had been a flower"

             A New Poet
                               Linda Pastan












Monday, April 11, 2011




"the walk liberating, I was released from forms,

from the perpendiculars,

     straight lines, blocks, boxes, binds

of thought

into the hues, shadings, rises, flowing bends and blends

          of sight:"

                                                





The quote above is from one of my favorite
poems Corsons Inlet by A.R. Ammons. While
my walk was restricted to the parks and
parking lots close to my office I try to capture
some of the spirit.


"so I am willing to go along, to accept

the becoming

thought, to stake off no beginnings or ends establish

      no walls: "

                                                                                                     Corsons Inlet  
                                                                 A.R. Ammons

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Hi, are these the Willie Wonka auditions?






     

All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up."
                                   Sunset Boulevard