Friday, February 28, 2020

Shaun 2002 - Feb. 28, 2020

"I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief." Wendell Berry

Shaun and Wendolene came into our lives in May of 2006 from the Calgary Humane Society. Wendolene would have been around 7 and Shaun 4. They had to be taken as a pair which is something we wanted anyway. We lost Wendolene in Oct of 2012.

https://thatsjustthewildwood.blogspot.com/2012/10/in-may-2006-we-wanted-to-adopt-couple.html


https://sunisaxeman.blogspot.com/2012/11/blog-post.html


Today we had to say goodbye to Shaun. He had been coughing for 3 weeks but was good enough to go for a walk around the nearby cresent Sunday. But time caught up with him this week and this morning we had to make a difficult decision.

 

He was very old for a Shih Tzu but in very good shape and able to keep up with the younger dogs on walks. Last night at the vets may have been the first night he spent without either Wendolene or Whateley by his side. He was a black hole for blankets pulling them all into his orbit and then shuttling either Helen or I uncovered to the edge of the bed. Most days on the couch he would come for a chest rub, first licking (once or twice) nipping my nose and then sneezing in my face before growling ferociously the entire time. As we both grew older and greyer I used to joke that if we wore hats you could not tell us apart.  He loved pasta appearing in the kitchen whenever he suspected it was on the menu often eating spaghetti like an unnamed movie icon. 

He normally accepted the changes in his life stoically whether it was his new friend Max...,


or the younger more energetic playmate Whateley who would keep Shaun's face clean for the rest of  his life. And they could both rock the sweaters Rigmor made them.






Although he generally was not one for outfits

.


This walk did inspire a poem.
https://sunisaxeman.blogspot.com/2011/04/ice-once-you-folded-entire-continents.html

Shaun's reaction to the cabin was funny. The first year we stayed two weeks. We had a couple lawn chairs and some cheap lanterns. He was quite put out. When the somewhat tacky Brick sofa showed up he was somewhat mollified. He also hated that nettles grew on the newly plowed lane. Even in Calgary a fairly soft spruce needle was cause to be carried some distance. But eventually he became quite the explorer although the couch was best. In the last few years I have begun to suffer from insomnia and so get up at night to read or putz around. But eventually Shaun would appear, if the bedroom door was closed he would demand that it be opened so he could find me and bring me back to bed to unite the family. Because family was everything to him. You will always be loved, always be missed little man.









Shaun feels I have gone on long enough so let's end with something short.

https://sunisaxeman.blogspot.com/2011/08/summers-hot-breath-small-dog-pants.html















Thursday, February 27, 2020

Illuminated Manuscript Convent of San Marco Museo del Convento di San Marco


It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by.
How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the
moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood
is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores
over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. “
                                      
Vita Sackville-West

Yesterday I saw a magpie flying by with a stick. Yet again the renos continue.

Wednesday, February 26, 2020

Venice, Oltre il Giardino


“One of the saddest realities is that we never know when our lives are at their peak. Only after it is over and we have some kind of perspective do we realize how good we had it a day, a month, five years ago. ”
― Jonathan Carroll


This week I heard a noise on the porch, luckily the dogs were having a nap with Helen. When I looked out the window a black squirrel was walking along the porch railing with a huge mouth/armful of grass before leaping into the spruce. So renos are in the air. 

Monday, February 24, 2020

Florence and Dante


       "All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain"
       Rutger Hauer


This weekend Helen and I went to the Wallace Gallery to see a Toni Onley Exhibition. The watercolours were quite good and the collages were a revelation. We love this gallery, we can have breakfast at Gruman's Deli and then walk over to see wonderful Canadian art. 

https://wallacegalleries.com/exhibitions/toni-onley

http://grumans.ca/home (potato latkes my favourite)

Sunday, February 23, 2020

Somewhere in the Badlands Dec. 2019


 "And from the study of things underfoot, and from reading and thinking, came a kind of exploration, myself and the land. In time the two became one in my mind."

John Haines

Monday, February 17, 2020

Squirrels at feeder

 I added a PVC pipe to the pole holding the feeder. It does stop the squirrels from climbing. So they jump from the lilacs. It also makes a good support for your foot while you work through the seeds in the bottom tray. The grey phase black squirrel below is giving the PVC a look but it uses the tree access point as well. Basically the feeder is empty and it is cleaning up around the base. Most of our Eastern Grey Squirrels are black as seen in the top photo, but we occasionally get these grey brown squirrels with white bellies, their markings are beautiful. My buddy Doug who lives in south Calgary by Fish Creek Park noticed they have fewer squirrels at the feeders now. He thinks this is because they now have bobcats. With the dogs I would rather have squirrels.


"Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail 
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries; 
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;"

from Sunday Morning
by Wallace Stevens 

And here we have squirrels.

Tuesday, February 11, 2020

Christmas 2019, Driving to Saskatoon


“The sky is realest: the sky cannot
Be touched and in the mirror it cannot
Be touched. He is enchanted. The rare azur
Is flawless; happily blurred blue is no whit
Less exquisite than blue unblurred. And what
He misses he would never know was there.”


James Merrill - Collected Poems

Sunday, February 9, 2020

Thoughts upon reading Matt Cardin's, The Stars Shine Without Me


"And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces. "

from Dolor
by Theodore Roethke

Saturday, February 8, 2020

Reading Thinking


"Everything he wrote, Berger says, was written “during the period of the Wall.… Everywhere the walls separate the desperate poor from those who hope against hope to stay relatively rich. The walls cross every sphere, from crop cultivation to health care…. The choice of meaning in the world today is here between the two sides of the wall. The wall is also inside each one of us. Whatever our circumstances, we can choose within ourselves which side of the wall we are attuned to.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/john-berger-joshua-sperling-biography-review/

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

A coyote and a badger use a culvert as a wildlife crossing


"I come home with a chicken or
a rabbit and sit up
singing all night with my friends.
It´s baroque, my life, and
I tell it on the mountain.

I wouldn´t trade it for yours."

from Coyote
                     by William Stafford


Link below: This is the best trail camera image I have ever seen.

2020-02-03, 7:11 PM

A coyote and a badger use a culvert as a wildlife crossing to pass under a busy California highway together. Coyotes and badgers are known to hunt together.

Sunday, February 2, 2020

Feb. 2nd Snow


"That night and for years afterward, she had envisioned another dream land, built from the imaginings of powerful women dreamers. Perhaps it would have fewer gods, she thought as she watched the moon vanish over the horizon, leaving her in the darkness of the ninety-seven stars.”

from The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe
by Kij Johnson,