Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Thank You (Florence Sept 2020)


“Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what's going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.” 

from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

Monday, April 27, 2020

Box in a Valise, Marcel Duchamp, The Peggy Guggenheim Collection Venice


Helen and I love art galleries, and we always find something new, 
something impressive, something unexpected, something to love.

"I don't believe in art. I believe in artists."
Marcel Duchamp

Wednesday, April 22, 2020

Imaginary Journeys in isolation



"Suddenly Tom’s talk left the woods and went leaping up the young stream, over bubbling waterfalls, over pebbles and worn rocks, and among small flowers in close grass and wet crannies, wandering at last up on to the Downs. They heard of the Great Barrows, and the green mounds, and the stone-rings upon the hills and in the hollows among the hills. Sheep were bleating in flocks. Green walls and white walls rose. There were fortresses on the heights. Kings of little kingdoms fought together, and the young Sun shone like fire on the red metal of their new and greedy swords. There was victory and defeat; and towers fell, fortresses were burned, and flames went up into the sky. Gold was piled on the biers of dead kings and queens; and mounds covered them, and the stone doors were shut; and the grass grew over all. Sheep walked for a while biting the grass, but soon the hills were empty again. A shadow came out of dark places far away, and the bones were stirred in the mounds. Barrow-wights walked in the hollow places with a clink of rings on cold fingers, and gold chains in the wind. Stone rings grinned out of the ground like broken teeth in the moonlight." (LOTR)





Thursday, April 16, 2020

Dinner and a show (The Wind in the Willows)


“Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wild World," said the Rat. "And that's something that doesn't matter, either to you or to me. I've never been there, and I'm never going, nor you either, if you've got any sense at all.”

Helen sent me the link below to a pizza eating groundhog today, which I absolutely loved.


The video reminded me of the menagerie of small mammals (and some that are not so small)  that creep, crawl and hop thru the grass in front of the porch of our cabin. Unlike some, I'm looking at you Justin, we are going to follow the Federal and Provincial guidelines about unnecessary travel. Which means we will miss spring at the cabin, and I suspect the little critters will miss the bird feeders. However since everyone in our circle has been spared the virus, knock on wood, we have nothing to complain about. 



Okay the moose and bear were photographed from the cabin 
bur across the slough. Which is just as well. 




“He saw clearly how plain and simple - how narrow, even - it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one's existence. He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome.”

Monday, April 13, 2020

Why Italians Are Growing Apples for Wild Bears (see link below)




"Bears are made of the same dust as we, and they breathe the same winds and drink of the same waters. A bear's days are warmed by the same sun, his dwellings are overdomed by the same blue sky, and his life turns and ebbs with heart pulsing like ours. He was poured from the same first fountain."


Grizzly Bear seen in Banff National Park Canada (2011)

Thursday, April 9, 2020

Margalo ( Great Crested Flycatcher- Cabin - June 2019)




“My name is Margalo,' said the bird, softly, in a musical voice. 'I come from fields once tall with wheat, from pastures deep in fern and thistle; I come from vales of meadowsweet, and I love to whistle.” 
 E.B. White, Stuart Little

Tuesday, April 7, 2020

New Snow with Hare



More snow today. It seems spring is self isolating elsewhere, 
heeding government warnings about unnecessary travel. 
When I went out to shovel before bed I found a white tailed 
jackrabbit had claimed the virus stilled street.

"For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world
older and more complete than ours they move finished and

complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost
or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear."

from The Outermost House by Henry Beston

And we had good news tonight, we needed some.

Monday, April 6, 2020

Still waiting


I am not sure whether we will be able to canoe the slough this summer.
At present no one wants an influx of city folk and who knows when that
will change.

“Swamps where cedars grow and turtles wait on logs but not for anything in particular; fields bordered by crooked fences broken by years of standing still; orchards so old they have forgotten where the farmhouse is. In the north I have eaten my lunch in pastures rank with ferns and junipers, all under fair skies with a wind blowing.” 

 E.B. White, Stuart Little


Friday, April 3, 2020

Florence Sept. 2019 Verdi





"Fly, my thoughts, on wings of gold;      "Va, pensiero, sull'ali dorate;
go settle upon the slopes and the hills,   va, ti posa sui clivi, sui colli,
where, soft and mild, the sweet airs       ove olezzano tepide e molli
of my native land smell fragrant!"          l'aure dolci del suolo natal!"


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Va,_pensiero

We watched the Venice episode of Lucy Worsley's Nights at the Opera
last night.

Thursday, April 2, 2020

To keep everyone safe it does not look like we will visit the farm or cabin anytime soon


“The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from the summer cottons into its winter wools.”
― Henry Beston (Northern Farm)

If your looking for a book to read I recommend Beston's
The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod


And stay safe.