Title: Dog barking with magpie

 

The magpie(s) have decided Nina is fun to tease, 

so they do. Here they are exchanging views. I have 

seen them teasing red squirrels and cats as well. 

They seem to get a fair bit of joy out of life. We 

always enjoy watching the young gangs of teenage 

magpies investigating the yard. One favourite target 

are the tags attached to young shrubs, they really try 

to tear them off. 

  

"You’re the one who flew down

to that river from the heavens,

as if your form alone were the only

holy message needed. You were alabaster

then in the noonday sun."

from Stone Bird

by Pattiann Rogers

Dogs, April 2017, Good Times

"These are the stories that the Dogs tell when the fires burn high and the wind is from the north. Then each family circle gathers at the hearthstone and the pups sit silently and listen and when the story's done they ask many questions:

What is Man?' they'll ask.

Or perhaps: 'What is a city?'

Or: 'What is a war?'"

from City by Clifford Simak

http://veneziablog.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-rialto-bridge-unpeopled-thursday.html

Not at home to callers

"Sitting over words
very late I have heard a kind of whispered sighing
not far
like a night wind in pines or like the sea in the dark
the echo of everything that has ever
been spoken
still spinning its one syllable
between the earth and silence"

Utterance by W.S. Merwin

The gang self isolates. 

Actually this is pretty much what we do anyway

Whateley and Piggy, action shot.

A Visit from St. Nicholas BY CLEMENT CLARKE MOORE

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse"

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”"

Dowg gone, thats a lot of snow.

"Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea;
Tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage
And make a Northwest Passage to the sea."

from Northwest Passage
as performed by the great Stan Rogers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVY8LoM47xI

Or we could go in.

I mentioned we went to the park with the dogs last week.

Shaun, Nina, and Whateley not only saw the ducks but

they made a new friend.

"If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, 

it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel's heart beat, 

and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence. "

George Eliot

"Then morning showed

Infinity's proportions, 

The proper height of the sky.

Becoming small

We were grown again."

from Growing up

Dorothy Livesay, Selected Poems [1926-1956] 

Helen began taking one of the dogs on a longer walk once she retied. 

Now that I am also home we can all go out at once taking long daytime

walks thru the neighborhood enjoying the small parks and the lovely 

mid-60's houses. Monday was a day of bugs and blossoms.

  

  

Tuesday was a horse of a different colour. When I let the dogs 

out I quickly joined them with a camera, initially not 

even bothering with a shirt. It was a unexpected treat with

snowflakes on the tongue and heads poking thru the snow.

I did eventually get dressed and leave the yard but it was the 

first glimpses that proved the most enchanting. When I came

into the house I knew I would turn to my slender volumes 

of the works of Canadian poets to look for quotes. although

 when I did I was attracted not to the poems about snow. 

But the poems about youth and magic.

"When the day bends over backwards

to bring forth the light

I must know by whose permission

I inhabit this place

in the holy congregation of animals

 and mortal stones."

from Magic Animals, 1972-1974

by Gwendolyn MacEwen 

"When he tried his eyes on the lake ospreys

would fall like valkyries

choosing the cut-throat

He took then to waiting

till the night smoke rose from the boil of the sunset

But the moon carved unknown totems

out of the lakeshore

owls in the beardusky woods derided him

moosehorned cedars circled his swamps and tossed

their antlers up to the stars

then he knew though the mountain slept the winds

were shaping its peak to an arrowhead

poised

And now he could only

bar himself in and wait

for the great flint to come singing into his heart" 

                                           

                                                                    from Bushed

                                                                          by Earle Birney

                                     From the top, Nina, Shaun and Whateley in their run.

  

By day three we noted that what we believe was a bear had stuck

it's head through the chain link. Luckily we were all in bed. 

 We did reinforce the run, which was constructed with just this type 

of event in mind and a trail camera showed no sign that bear returned to

that spot.

"The hounds laid dew-laps on the ground,

With needles of pine sweet, soft and rusty--

Dream'd of the dead stag stout and lusty;

A bat by the red flames wove its round.

The darkness built its wigwam walls

Close round the camp, and at its curtain

Press'd shapes, thin woven and uncertain,

As white locks of tall waterfalls."

                       from Said the Canoe ( an old favorite ) 

                      by Isabella Valancy Crawford

" Sometimes it is inconceivable that I should be the age I am

Almost always it is at a dry point in the afternoon

I cannot remember what

I am waiting for and in my astonishment I

Can hear the blood crawling over the plains

Hurrying on to arrive before dark "

from The Child 

by W.S. Merwin

This quote from Merwin really struck me as appropriate

for those times I encounter a chance mirror or 

contemplate the years since something or to

something. These shots are from last weekend

when we had, hopefully our last blast of winter.

This weekend we bought a Thule for our upcoming

trip to the cabin and I did a bit of yard work.

"Almost a thousand years later

I am asking the same questions

you did the ones you kept finding

yourself returning to as though

nothing had changed except the tone

of their echo growing deeper

and what you knew of the coming

of age before you had grown old

I do not know any more now

than you did then about what you

were asking"

from A Letter to Su Tung-po

by W.S. Merwin

"My! it was fine, coming through the snow as the red sun 
was rising and showing against the black tree-trunks! As you 
went along in the stillness, every now and then masses 
of snow slid off the branches suddenly with a flop! 
making you jump and run for cover. Snow-castles and 
snow-caverns had sprung up out of nowhere in the night
--and snow bridges, terraces, ramparts--I could have stayed 
and played with them for hours. Here and there great 
branches had been torn away by the sheer weight of 
the snow, and robins perched and hopped on them in 
their perky conceited way, just as if they had done it 
themselves."

from The Wind in the Willows
Kenneth Grahame

Friday the temperature went up and the snow has been melting.

"O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'   He chortled in his joy."

Though some might miss it.

Did someone say Release the Kraken(s) 

"Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand."

From The Stolen Child
W.B. Yeats



 

"The deepest sleep holds us

to something immutable.

We have fallen

into place, and harmony

surrounds us. We are carried 

in the world, in the company 

of stars. But as day comes

I feel the waking of my hunger

for another day."

from From The Crest

Wendell Berry

Friday Night a new pack member joined us.

Nina is a rescue from Mexico arranged through

a Calgary group that brings smaller dogs, which

are often in short supply in Calgary, from rescue

groups in the US and Mexico. Since we wanted

a young companion for Whateley and Shaun

we contacted them and decided Nina would fit

would right in. At present she is sleeping in 

with the rest of the pack.

The wonder of the world

The beauty and the power,

The shapes of things

Their colours, lights and shades

These I saw,

Look ye also while life lasts

from an old gravestone in Cumberland England
from the introduction to the book

Eliot Porter In the Realm of Nature.