"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 

"No one can tell me,

 Nobody knows,

Where the wind comes from,

Where the wind goes."

from

Wind on the Hill

      A.A. Milne

"She cleared the garden of its weeds

And planted several thousand seeds.

Small creatures picked the flowers at dawn

And danced with them about the lawn.

Until they all, down to the least,

Where eaten by a monstrous beast."

                              From The Eleventh Episode

                                            by Raddory Gewe

                                                   ( Edward Gorey )

Small Worlds

  "The Seasons revolve and the years change
With no assistance or supervision."

Another Spring

                        Kenneth Rexroth

 

" If I moved, Basho's frog

Would splash in the pool.

Empty Mirror

                    Kenneth Rexroth

"As long as we are lost

In the world of purpose

We are not free."

Empty Mirror

                     Kenneth Rexroth

"Everything that slows us down and forces patience,

everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature,

is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.”

                                                                                  May Sarton

This weekend we weeded and set up the fountain

in the pond. We are trying to introduce for native

plants around the pond so this weekend we added

some small native columbines and shooting stars.

"I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,

I hear it in the deep heart's core. "

The Lake Isle of Innifree

       William Butler Yeats

My favorite plant at the Research Park is in bloom,

The Red-leaf Rose, Rosa glauca, it only blooms once

but the foliage is great in arrangements and it produces

lovely rose hips. I finally planted one in the back yard

this year.

This rose is a favorite target of Diplolepis rosae,

the mossyrose gall wasp. These galls are sometimes

attacked by other wasps who replace the original larva.

I have also seen a downy woodpecker happily ripping
them open in the winter. "It's the hard-knock life!"

There is a great discussion on this wasp at

http://www.talkaboutwildlife.ca/profile/index.php?s=1838

"Some things that fly there be --
Birds -- Hours -- the Bumblebee --
Of these no Elegy."

                                            Emily Dickinson

                                                89

 

I went down to my local park yesterday

expecting my usual Mallards and

Canadian geese. But I also found

a pair of Gadwall.

And a pair of American Wigeon

I also went back to the shrubs for some more

wasps and bees.

The insect in the shots below
appears to be a Hover Fly.

"Tiny antennae and flattened abdomen."
Bugs of Alberta

"Hoverflies are harmless to most other animals
despite their mimicry of the black and yellow
stripes of wasps, which serves to ward off predators."

Wikipedia

The larva eat aphids and other pests so they are
used as a biocontrol.

"The insect world appealed to Fabre.

I find the insect world macabre.

In every hill of ants I see

A governed glimpse of what shall be"

                                     Creeps and Crawls                                 

               Ogen Nash