Last night we had a lovely supper and visit with family

 

“Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.

Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies

like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,

some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,

snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn

back into the little system of his care.

All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,

tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.”

Ted Kooser, Flying At Night: Poems 1965-1985

Whateley and Nina taking their Christmas Letter to Santa

 

We will not be travelling for Christmas but we will be together, healthy and happy for the holidays.

“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.”

from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Spain

"Suddenly I realize

That if I stepped out of my body I would break

Into blossom."

from

A Blessing

  by  Jame Wright

Spain

“The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.”
 
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek 

Spain 2020

"But it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky; 

and the air smells now, as if it blew from a far-away meadow; 

they have been making hay somewhere under the slopes 

of the Andes, Starbuck, and the mowers are sleeping among the 

new-mown hay."

from Moby Dick

 By Herman Melville

When the pandemic started my sister was travelling in Spain with friends. They were unable to fly home before the borders closed and spent the first 6 weeks in a high-rise apartment under lockdown. The people there treated them well. But it was justifiably quite restricted. When things loosened up in early May they were able to move to rented house in the country. When they got there the farmers were cutting hay an activity I associate with late July or August in Saskatchewan. A recent email indicated they had hoopoe in the area. They are certainly a beautiful bird and it looks like a lovely area. We are very happy that our friends and family are doing okay. 

https://www.andaluciabirdsociety.org/article-library/about-birds/171-hoopoe/

The Farm

"Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night."

from The Names by Billy Collins

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

Evening Flight

"Where the names float like birds, and all desire dies,

And the life we longed for finds us at the end."

from A Substitute for Time

by John Koethe

The Heron

"As though one's childhood were a small midwestern town
Some forty years ago, before the elm trees died.
September was a modem classroom and the latest cars,
That made a sort of futuristic dream, circa 1955.
The earth was still uncircled. You could set your course
On the day after tomorrow. And children fell asleep
To the lullaby of people murmuring softly in the kitchen,
While a breeze rustled the pages of Life magazine,
And the wicker chairs stood empty on the screened-in porch."

from From the Porch
by John Koethe

The Friday before last, we had family over in the evening. We were sitting on the screened-in porch when a young blue heron, the first we have seen on the slough this summer appeared. It fished directly below us and in the course of 1 or 2 hours in an  area few metres square it caught at least four possibly more Tiger Salamanders. We are lucky to see one a year, often crossing a grid road, so we were amazed at the profusion, much less the size of the animals it found in such a small area. Needless to say the heron has returned on a number of evenings, but I am unsure if it's luck is holding.

"And even as it deepens something turns away,

As though the day were the reflection of a purer day

In which the summer's measures never ended.

The eye that seeks it fills the universe with shapes,

A fabulist, an inquisitor of space

Removed from life by dreams of something other than this life,

Distracted by the bare idea of heaven,"

from Gil's Cafe

by John Koethe

Moose Family

The moose family continues to appear almost daily at one of the nearby sloughs. It makes me wonder if the resident bear has moved on.

"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 

But by now he could only 

bar himself in and wait 

for the great flint to come singing into his heart"

from Bushed

by Earle Birney

The Past

    My parents lived through trauma of the depression, followed by World War Two. They raised four children from the money that my father earned in an automobile factory. Money was saved for each child's education after high school so they did not have to work in the factories as well. As with many of their generation this necessitated a certain frugality that persisted their entire lives. I do remember a momentous occasion when we got a "new" suite of matching furniture, chairs, coffee and end tables, a record player and radio in a cabinet, and the families first colour television in a matching cabinet. New was a big deal, although their nature did reassert itself, when the tv broke down the cabinet was fitted with doors and remained in our lives for years. 

The bathrooms were more typical of the frugality and homemade ethos with which they lived. They would often contain a decorative soap, hand painted with a decoupage image of flowers and legs made form pins and beads, the spare toilet paper roll would sit beneath hand some knitted cap (sadly never a poodle), on the wall maybe a reproduction of some well known painting picked up a A&P for buying a certain number of groceries and sometimes a hooked rug made by my mother. As an adult (and long since moved away), I gave my mother a crude pottery bowl I had made, it appeared in the bathroom with hold extra soaps etc. 

So recently when I wanted something to hold the toilet brush, I went not to the store but to the basement. I know they would approve. 

Please note: This can was selected because of the size. We have Scotland on our want to visit travel list.

So Much Unknown

But who shall so forcast the years

and find in loss a gain to match?

Or reach a hand through time to catch

The far-off interest of tears

Alfred Lord Tennyson 1850 In Memorian

Riffling photos so much unknown; 

unasked, the dog’s name, the smell of the park 

the colour of a hat now lost, no eyes to see, 

when so many days lay ahead; but 

the tunnel ends, alone now with cast off bags 

no one spoke, when there is time to hear

your friends name, the make of the car

All orphans to the world suddenly alone

Questions for empty rooms, empty mirrors

but who shall so forcast the years.

A legacy of things holds freight

a story of a first this or that

weddings, service, gifts cold things 

warmed by a breath of life

Held now as your absent hand

For memory, words, stories meaning attach

to the humblest thing, the simplest occasion.

Identity itself is risked in every loss

and life itself will clutch and snatch

and find in loss a gain to match?

Or in gain a loss to hatch

For each day is not a puzzle to unravel

And some nights, peace is best

Every occasion is not greater

Then the sound of dice in your hand

Sometimes from the present we detach 

new memories for old a warm touch for cold.

Like a child with a favourite book reread.

Striving with every moment to stretch

Or reach a hand through time to catch

a moment once wasted now wanted.

It seems that age can only embrace

what comes it’s way regardless.

Each loss, each parting 

each cold alone awakening.

Those unanswerable fears.

change callow youth to miser 

hoarding half remembered days.

Some long delayed reckoning nears

The far-off interest of tears

Guy

This version Sept4/05

form Glosa

Garden pond at the farm.

"2 A.M. moonlight. The train has stopped

out in a field. Far off sparks of light from a town,

flickering coldly on the horizon.

As when a man goes so deep into his dream"

from Track

by Tomas Transformer

"I go and lie down where the wood drake 

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. 

I come into the peace of wild things 

who do not tax their lives with forethought 

of grief. I come into the presence of still water. 

And I feel above me the day-blind stars 

waiting with their light. For a time 

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."

from The Peace of Wild Things

by Wendell Berry

I took the first three photos last year, these sawhorses 

of scrap lumber were made many years ago by my

 late father-in-law and they acted not only as a perch for

  Phoebes and a jungle gym for chipmunks 

 but also as a reminder of John.

  

I always think of chipmunks as creatures of parks and camp sites, 

easily tamed, not really wild. The next three photos were taken

while canoeing last night. This inquisitive chipmunk climbed thru

a maze of branches to watch us go by. There are no house or 

cabins for a mile or more. It is both curious and wild.

" Fields around are yellowing into harvest

nestlings and fingerlings are sky and water borne"

from Wilderness Gothic

by Al Purdy

Some recent highlights.

The swallow chicks from the nests by the living room eaves

left the nest a couple weeks ago and were feed in the trees by 

the porch. You could really see the dominance of the larger

chicks.

Also shot for the living room window, a White-Throated Sparrow

feeds a Brown Headed Cowbird chick. The White-Throated 

Sparrow is considered a rare cowbird host according to The 

Birders Handbook by Enrlich et al.

A young coyote approaches us on our walk. The parents 

apparently stash them somewhere while they go to hunt. Like

teenagers everywhere they then unlock the door and go to the 

mall. A couple of rocks in its direction convinced it that people

and their dogs are not something to approach. 

This summer we went on four studio trails, where you drive thru 

the country and artists welcome you into their homes and studios

to share their work. It give you wonderful insight in how creative

people can be. We bought painting, pottery and quilts as well,

but we really likes these wooden items by three different artists.

I have long wanted to carve birds so I love the Wren I bought, now

I have to get busy.

Finally the local lake in the evening, my wife and her

family fished here on Sundays so it is a special place

for her.

"This is, I think,

what holiness is:

the natural world,

where every moment is full

of the passion to keep moving.

Inside every mind

there's a hermit's cave

full of light,

full of snow,

full of concentration.

I've knelt there,

and so have you,

hanging on

to what you love,

to what is lovely.

The lake's

shining sheets

don't make a ripple now,

and the stars

are going off to their blue sleep,

but the words are in place --

and the fish leaps, and leaps again

from the black plush of the poem,

that breathless space."

               from At The Lake

                by Mary Oliver

"But it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky; 

and the air smells now, as if it blew from a far-away meadow; 

they have been making hay somewhere under the slopes 

of the Andes, Starbuck, and the mowers are sleeping among the 

new-mown hay."

from Moby Dick

 By Herman Melville

My brother in law Ralph cuts the hay.

"Far to the north, or indeed in any direction

strange mountains and creatures have always lurked-

elves, goblins,trolls, and spiders:-we

encounter them in dread and wonder,

But once we have tasted far streams, touched the gold

found some limit beyond the waterfall

a season changes, we come back , changed

but safe, quiet, graceful."

     from Allegiances

               by William Stafford

"In the small beauty of the forest

The wild deer bedding down—

That they are there!

                              Their eyes

Effortless, the soft lips

Nuzzle and the alien small teeth

Tear at the grass

                              The roots of it

Dangle from their mouths

Scattering earth in the strange woods.

They who are there."

from George Oppen

           Psalm

We were able to get out to the farm over 

Christmas but a mixture of lots of snow, very 

cold temperature and the colds we brought 

with us meant we did not drop by the cabin and 

I did not get as many good photos as I had hoped.

However we did get in lots of visiting and  saw

the family so that was good.

Deer were abundant  this year their trails running

thru the garden across the lane and over to where

Ralph has stacked his bails. They were making great

headway in ripping them apart and you could see 

deer passing back and forth from the windows.

"Time wants to show you a different country. It's the one
that your life conceals, the one waiting outside
when curtains are drawn, the one Grandmother hinted at
in her crochet design, the one almost found
over at the edge of the music, after the sermon."

from The Gift

                                  William Stafford