Caragana and Tansy by the old house.

Caragana and Tansy grow by the door of the old house Helen lived in until she was about eight. In the past both were valued bacause they would grow in the harsh environment of the Canadian Prairies. Now this ability to flourish in these conditions means they are considered weed species because they spread if not rigourously checked.

“And I told him that a man's life is always dealing with permanence - that the most dangerous kind of irresponsibility is to think of your doings as temporary. That, anyhow, is what I've tried to keep before myself. What you do on the earth, the earth makes permanent.”

from A Place on Earth
by Wendell Berry

Concrete overpass on trip to Hafford for lunch. Part 2

  ''one could breathe that only on the bright edges of the world,

on the great grass plains or the sage brush desert.

That air would disappear from the whole earth in time, perhaps; but long

after his day. He did not know just when it had become so necessary to him, but

 he had come back to die in exile for the sake of it. Something soft and wild

and free, something that whispered to the ear on the pillow, lightened

the heart, softly, softly picked the lock, slid the bolts, and released the

prisoned spirit of man into the wind, into the blue and gold, into the morning,

into the morning!''

from Death Comes for the Archbishop

by Willa Cather

Concrete overpass on trip to Hafford for lunch. Part 1

  Tuesday we took Helen's mom to lunch at the great A&M Bistro in Hafford. Each time we take that hwy Helen is more and more intrigued by an old concrete overpass over the railroad. Both railroad and road are long abandoned but on the way home Helen wanted to see what was still there. The answer, beautiful views. Even the remaining concrete bridge is lovely, save for some callow  graffiti. The last two years Helen and I have climbed Memorial Hill in Shelllake for the view. But the Shell Lake area is the parkland and the views are restricted. South of Blaine Lake you are in the prairie and it shows with these rolling vistas. I will split the photos into two posts, because I cannot choose just one or two.

"He had seen the end of an era, the sunset of the pioneer. He had come upon

it when already its glory was nearly spent. So in the buffalo times a traveller

used to come upon the embers of a hunter's fire on the prairies, after the hunter

was up and gone; the coals would be trampled out, but the ground was warm,

and the flattened grass where he had slept and where his pony had grazed, told

the story.  This was the very end of the road-making West; the men who had put

plains and mountains under the iron harness were old; some were poor, and even

the successful ones were hunting for rest and a brief reprieve from death. It was

already gone, that age; nothing could ever bring it back. The taste and smell and

song of it, the visions those men had seen in the air and followed,—these he had

caught in a kind of afterglow in their own faces,—and this would always be his"

                                         from Lost Lady

                                                     Willa Cather

A Day in the Life

"We risk our eyes

every day; they celebrate; they dance

and flirt over this offered treasure.

"Be alive," the land says. "Listen-

this is your time, your world, your pleasure.""

from Crossing Our Campground

by William Stafford

Yesterday I worked around the cabin taking out some grass, to discourage ticks and moving some plants. Despite bug repellant, changing my clothes after a tick check, a shower at the farm, more tick checks, scanning the sheets with a flashlight before bed, I found I had been bitten by two ticks. Helen has ordered me an anti-tick outfit, I believe it is a plastic buddle with waldos. She has also put the kibosh on some of my landscaping plans, I am not arguing. Ticks only became a problem here a few years ago when the winters warmed up. I was getting a bit discouraged, thank god the dragonflies showed up about four days ago.

Then this morning I woke to this out the front window.

We went to Shellbrook for breakfast and shopping.

On the way there were ducks. A Canvasback and 

some Scaups.

An old cabin. This looks similar to the homestead cabin

on the farm which was built about 1911-1912. Quite the

place to spend a Saskatchewan winter with the family.

The view from Arnies Grill, the wonderful restaurant in Shellbrook.

A prairie town sleeps under a blue sky. 

Nice but we really need rain.

A quick stop for gas, almost there.

The Winter Prairie #10

"Bell rings and they go and the voice draws their pencil

like a sled across snow; when its runners are frozen

rope snaps and the voice then is pulling no burden

but runs like a dog on the winter of paper."

from The Stenographers

by P.K. Page

Anansi, 1974

The Winter Prairie #9 (Vision now fine)

This is when the accomplished Mr. Murple

Splendid on skates comes forth to spin the night

Upon his arms outstretched and whirling eyeballs.

 from Ice at Last

George Johnson

Toronto Oxford University Press 1959

The Winter Prairie #8

"Yes, it has its head in the clouds, clouds
on its mind, indifferently
contemplates the weather by day, 
at night the blue toil of stars, 
reminding us of someone cleaning 
a house or writing a poem"

from Cloud Gate
by Kathleen Wall & Veronica Reminder

University of Calgary Press, 2018

The Winter Prairie #7

"Moving 

to establish distance

between our houses.

It seems

I welcome you in."

from Moving

by Phyllis Webb

Selected Poems 1954-1965

Phyllis Webb, Tallon Books, 1971

The Winter Prairie #6

"With the noise of a thousand typewriters

We shall gallop over the roofs of town.

We are the the Sun's animals.

We stand by him in the West

And ready to obey

His most auburn wish

For Rain, Wind and Storm"

from The Sundogs

by James Reaney

McClelland & Stewart, 1949

The Winter Prairie #5 (Left eye done 20/20)

" he wanders, wonders
                                      through the play within the play

                                              knowing not
                            
                                                     which is the right

                                                                 the light

the star in the cold, staring sky,

       or the star reflected in a human eye. " 

from Double Entendre
by Phyllis Webb

McClelland & Stewart, 1956

The Winter Prairie #4

"It was the hand that caught in me
Sudden as a beast the blizzard
had whirled on us   was gone
as quick over the hill and howling
through the next village  whose spire
could be glimpsed blotting out now 
in a grey fury"

from Arrivals 
by Earle Birney

Mcclelland and Stewart, 1964

The Winter Prairie #3 (Right eye seems to have gone well)

"Past that frost-cracked rock step
twist yourself through
skew trunks and old coat-hook branches;
ground once dug and thought of and
never intended for those toadstools. "

from Old Property
by Milton Acorn

NC Press, 1975

The Winter Prairie #2

"We dream of the big world we cannot enter

and we have no money and we turn into winter;

when the next spring comes we will melt until

we run like rivers down the high free hill." 

from We are Sitting on a High Green Hill

by Gwendolyn MacEwen

Macmillan of Canada, 1974 

CPL book sale, the good old days.

The Winter Prairie #1

I am not taking a lot of photos at present. So I thought I would posts a series of photos I took earlier this winter on trips to and from Saskatchewan.

While in Saskatchewan I was also able to purchase some lovely books by Canadian poets that I want to feature as well. And maybe I will sneak in a few others from my shelves. 

"So all the photographs like children's wishes

are filled with caves or winter, 

innocence

has acted as a filter,

from Photos of a Salt Mine

P.K. Page

McClellan & Stewart Limited, 1967

-29C/-20F WC-41/-41.8 at 6:00 a.m. in Calgary today.

But we have power and no where to go today but the library.

And maybe the beer store, bank, the British Pantry all close. 

"Down in the west

The brimming plains beneath the sunset rest, 

One burning sea of gold. Soon, soon shall fly 

The glorious vision, and the hours shall feel 

A mightier master; soon from height to height, 

With silence and the sharp unpitying stars, 

Stern creeping frosts, and winds that touch like steel, 

Out of the depth beyond the eastern bars, 

Glittering and still shall come the awful night." 

from Winter Evening 

by Archibald Lampoon

Winter roads

"My self will be the plain,

wise as winter is gray,

pure as cold posts go

pacing toward what I know."

from The Farm on the Great Plains

by William Stafford

Spirit Badger (trip to Hafford)

"Anyone with quiet pace who

walks a gray road in the West

may hear a badger underground where   

in deep flint another time is

Caught by flint and held forever,   

the quiet pace of God stopped still."

from Walking West

by William Stafford

"Her luck
has always been bad, so she stood
to one side and let me pass, trailing
the unmistakable aroma of badger
which she mistook for my underwear,
and so she looked upward, not
to heaven but to the cracked ceiling
her husband had promised to mend,
and she sighed for the first time
in my life that sigh which would tell
me what was for dinner. 

from One My Own

by Philip Levine

full poem 

https://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php%3Fdate=2006%252F01%252F10.html

Heading Home (September prairie)

"In scenery I like flat country.  

In life I don’t like much to happen."

from Passing Remark

"Wherever we looked the land would hold us up. "

from One Home

by William Stafford

Heading Home (Sept. Harvest)

"Oh the weather is against me and the wind blows hard

And the rain she's a-turnin' into hail.

I still might strike it lucky on a highway goin' west, 

Though I'm travelin' on a path beaten trail. 

So it's fare thee well my own true love, 

We'll meet another day, another time." 

from Farewell

by Bob Dylan

"THE PRAIRIE GAVE BREATH; I GREW AND DIED:

ALIVE ON THIS AIR THESE LIVES ABIDE.:

from Signature

by Dorothy Livesay