Wednesday, February 28, 2024
End of February 2012
Tuesday, February 13, 2024
"The Lonely Land" by A.J.M. Smith
Cedar and jagged fir
uplift sharp barbs
against the gray
and cloud-piled sky;
and in the bay
blown spume and windrift
and thin, bitter spray
snap
at the whirling sky;
and the pine trees
lean one way.
A wild duck calls
to her mate,
and the ragged
and passionate tones
stagger and fall,
and recover,
and stagger and fall,
on these stones —
are lost
in the lapping of water
on smooth, flat stones.
This is a beauty
of dissonance,
this resonance
of stony strand,
this smoky cry
curled over a black pine
like a broken
and wind-battered branch
when the wind
bends the tops of the pines
and curdles the sky
from the north.
This is the beauty
of strength
broken by strength
and still strong.
Sunday, January 21, 2024
Sunday, January 7, 2024
Tuesday, December 12, 2023
Sunday, December 10, 2023
Of winter days to come
It was -6 C and felt like -12 when I took these photographs on November 24, it wasn't even winter, it was a first taste of winter but without snow. As you get older you wonder if you can take another winter; it will be like this, and colder, all of December, January, February, March, and the first days of April. Too much, too long, too cold.
It is what we, in Canada, must endure.
Tuesday, March 7, 2023
The perennial garden in winter
There isn't a lot to do in the garden in winter, maybe there is nothing to do but walk through two feet deep of snow and the snow over the top of your boots. Or look out the dining room window at the snow and cold and be glad you're inside and not out there. These bright sunny March days can be quite warm in the sun, you might even get a sun tan sitting outside in the garden if there isn't a cloud cover. In the shade it's cold, it's -2 C. I had forgotten that March is my least favourite month.
A perennial garden doesn't require work in winter, no skimming this years seed catalogues, no buying seeds, no germinating seeds in-doors, there is none of that. All it requires is patience and try to get through our overly long winter. So, just get on with your in-door life, go for a walk, make supper, vacuum the carpets, and soon a mostly white and empty garden will be transformed into something so different from the garden in winter that it is one of the wonders of our northern life. Nevertheless, by late February and the three weeks of winter in March one is fed up with winter, the cold, snow, and we just want it to end.