West Haven Community Garden

The West Haven Community Garden is located behind Reno Plus, a big box hardware located on rue St-Jacques near Av. Patricia. 

Photographs taken 05 September 2025

Henry David Thoreau on gardens and nature

 

The Hidden Trail, 2022

Photographs of the Hidden Trail

And then for my afternoon walks I have a garden, larger than any artificial garden that I have read of and far more attractive to me, -- mile after mile of embowered walks, such as no nobleman's grounds can boast, with animals running free and wild therein as from the first, -- varied with land and water prospect, and, above all, so retired that it is extremely rare that I meet a single wanderer in its mazes. No gardener is seen therein, no gates...You may wander away to solitary bowers and brooks and hills.

                                   —Henry David Thoreau, "Journal", 20 June 1850.

          

I long for wildness, a nature which I cannot put my foot through, woods where the wood thrush forever sings, where the hours are early morning ones, and there is dew on the grass, and the day is forever unproved, where I might have a fertile unknown for a soil about me. 

                        —Henry David Thoreau, "Journal", 22 June 1853       

         

A man is not to be measured by the virtue of his described actions or the wisdom of his expressed thoughts merely, but by that free character he is, and is felt to be, under all circumstances.
                       — Henry David Thoreau, "Sir Walter Raleigh"

                   

Expect the expected

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863 - 1944)

A terrible shadow drew nearer -  a shadow 

that seemed as if torn from universal Night.   

                   —Dame Edith Sitwell, 

                    The Queens and the Hive (1962)

They say “expect the unexpected” but common sense tells us to “expect the expected”; there is some hope in the unexpected, it remains unknown, but we have a good idea of what the expected might be. Isn't it just common sense to expect the expected?

The other night, reading the Oxford Book of English Verse (1939), edited by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch,  I thought this is about as good as it gets for a poet. If you can have just one page in a future edition of the Oxford Book of English Verse you've got it made, you have been and will be  remembered, you have dodged obscurity, your work will be remembered. The irony of this is that the editor of this famous anthology, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, has been more or less forgotten; indeed, Quiller-Couch's website intends to salvage him from obscurity. The truth is, for all of us, that with time there will be no one still alive who will remember us, or remember what (if anything) we accomplished, and it will be as though we never existed. Expect the expected.

Oh, how we struggle against time. Time cracks the whip and we jump and ask, “is that high enough, I can jump higher?” Old age is torture, it includes declining health, physical and mental exhaustion, arthritic pain, dentures and dementia, loneliness and regret, and the loss of all of one’s friends and family, we are stripped naked and chastised; the worst is saved for last when we are weak, crippled, and incontinent, and least able to deal with it. 

D.H. Lawrence wrote about the "bitch goddess" success, about the desire for material riches and fame that drives most people; they want the magic dust of being wealthy and famous sprinkled on them but without doing anything to deserve it, they want to be a somebody, even if being a somebody doesn't last long. But this magic dust bestowing fame and success is still dust, to be sprinkled down by the gods, or perhaps from Mount Parnassus. Poets should remember that the Muses don't care about your fame, prizes, literary awards, honorary degrees, prestigious presses, or who you knew, they are preoccupied with transience, that nothing lasts forever, and if it is the desire for fame driving your poetry, hanging out in bars at 2 a.m., schmoozing and boozing, it will still come to nothing but dust. And this applies to everybody; Transience, thy name is Everyman's Fate; Shelley knew this, it is the message of "Ozymandias", his most famous poem. I say to you poets, you are dead while still alive; blow the dust off the paper on which you have written your poem, the poem is already dust, the paper is dust, and then the poet is dust.

Seen on 9 September 2025, you never know where you will find wisdom

Posters on Cote-St-Luc Road seen on September 9, 2025. These are quotations from Rabbi Nachman of Breslov who said, “The whole world is a very narrow bridge. And the most important thing is not to be afraid.” I noticed, a few days later, that these signs had been removed.

“Even in dark times, you are able to find G-d.”

More quotations from Rabbi Nachman of Breslov:

 “You are wherever your thoughts are, make sure your thoughts are where you want to be.”

“If you won’t be better tomorrow than you were today, then what do you need tomorrow for?”

“All new beginnings require that you unlock a new door.”

“Always wear a smile. The gift of life will then be yours to give.”

“Let the good in me connect with the good in others, until all the world is transformed through the compelling power of love.”

 “Work at not needing approval from anyone and you will be free to be who you really are.”

“Seek the good in everyone, and reveal it, bring it forth.”

“Where there is no truth there is no grace.”

“Depression does tremendous damage. Use every ploy you can think of to bring yourself to joy.”

“Get into the habit of singing a tune. It will give you new life and fill you with joy. Get into the habit of dancing. It will displace depression and dispel hardship.”

Another fire, 14 September 2025

Coincidentally, there was a second fire (this time on Elmhurst Avenue) only two streets over but in the same city block a week after the fire on Westmore; the second fire, five alarms, was in a building that had not been occupied for about fifteen years. No one was injured, the apartment building had been boarded up for many years. It's possible homeless people were in the building.

Fire on Westmore Avenue

Here is the apartment building, on Westmore Avenue, where there was a fire on 05 September. These photographs were taken on 13 September 2025. When I took these photographs there were former residents leaving the building with what they could salvage from the fire, a disaster for them, and now they must find new places to live at a reasonable rent which will be difficult.

Driving to work, driving home, 16 September 2011

 

Walking to Meadowbrook Golf Course

A very long walk on 9/11; the last days of summer.