It was the afternoon of 14 December, -7C

First snow, 5 December 2024

Wet snow and -1C; so far, it doesn’t look like we’ll have the mild winter we had last year. 

The garden, 19 November 2024

It’s the same garden but it changes, it’s a living entity subject to the changing seasons, weather, and time of day. It was Clause Monet who showed us how the sunlight at the different times of the day changed our perception and our emotional response to the same environment, the paintings in the Série des Cathédrales de Rouen is a good example of this. And so with each changing season it’s the same garden but it's like a different garden, that’s how it appears, but it’s still the same garden, changing, growing, this place of peace and quiet in the city. 

Birds, robins, bird bath

 October 2024

Halloween afternoon, 31 October 2024

 

The garden, 16 October 2024

 Looking out of a basement window, seeing several robins in the bird bath and, a few feet away, a squirrel drinking water from a dish. For a while during Covid we had a quarantine, you would be fined if caught outside after eight p.m. except if you were walking your dog (you can’t make up this stuff); I remember standing by this same basement window, looking outside, and thinking how lovely and quiet it was. Do other people look back on Covid and question the whole thing?

Gold finches and brown-eyed Susans (2)

On 20 September 2024. Now we're advised not to cut down coneflowers, brown-eyed susans, bee balm, birds will eat the seeds during the winter. But cut down hostas, they harbour slugs and other insects over the winter. 

The garden on 21 September 2017

Looking at these photographs, it seems I began my Canadian cottage garden in the spring of 2017; here it is in the fall.