Spring Gardening About to Begin

What gives meaning to life? Family, fame and fortune, creativity, and gardening. Said with tongue in cheek... 

The garden survived another winter, soon buds will appear on trees and bushes, the grass will begin to grow and turn green, birds are already at the bird bath (a big red cardinal yesterday), and life returns to our frozen north which is thawing, warming, The Good Earth, is that what Pearl Buck called it?

Sometimes winter seems a short intrusion in life, a few months we don't want off but are forced onto us. After the fact it seems a short intrusion.

So, here is my retreat from politics, war, and the world outside of home.

I have no real desire to go anywhere, I have everything I need, at home. 

Here are photographs I took this morning of the garden, making its appearance as the snow melts and the days grow longer and the sun stronger and warmer. 

Farewell winter 2022

It's the last day of winter, the first day of spring. Winter 2022, you will not be missed. Hurrah for spring! Any spring, this spring or spring next year!

Here is the news on the spring equinox: 

When does spring 2022 start? Twelve hours of daylight returns on Sunday with the spring equinox. The vernal (aka spring) equinox will occur this Sunday, March 20, at 11:33 a.m. EDT. On Sunday, there will be roughly 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness almost everywhere on Earth.

Photos taken on March 10, on the path from behind an apartment building to the Westminster Bridge. 

Farewell winter, you will not be missed; if only you didn't overstay your welcome,

but you always stay too long, four months, five months (we don't like you that much),

it's too much to bear, you're not even scenic by the end,

and even two months is too long for winter, 

we tire of you, oh winter, 

which is surely a bad sign, and we are happy to see you go,

you are no longer pretty or cosy or even welcome,

and we are no longer happy as we were with the first snow,

by the end snow is just snow, dull, grey, and slushy;

farewell winter, you will not be missed;

there's a new season in town, it's time for spring.

The last day of winter 2022

Winter 2022 will soon be a memory. Here are some photos from one of the few walks I took, on many days it was just too cold to go outside for a walk.

This is the approach to Meadowbrook Golf Course, one of the few undeveloped pieces of land left in this area. Notice that a few years ago the city of Cote St. Luc cut down the trees adjacent to the road. Why did they do this? They claimed that some of these trees were a danger, they might fall on passing cars. Some people hate nature, and perhaps they were really preparing for the day when the golf course will be the site of condos and townhouses. Progress is relentless and unforgiving.

Photos taken on March 10th, 2022.

 

Morgan's Department Store

Here we are back in the 1940s. A full service department store like this is a thing of the past; the other day I saw an Amazon truck make two deliveries within five minutes on the same street, everyday I see Amazon trucks cruising our streets making deliveries, and how many deliveries does The Bay (formerly Morgan's) make on the same streets? None. Even The Bay trucks, or Eaton's trucks, are a thing of the past. 

Now we get in the Time Machine of photography and find ourselves in a different world, downtown Montreal, decade of the 1940s, pre- or post-World War Two. 

Photo taken between 1930 and 1940; this is Morgan's Department Store
before they added an extension to the rear of the store; this original 
building was called Colonial House

A winter day in the 1940s, Morgan's seen from
the entrance area of Birk's jewelry store

Furniture department display

Cosmetic department

A fashion show

Looks like the basement; now the basement leads to the Metro

Fashion department

Santa's visit

Morgan's, 1940s

A fabulous Christmas display on the store's exterior,
seen from Philips Square

The Beaver Hall Artists

More photographs taken at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' 1920s Modernism in Montreal exhibition, 2015.

1920s Modernism in Montreal exhibit, MMFA

I'll go back and identify the artists of these paintings, all were exhibited at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' 1920s Modernism in Montreal exhibit in 2015. For instance, the first painting below is of St. Patrick's Church from the rear of the studio of the Beaver Hall artists.

This is St. James Cathedral, renamed Marie, Reine de la Monde around 1950
which was the year of Mary; it's just a few blocks west of Beaver Hall Hill

St. James Cathedral, Marie, Reine de la Monde

This Seventh Day Adventist Church is located in Upper Westmount

One of the two towers at the College de Montreal;
on the north side of  Sherbrooke Street West across from Fort Avenue 

Of course, this is where we began, looking down on the entrance
of Morgan's Department Store on the corner of Union and Ste. Catherine Street West