Return of the window flower box

You don't see many window flower boxes anymore. I remember my mother standing at her dining room window and planting flowers in the flower boxes beneath the windows. Not many people bother with flower boxes today; maybe the awkwardness and possibly dirt of leaning out of a window and planting from inside one's home is a part of the lack of popularity of window flower boxes. 

    This flower box (pictured) is outside of our kitchen window that faces the street. The brackets holding up the box have been there for at least twenty-six years, that's how long we've lived here and the brackets were there when we moved in. For years I looked at these brackets and thought I would like to have a flower box there and, finally, this last spring that's what I did. I know it's not the most beautiful flower box, it's just a plastic box from a big box hardware, some bagged soil left over from previous years, and some geraniums and a few marigolds not planted elsewhere. The plywood was something I found in the basement workshop and I cut it to size in a few minutes. Not a big job at all but it has given me a lot of pleasure and happiness. Now, when I do the dishes (always by hand) I can see red geraniums just outside the kitchen window. Maybe I'll paint the plywood base if I can get around to it which, knowing me, is unlikely. 

    This flower box gets no direct sunlight and yet the plants were thriving all summer and into fall. It was a very rainy summer so maybe that has something to do with how well they've done. Even the simplest, most crude flower box will give a lot of happiness. It increases the space you have to plant flowers, and it helps beautify you home. It is also an extension of container planting, but the container is attached to the wall instead of sitting on the ground. A flower box at an upstairs window requires watering from inside the house. Hanging plants need to be watered every day, or every week depending on the weather, and during a hot summer they will dry out in a day; so be sure to water them. I don't think you want too many flower boxes, it might look ostentatious and over the top, but it's your home so you decide what you want. They have flower boxes that attach to railings on balconies, I don't really like the look of these but you might give it a try if you live in an apartment. Having flowers is always better than not having flowers. A flower box is a small thing, like a bird bath, but, as I keep saying, it gives a lot of happiness.   

                                         

    And, finally, an inside view.

Remembering Veeto (2)

A few years ago, after the death of her mother, Veeto sent me this photograph of the family dining room table where we used to play "space command" when we were children. We lived in the same fourplex, one of Hoolahan's flats on Oxford Avenue, we were at 4614 Oxford and Veeto (Audrey Keyes) was three doors north in the same building. When I was four to maybe ten years old I used to go to her front door and Mrs. Keyes would answer, "Can Audrey come out to play?" I would ask, or we would stay indoors and play in their flat, either in the living room or dining room under this table, or Audrey's bedroom. It was all "let's pretend", it was all the imagination, it was a wonderful innocent time of life. I guess Veeto inherited the table and had it shipped to Australia where she lived. 

My cousin, Linda Morrissey, who lived a few doors from us, walked Veeto to the Villa Maria School where both were students. I wonder what Linda remembers of Veeto, Veeto was Audrey Keyes in those days. I was walked to school, to Willingdon School, by another girl, Mimi, who lived on Oxford but a few doors in the opposite direction to Linda. I was not the greatest student and I would play hooky from school, either feigning illness and then I might stay at my grandmother's home on Girouard Avenue, or hiding out in my bedroom, one day hiding under the bed. Other people have fond memories of school, I don't have those memories. But I have fond memories of Veeto. 

Below the dining room table

Sitting outside of our respective homes

Audrey and her lovely mother, Mrs. Keyes; in 2006 at the residence
corner of Sherbrooke St. West and Landsdowne Avenue

It’s pretty sad losing an old and dear friend. Veeto was so full of life, to walk down the street with her was to have the street transformed by her presence. She sang and gave everything new life, new meaning, a new presence. What a special friend she was, what a special person to share one’s childhood with. I was blessed by her presence as was everyone who knew her.

Remembering Veeto

When I was growing up on Oxford Avenue, in the mid-1950s, Veeto was the little girl next door who was my first friend in life. We moved from Oxford in 1963 and while I heard a few things about Veeto, that she had moved to Australia, it wasn’t until around 2006 that we met again. She was an extraordinary person, one of the important people in my life. I will never forget dear Veeto.

    Photos of Veeto (Audrey Keyes) taken on 30 June 2009 at Cote des Neiges Cemetery, Montreal. Veeto's mother died in February 2008 and the funeral was a few months later; these photos were taken probably the following summer, in 2010. Both of Veeto's parents died on February 28th, her mother in 2008, her father years before.

 

Honey bees on the corner of Terrebonne and Mayfair

 Photographs from 02 September 2023.

A garden on the corner of Terrebonne and Mayfair

I've walked by this house, on the corner of Terrebone and Mayfair, for years. I usually stop in the summer to take photographs of honey bees in the hydrangea but the owners have transformed their property into a beautiful garden, no grass, just many different types of plants. Earlier this summer, when I was planning what next to do with my garden, I bought a hydrangea to fill in a place as you enter the side gate, only today did I realize that the hydrangea I bought is the same type as found on this corner. I look forward to having more honey bees in our garden because of this. 

Land snails

I don't remember seeing any land snails in Montreal. That has changed this year, now they're everywhere. I am even stepping on them in the grass or on the walk by the side of the house. Is the increase of land snails because of climate change? It is hotter this summer and we are having more rain than in most summers.

"Poem of the Daily Work of The Workmen and Workwomen of These States" by Walt Whitman

 

The men who constructed
the Victoria bridge

       This is the poem of occupations;

In the labor of engines and trades, and the labor of fields, I find eternal meanings. Workmen and Workwomen! Offspring of ignorant and poor, boys apprenticed to trades, working on farms, Sailor-men, merchant-men, immigrants, House-building, blacksmithing, glass-blowing, Ship-joining, dock-building, fish-curing, ferrying, The pump, the pile-driver, the great derrick, the brick-kiln, Coal-mines, the lamps in the darkness, echoes songs, Iron-works, the great mills and factories; The slaughter-house of the butcher, the killing-hammer, The hoghook, scalder's tub, gutting, the cutter's cleaver, The men and work of men, on railroads, fish-boats, canals; The daily routine of shop, yard, store, or factory; In them the heft of the heaviest, In them far more than you estimated, In things best known to you, finding the best, Happiness, knowledge, not in another place, but this place; You workwomen and workmen of these States

having your own divine and strong life.

                                            --Walt Whitman, 1855 

 

Memory, and how it got that way

 

Years passed. The seasons came and went, the short animal lives fled by. A time came when there was no one who remembered the old days before the Rebellion, except Clover, Benjamin, Moses the raven, and a number of the pigs.

                                                                —George Orwell, Animal Farm 

Forget remembering the old days, most people`s memories don't go back much before nine days ago. In fact, a neighbour tells me that her mother's advice is that if you do something embarrassing, not to worry; after about nine days people will have forgotten what you did. And our collective amnesia and revision of the past is what Justin Trudeau has relied on. Have a former Nazi celebrated in parliament, go on a vacation to Tofino on National Reconciliation Day, get caught wearing black face? Quick! You're an actor specializing in sincerity and people are suckers for apologies, the more sincere the better. Apologize or not, in a few days it will be as though you never did anything embarrassing. 

    The old days of free speech, freedom of movement, freedom of religious expression, and freedom to own property, the public will get used to these being cancelled, they will even thank Justin for deleting them. Forget how things used to be, those old freedoms were dangerous to the collective, they made some people feel unsafe, and they were necessarily cancelled. We never want free speech again because it hurts people's feelings, people who say what they think or they believe in something we don't believe in are often deniers of alleged scientific fact or of the latest compulsory belief.

    Remember when we used to own property? When we wrote letters instead of emails? When we read newspapers printed on paper, it was a record of what had happened, not something digital and therefore deletable, revisable, or denilable. Remember? Remember? Remember? Remember? Is it a false memory? Are you confused? Think back to the way things used to be and what we lost and what we still remember. Remember when we had only two sexes, men and women, that’s gone. Remember values and morality? Sorry I mentioned it. Remember seeing someone walking down the street reading a book, absorbed in reading a book? How many people do you see reading a book anymore? But you will see many people walking down the street looking at their IPhones. "Remember to remember" said Henry Miller. 

    Justin Trudeau relies on people having short memories; remember the way it used to be before 2015 and we had our own thoughts, it wasn't Justin's agenda imposed on the country. Remember 2015, there was Justin walking to Rideau Hall with his cabinet behind him, his wife beside him, they were all smiling and laughing and optimistic and glorying in their good luck, their new power and authority; my God, the hubris was palpable! They were going to change the world, instead they destroyed a country. It wasn't a new beginning, it was the end of what we loved. There was Justin and his wife who was wearing a white coat and directly behind her there was Melanie Joly wearing the same white coat and both women were laughing, what was that all about? And there were others there, men and women, some have since felt the Wrath of Justin and been dumped from cabinet, others have hung in there, and all know the true measure of Justin Trudeau. We, too, know the true measure of the worst prime minister in Canadian history. Now we laugh when we see him, now we don't believe anything he says, now we know he was never anything but a high school drama teacher, no great intelligence or profundity there, just ruthlessness and cunning. All the good people, all the intelligent people, have been deleted or jumped ship from his cabinet to escape the shipwreck Justin would make of the country; and the ones who remain? They are the deluded, the hopeful, and the relentlessly ambitious. 

We don't yet live in Animal Farm but we are headed there, and if we end up at Animal Farm our collective amnesia will make us wonder what the past was really like or if it ever existed, all it takes is nine days and the past is forgotten, deleted from memory. As George Orwell wrote,

As for the others, their life, so far as they knew, was as it had always been. . . Sometimes the older ones among them racked their dim memories and tried to determine whether in the early days of the Rebellion, when Jones's expulsion was still recent, things had been better or worse than now. They could not remember. There was nothing with which they could compare their present lives; they had nothing to go on except Squealer's lists of figures, which invariably demonstrated that everything was getting better and better. The animals found the problem insoluble; in any case, they had little time for speculating on such things now. Only old Benjamin professed to remember every detail of his long life and to know that things never had been, nor ever could be much better or much worse -- hunger, hardship, and disappointment being, so he said, the unalterable law of life.

Stopping by St. Philip’s Church

 It was at this moment that I discovered how much honey bees love asters. Summer has ended and the bees are preparing for a long winter, they are bringing in the last pollen and making the last honey that has to last them until next spring when they can, once again, leave the hive in search of pollen and nectar. This is serious business. 

Justin Trudeau's Canada in 2030

 

Has any other Canadian prime minister ever been photographed like this?

Crystal Ball, oh truth telling Crystal Ball, what is our future as a country?

It's not good. Just extrapolate from what Justin Trudeau has done to the country since 2015: our standard of living has declined; numerous homeless people are in every city and town; if you are young you have probably already given up ever owning your own home; the cost of food is prohibitive; and on it goes. This is our present, but worse lies ahead.

Let's pretend: Justin survives as prime minister for the next two years and, in 2024-2025, he is re-elected with a majority government. And then we have another four years of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. What will Canada be like in 2029-2030 when Justin is old, wrinkled, and grey? 

1. There is no way you'll ever own your own home, that ended back in 2022. We will be a nation of renters. Lease your electric car, rent your apartment, own nothing, not even the clothes you're wearing. You'll be living in the fifteen minute city so, assuming you have a job, all you'll need is an electric bicycle, your skateboard, a new pair of shoes, or a walker.   

2. Even if you want a road trip somewhere, a family vacation, don't expect to drive very far, your rented electric car has to be charged and there are few places to do this; your electric car doesn't have great mileage; expect the grid to have regular blackouts as it can't handle our increased demand for electricity. And in our cold winters your electric car loses 30 percent of its warmer weather mileage; you won’t be going far. 

 3. The government, and government funded school boards, will have final authority on important issues in your child's life. They see parents as the enemy of the new state they are creating. 

4.Justin has us in conflict with China and India. The conflict with India seems dubious; it is convenient that Justin has announced this latest crisis just when his popularity is at its lowest. As they say, "never waste a good crisis"; they also say: "if you don't have a crisis, invent one."

5. And there was the Emergency Act that was never needed. Covid mandates showed us the future that Justin Trudeau has in store for whoever doesn't follow his party line. 

6. Justin is a terrible manager of government, nothing is thought out in advance; if something fails he just spends his way out of the mess he's created. There are many examples of government incompetency under Justin. For example, our population is exploding, a million immigrants per year, the highest in the western world. Our population is now 40M, it will be 47M by 2030 and 50M by 2050. This is happening at a time when Canadians can’t find affordable housing and our hospitals are collapsing.

7. Visit any Food Banks lately? With inflation and our poor economy food banks will be a part of daily life.

8. Quebec controls immigration into Quebec, punitive language laws, provincial taxation, and Quebec is increasingly a separate political jurisdiction in Canada. The Federal Bill C-13 and Quebec's Bill 96 work in tandem to end the presence of the traditional English-speaking minority in Quebec. Justin doesn’t care whose rights he destroys.

9. Not feeling well, depressed, no money, homeless? Then maybe it's time to take advantage of doctor assisted death. Under Justin, many Canadians now see euthanasia as a solution to homelessness and poverty. 

10. Need a family doctor? Family doctors are increasingly a thing of the past; many Canadians don't have a family doctor, or they are losing their family doctor, or they can't find a new family doctor. 

This is the short list of how Justin has worked to destroy the country; there are other examples of Justin's vision of a future that is now being imposed on us. It is relentlessly dystopian, woke, and progressive.

I suggest that we need a "special rapporteur" to investigate the Justin Trudeau regime. We need a royal commission on Justin’s disastrous years in office so that they are not repeated.                                    

Crystal Ball, oh truth telling Crystal Ball, is this our Future?

Loyola College, Montreal

Not far from where I live is the former Loyola College (on Sherbrooke Street West near West Broadway); it is now, as of 1974, a campus of Concordia University. Concordia University was created by the amalgamation of Sir George Williams University, which was associated with the YMCA, and Loyola College, which was a Roman Catholic institution. Loyola College is one more institution built by Montreal's Irish community, as is St. Mary's Hospital. The college seems to have retained its heritage and religious foundation, as far as this is possible in today's secular world. Hingston Residence is on the campus, William Hingston being an important historical figure in Montreal. There is a free shuttle bus service for students that takes you to the downtown campus in a half hour, or less depending on traffic. Vanier Library is found here as are newer science buildings. 

Photographs taken the morning of 9 September 2023.

This is the new science hub at Concordia; visit the science hub located on the Loyola Campus.