Canadian Cottage Garden, in the earlier evening

 Photographs taken on 05 September 2025, around 6:30 p.m., as the days are getting shorter.

"Bound for Hell" by Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941)

 

Marina Tsvetaïeva en 1925.

Hell, my ardent sisters, be assured,

Is where we’re bound; we’ll drink the pitch of hell—

We, who have sung the praises of the lord

With every fiber in us, every cell.

We, who did not manage to devote

Our nights to spinning, did not bend and sway

Above a cradle—in a flimsy boat,

Wrapped in a mantle, we’re now borne away.

Every morning, every day, we’d rise

And have the finest Chinese silks to wear;

And we’d strike up the songs of paradise

Around the campfire of a robbers’ lair,

We, careless seamstresses (our seams all ran,

Whether we sewed or not)—yet we have been

Such dancers, we have played the pipes of Pan:

The world was ours, each one of us a queen.

First, scarcely draped in tatters, and disheveled,

Then plaited with a starry diadem;

We’ve been in jails, at banquets we have reveled:

But the rewards of heaven, we’re lost to them,

Lost in nights of starlight, in the garden

Where apple trees from paradise are found.

No, be assured, my gentle girls, my ardent

And lovely sisters, hell is where we’re bound.

Fire on Westmore Avenue

05 September 2025

After last night’s rain and heavy winds—broken tree boughs, many branches littering the streets, loss of electricity—after that, a property fire occurred on Westmore Avenue. 

Here is the communique from our Borough mayor regarding the fire:

Update – Fire on Westmore

Our thoughts are with the residents affected by the major fire currently underway on Westmore. Videos and images circulating on social media show just how serious the situation is.

Thankfully, everyone has been safely evacuated and is safe and sound. The Red Cross is on site providing emergency housing and immediate support to those in need.

The borough has set up an emergency response team, in collaboration with OMHM and the NDG Community Council, to support residents in the coming days as they navigate this difficult time.

A heartfelt thank you to the firefighters and all first responders for their courage and swift action.

 

Canadian Cottage Garden on 3 September 2025

Fall is not far away, the days are shorter, the sunshine is not as hot, the nights are cooler, there is the smell of fall in the air, birds are flying south, bears prepare to hibernate, and the garden is closing down. While flowers are dying back we know that they will return in eight months, that’s eight long cold months. Cruel months. Monochromatic months of sense deprivation. No wonder we celebrate summer, tolerate winter, see winter as something to survive and put behind us, and in November we already count the months to spring.

The garden on 3 September 2025

A herb garden, 31 August 2025

Yesterday—it was the last day of August—I visited the city/farm garden behind the Hingston Hall residence at Concordia University (Loyola Campus). I’ve visited this garden for many year; it is thriving and the herb garden is growing better than ever. This was a good summer for gardening!

Elf dock 

Common primrose 

Milkweed 

Worm wood 

Mullein

Bee balm

Horse raddish

White sagebrush 

Chives

Leaving the herb garden 

31 August 2025

"Unending Love" by Rabindranath Tagore

 

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain,
Its ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played alongside millions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –
And the songs of every poet past and forever.

"A Subaltern's Love Song" by John Betjeman

 

John Betjeman

Miss J.Hunter Dunn, Miss J.Hunter Dunn,
Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun,
What strenuous singles we played after tea,
We in the tournament - you against me!

Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won,
The warm-handled racket is back in its press,
But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less.

Her father's euonymus shines as we walk,
And swing past the summer-house, buried in talk,
And cool the verandah that welcomes us in
To the six-o'clock news and a lime-juice and gin.

The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath,
The view from my bedroom of moss-dappled path,
As I struggle with double-end evening tie,
For we dance at the Golf Club, my victor and I.

On the floor of her bedroom lie blazer and shorts,
And the cream-coloured walls are be-trophied with sports,
And westering, questioning settles the sun,
On your low-leaded window, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

The Hillman is waiting, the light's in the hall,
The pictures of Egypt are bright on the wall,
My sweet, I am standing beside the oak stair
And there on the landing's the light on your hair.

By roads "not adopted", by woodlanded ways,
She drove to the club in the late summer haze,
Into nine-o'clock Camberley, heavy with bells
And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells.

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
I can hear from the car park the dance has begun,
Oh! Surrey twilight! importunate band!
Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girl's hand!

Around us are Rovers and Austins afar,
Above us the intimate roof of the car,
And here on my right is the girl of my choice,
With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice.

And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said,
And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.
We sat in the car park till twenty to one
And now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

“I am happy living simply” by Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941)

 

Marina Tsvetaeva

I am happy living simply:

like a clock, or a calendar.

Worldly pilgrim, thin,

wise—as any creature. To know

the spirit is my beloved. To come to things—swift

as a ray of light, or a look.

To live as I write: spare—the way

God asks me—and friends do not.

1919