June Nature Notes

May Nature Notes

Inspired by Edith Holden's "The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady" I have been trying to capture moments of outdoor beauty.  We have had an uncharacteristically hot month and the lilacs are just on the verge of popping out.  It is a very popular flower to plant in our neighbourhood so we are anticipating bouquets of colour on every corner to brighten us after the incessant brown and grey (and white!). 

We had a much too-short weekend visit to the mountains in celebration of my birthday and Mother's Day during which I ate my body weight in amazing food and then we all soaked in the outdoor hot-tub whilst the snow fell.  I could hardly believe that I forgot my camera, especially when Orca and I encountered a curious mule deer on a short hike.  I saw two deer about 50 metres down the trail.  Orca was on his lead but I let him set the pace in approaching them.  It was fascinating to watch as he stopped, sniffed the air, and proceeded with caution.  The deer closest to us was doing exactly the same thing.  I was excited to see it take steps toward us!  As we moved closer and closer I watched both dog and deer conversing in subtle ways.  The deer moved toward us at the same rate Orca was moving forward until they were only about 6 feet apart.  That was when I wished I had not forgotten my camera!  I was wondering if they would actually touch noses when the furthest deer startled and bounded away, followed by Orca's new friend.  As a city dog he is used to having squirrels and cats to chase out of the yard but this was his first up-close encounter with a wild animal.

A Painted Lady butterfly experiement

April Nature Notes

Inspired by Edith Holden's "The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady" I have been trying to capture moments of outdoor beauty.  I was able to find some little bits of green in sunny southern nooks and crannies at the end of this month.  Spring is one of the longest seasons here and starts when we are still winter's thrall, knee deep in the white stuff and in the seventh or eighth month of boots and coats.  We tell ourselves "Spring is Coming!" for at least two months of yo-yo-ing temperatures and the occasional blizzard until the rains of June arrive.  Last week we were blessed with three days of temperatures in the 20s and it was bliss!  This morning my car dinged a Possible Icy Roads warning that alerts me when temperatures dip to 3 degrees, but never mind: "Spring is Coming!"

And so are the lilacs :)

April was a mixed bag of reading for me.  I absolutely adored Once, Only the Swallows Were Free by Gabrielle Gouch.  So beautifully written, the author recounts her early years in communist Romania, and her family's eventual emigration to Israel.  She intersperses the account of her return to visit her half-brother who remained in Romania with the memories of her childhood and adolescence, as well as the history of her parents.  She did an excellent job of depicting the oppression of the communist state, of knowing everything you said and did could come back to haunt you.  I have been quite ruthlessly purging all books I have read and know I will not re-read.  I am keeping Once, Only the Swallows Were Free, if not to re-read, to eventually pass on to just the right friend.

We are making our summer plans, and Elizabeth and I have decided that along with our dog Orca...

... and here he is!

we will drive the 4000 kms at the beginning of June to our cottage in Ontario.  Erin and Howie will fly to meet us at the end of the month.  We are trying to come to a consensus about audiobooks this week.  We've done this drive every summer since 2009 and I'm thrilled to do it again this year.  I actually like highway driving, and a road trip is better as a getaway than a visit to a Caribbean resort in my book.  We'll take the better part of a week to do the "northern route" around the top of the Great Lakes.  As soon as we decided how the Getting There was going to work out I got excited about the drive.  Although I'm not sure I'd want to live in remote northern Ontario (and I certainly wouldn't want to pay the gas prices!) there is something so invigorating about the area.  Trees and lakes and rocks.  Rocks and lakes and trees.  People joke about how boring it is, but they joke about the prairies too and really, is there anything more beautiful than an endless field of wheat rippling in the breeze?

Rushing River Provincial Park (east of Kenora, Ontario)

So, in anticipation of that experience I read Mary Lawson's Crow Lake and The Other Side of the Bridge, both set in the fictional town of Struan, which I imagine to be somewhere near Kirkland Lake, Ontario.  While the remoteness and the natural surroundings provide a backdrop, the real focus of Mary Lawson's writing is on characterisation.  There is no confusing one character for another, their profiles are so well drawn they do emerge fully formed.  They are books about the small moments in the lives of ordinary people living their lives in ordinary ways.

My Little Free Library find this month was J.K. Rowling's The Casual Vacancy which I think everyone read two years ago, so as usual I am a day late and a dollar short.  Like many others I found the bleakness and the cruelty of the characters rather challenging.  I searched for just one person to be nice to someone else, but almost in vain.  Her depiction of addiction (cause and effect) was powerful and graphic and yet very sympathetically portrayed.  Terri has to be one of the most heart-breaking characters I've ever read.  I wanted so much to see more resilience in some of the characters, but the way she was able to find nobility in the most unlikely places and to develop the characters through both their individual and collective pasts was fun to read and brought back many memories of the small towns in which I've lived.

I have failed miserably on my decision to forego buying any new books this year, but every purchase has made me very happy so I've forgiven myself and will probably continue to ignore that half-hearted decision.  Last week I had an astounding experience at a charity shop where I found that someone had donated 28 Virago Modern Classics (green covers) all in pristine condition and priced at less than $2 apiece. I only have my own experience to go on but I thought that was quite a find!  I shall look forward to working my way through some very new-to-me authors in the coming months.

On tap for May I have decided to focus on books that feature travel because the anticipation of the journey is half the fun, isn't it?  At the moment, I am thoroughly enjoying Andrea Barrett's The Voyage of the Narwhal, a fictionalised account of Arctic exploration and the search of the missing Franklin expedition.  Also on my little pile are Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple, for which I've yet to see an unfavourable review, and am possibly the last person for whom it is still unread; Ethel Wilson's The Innocent Traveller, about which I know nothing except the name of the protagonist, but is a must-read after reading Hetty Dorval and The Swamp Angel; and Suzanne Desrochers' Bride of New France, a debut novel set in the 17th century about les filles du roi who travelled from France to Quebec to populate the New World; and the second in the childrens' series Mennyms in the Wilderness by Sylvia Waugh, about the suburban family who are forced to move to the country without revealing the secret they have successfully hidden for over forty years (they are life-size ragdolls).

March Nature Notes

Little glimpses of nature in my corner of the world, inspired by Edith Holden.

One might get the impression from these photos that spring arrived this month.  If only.  We have shovelled our front walk every single morning for a week.  We did have a reprieve earlier in the month when we saw some blue in the sky to relieve us of the incessant grey, and we did enjoy some chinooks that melted almost all the accumulated snow.

That's my great-grandmother in the white.

I've been working on a family history project which has reduced my reading time, but I have enjoyed a few good books this month.  I am very close to completing my first classic in quite some time - The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton - an anomoly amongst all the uncharacteristic 21st century books.  This is my introduction to Edith Wharton and although it took me a little bit of time to get into the swing of it, I am thoroughly enjoying her wonderful character building, and the depictions of Old New York, and the struggle between individual desires and the sacrifice of self for the stability in the status quo.  Such impressive representations of women!

I finally read Lynn Coady this month (Saints of Big Harbour) and immediately got my hands on Hellgoing (most recent Giller winner) and Strange Heaven (her first novel).  I like her writing a lot, and having grown up in small town Nova Scotia I felt a real connection to the setting.

One of the parts of parenting I enjoy is keeping current with what my daughters are reading, what they are discovering on their own, and having them recommend their favourites to me so we can discuss them.  Elizabeth is just dipping in to the YA-type books and I'm having a bit of trouble keeping up!  I made it through 2/3 of the Veronica Roth Divergent trilogy in time to see the movie with her.  While I cannot admit to enjoying the writing (each 500 page book could easily have been pruned down to 150 pages, and read like the first draft of a screenplay), the themes have served for terrific discussions.  She just finished The Fault in Our Stars, and is starting The Perks of Being a Wallflower.  Such great catalyst for discussion!

Happy April everyone!

February Nature Notes

Inspired by Edith Holden

A sunny day amongst the evergreens.

Cotton Candy Snow at the front door.

Canada Goose

The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady by Edith Holden (January)

Fleur Fisher, in her post about The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady at the end of December got me thinking.

I've loved this unique and inspiring book since I found my copy of it in a second-hand shop years ago.  When the girls were little we used to frequently head out with our sketchbooks to try to capture little items in nature - twigs, snowflakes, squirrel nests, flowers.  The impetus for these outings came from Edith Holden and our love of her delicate, intimate nature journal.  We would settle down on a blanket in a field or in the back garden or beside a mountain trail and try to capture on paper a little piece of the natural world.

If I were of an artistic bent I would get out the watercolours.  Alas... these days I have accepted my lack of abilities in that vane and the watercolours remain (thankfully) tucked away - but I do love photography.  I have decided to read along month-by-month in the Country Diary and find inspiration for seeking out the beauty in nature in my own corner of the world.  All the photos I will post will be my own, inspired in some way by this beautiful book.

Coyote beside the road on the edge of town.

Hoar frost at my front door.

We call these "Magic Rowan Berries"

Prairie dog on high alert

Hoar frost in the neighbour's garden.