Snow Days of Yesteryear

Christine and me

The picture above shows quintessential 1970s winter. My little sister and I are bundled with multiple layers of (largely inefficient) winter garb. This was long before Thinsulate; we were warmed by layers of wool and nylon.

Florgasm

Chive flowers 

Oh, how I love spring -- and especially the flowers it brings. Prepare yourself for a bounty of beauty!

Quintessentially Canadian

Snow collecting on the hockey net.

February fourth was my favourite kind of snowy day -- one of those days where the snow drifts gently from the sky like eiderdown, collecting in delicate, lacy blankets. As my daughter, Emily, left for school that morning, she called back to me, "This is a perfect day for taking pictures!" How could I resist that admonition?

Wordless Wednesday: Ice Storm -- UPDATED

Japanese lilac

Sometimes a subject is so captivating that words are not needed. Updated with new pictures!

Baby's First Haircut

Kane in all his wet, furry glory, about to dive into the pool. (The sunset light is what's making him look so brown here.)

Don't you hate those baby books? You know -- the ones where the exhausted new mother is supposed to remember the date that her third child said its first words? Those books were a constant accusation to me, a guilt trip about what an incompetent mother I was.

Seasons - a 2015 Calendar (UPDATED)

At the suggestion of one of my friends, I have pulled a few of my photos -- all in high resolution, so they will print well -- into a wall calendar. Take a look at it, and let me know what you think.

Are there pictures I've missed that you really wish were in it? Do you need pictures of Kane or Elly in it? (Those felt a little too personal, though they are cute animals.) Would you rather see one that was *just* flowers? Just animals?

(Note: I don't get any commission or percentage if you do happen to buy one, but if you do (and you let me know) my ego will be stroked, and that's always a pleasant thing.)

UPDATE: With feedback from friends, I've created a calendar with a floral theme. See it here.

Five Places: My Mother's Childhood Home

My mother (right) with her mother, my oldest brother, Stewart, and her father
at the Haileybury home. This lawn/meadow is where they pastured their milk cow during the Great Depression.

How many people get the chance to live, even for a short period of time, in their parent's childhood home? I don't think many of my friends have done so, but I -- along with my father and a few of my siblings (Patricia, Harvey, Andrew, and Christine) -- spent a whole summer living in the home where my mother grew up, in Haileybury, Ontario.

Spring

The forest floor, May 13, 2014

According to Lucy Maud Montgomery (through Emily of New Moon's teacher Mr. Carpenter), "spring has been responsible for more trash than anything else in the universe of God." While this is undoubtedly true, I am really quite unwilling to resist its pull.

And why should I? It brings such joy.

Rainy-day Magic

Look: you can see the drips coming from the downspout.

It's April, so rain is not unexpected. And here, when a day starts with rain, it is pretty much guaranteed to end that way. Unlike in Colorado, where it might presage balmy sunshine or snowfall. In the next five minutes.

What a difference a month (or so) makes!

April 15, 2014

Do you recognize that park bench? No? You've seen it before. Here:

March 5, 2014

Signs of Spring

Usually, by this time of year, we've had quite a few mild days (and by "mild" I mean well above freezing -- warm enough that you'll see students wearing shorts), but this year, we seem to have been frozen (literally) in the polar vortex. In fact, the City of Ottawa issued a frostbite warning last night. I shared the notification on my Facebook wall and people thought it was a hoax. Sorry. No.

But if I open my eyes, I can see that the world does seem to be moving toward spring. Here are the signs I've found.

Pretty Pictures: Winter

Britannia Beach in winter

Though I am well and truly ready for winter to END, I must admit that I've enjoyed the snowy rambles with Kane, especially since I started bringing my camera along on our walks.

The Snowy Day

Or snowy week, really. It has snowed, and then it has snowed again some, with very little melting in between. This is what our driveway looks like right now.

With thanks to Peter and Brian for some excellent shovel-work.

Where the snow has not been shoveled, it is deep and slippery - hard work to walk through. I tried following in Stephen's steps, but his stride is about a foot longer than mine, so it did not work very well. I was better off cutting my own trail.

The snow and bright sunlight made pretty vignettes everywhere we looked.

The fence around the ice rink - which has not yet been poured.

Evergreen boughs sagged heavily under the mounded snow. We need a good, strong wind to blow it off.

We stepped in out of the cold, cold winter into a house aromatic with the smell of turkey roasting: sage, thyme, onion, and butter. Mmmmmm.

Almost done.

Then, Peter lit a fire for us.

Peter still had hat head from shoveling the driveway.

So, it's been a perfect day. And it's not over yet! This evening, both my girls will be home, to share that turkey, and for Emily's birthday cake. I can't promise that I'll take pictures, but it does seem likely, doesn't it?

Seasons

Gee, looking down the recent posts, it seems I've been in a bit of a funk lately. I haven't, actually, though my heart has been stretched of late.

My prodigal daughter is on her way home. (Rejoice!) So today, I'm going to focus on gratitude. 

Our neighbourhood is a counterpane of beautiful colours, and our back yard seems to have confused its seasons.

This is from the planter I bought in June. Isn't this supposed to be a summer flower?

Gratitude: Renewal

The winter here's cold and bitter
It's chilled us to the bone
We haven't seen the sun for weeks  
~ Sarah McLachlan, "Full of Grace"

Spring is my favourite season. After the long, grey months of winter, I do a little happy dance when I see the flowers and buds. If you've read any of my blog for the past few months, this comes as no surprise.

The ornamental crab in our front yard.

But this year, for some reason, spring seems to have been particularly slow in coming. Maybe because I've been waiting so impatiently.

The theme for this April's Gratitude Journal was "renewal," and I've been looking for pictures that really show that. Looking at the other photos in the Flickr group, I've seen full-grown flowers and roses from other group members. Meanwhile, I've slipped into our garden every so often and snapped a pic, but none of them really looked truly awakened until I got back from my business trip this week.

While I was gone, Ottawa awoke.

I'm so happy finally to feel like spring is happening here.

What's your favourite season? Why?

Freeze!

UPDATE: Picture of Steve's temporary solution.

I have at least one friend who loves winter. She loves skating, snowshoeing, tobogganing, and just playing in the snow with her daughters. She doesn't mind bundling up in many layers.

Myself, I find winter beautiful, especially on a sharp, sunny day, and I don't mind the cold (especially as I seem to be equipped with my very own heat pump), but I think even my friend would agree that there is one aspect of winter that is a decidedly two-edged sword: freezing rain.

Beautiful scenery

Yes, it creates some wonderful scenery (and I sort of regret being too lazy to go out and capture some night-time pictures of the glazed trees, but the pizza was hot and the Chardonnay was calling), but it is treacherous.

On Friday morning, our little side-street was lacquered with about three inches of glistening ice, sprinkled with a generous continual spray of fresh drops. According to CBC, Ottawa police reported 69 collisions between 6 a.m. and noon Friday. I'm sure the insurance adjusters will be writing cheques for weeks.

And if your vehicle happens to be outdoors, you will find it encased in ice, as Stephen did this morning when he went out to start our van up for its weekly workout. The driver's door was frozen. Even after he chipped away the ice, it was immovable because ice had dripped down between the frame and the rubber seals.

So Stephen got tough and pulled out a crowbar!!! If I were facing this challenge, I might have been more likely to grab the blow dryer (or gone back to bed), but Steve is a manly man and grabbed the more assertive tool.

Then this happened.

Yah. That window is not supposed to open.

So even parked in our driveway, the poor vehicle didn't make it through the ice storm unscathed. We are not amused, despite Steve's expression here.

"Stuff happens."

UPDATE: Here's the temporary solution, until we can get the window repaired. Not bad, I think.

---

P.S. This poor van. It most recently lost a wheel while driving on the freeway, but its stories of trauma go further back than that.

• One winter a snowplow skidded straight into the back of it, causing significant damage.
• A construction dump truck backed right into the driver's side door.
• It was rear-ended once.
• I once scraped the entire passenger side (and ripped off the mirror) while driving into our garage. 

Honestly, as with many an aging Hollywood star, I'm not really sure how many parts of this car are original issue.

Everyone should have a soldier in the house.

If there's one thing soldiers are taught, it's how to shine a pair of boots. We won't get into why it is important that a soldier's boots be shiny, we will simply accept that it is. And then we will reap the benefits of having such a skill in the household.

Did you see what happened to my favourite leather boots while I was in Toronto?

That is some serious salt damage right there.
The tips of the toes are sopping wet with salt water.

I was a little distraught because I do like these boots - they are extremely comfortable, great for walking, and they look unique with their foot-forming shape. (They kind of remind me of those old "Earth shoes.")

As soon as I could, I covered the salty spots with moist paper towels and was pleasantly surprised by how much salt came out. (Yay, osmosis!) But the leather still looked rather sad.

So this past weekend, I paid Brian (who is an Army cadet) to give those boots a good cleaning and polishing.

Clean and smooth

Isn't that kind of amazing? I immediately applied a fresh coat of waterproofing. Then I gave him two more pairs of boots to treat.

Thankful for Thanksgiving

A while ago there was a "thing" going around on Facebook where people had to guess (among other things) your favourite holiday. Mine was Thanksgiving.

I love what it's about, I love the weather, I love the traditional turkey dinner ... It's all good.

I was about to narrate the ENTIRE DAY, from stewing the cranberries to leftover-izing the meal, but just decided I will spare you. Instead, you get a photo essay. Not worthy of Time magazine, but enough to give you a taste of our holiday.

For us, the day is largely about the food. We all pitch in, chopping, paring, mincing, stuffing, and stirring.

 Then, because I like to, I decorate the table. Gold and bronze were the colour scheme this year.

Psst! That beautiful fabric? It's a shower curtain!
All the fabric and runners I could find were too expensive.

The best thing about this is that you get most of the work out of the way in the morning, and then you just relax and smell the sage until it's time to cook the veggies. In the interim, the perfect thing to do is go for a walk, and enjoy the season. On American Thanksgiving, it was fun to stroll the neighbourhood and watch as everyone put up their Christmas lights. (I had no idea it was such a tradition to do that.) In Ontario, we head for the forests to look at the miracle of leaves changing colour. [I recently (re)learned that the colour is caused by sugars left behind in the leaves when the sap all runs back to the trunk/roots.]

This year, our Thanksgiving weekend was spectacularly beautiful. A balmy mid-twenties with picturesque blue skies. Who could resist? First, we explored the forest.

Then we wandered through the neighbourhood.

This was my favourite picture of the day.

We walked back into the house and were greeted by the savoury smells of sage, turkey, and celery. There was just enough time to shower and do the final prep before our guests arrived. And then I was too busy enjoying myself to take many pictures, though I did get this one of my beautiful Katie holding her boyfriend's hand.

So I didn't get any pictures of the food all prepared and served. I never do. And that's part of why this is not a photo essay worthy of Time magazine: it ends before the climax. Ah well, you get the idea, right?

How did you spend your Thanksgiving/Columbus Day weekend?

Fall Colours

I finally got my camera back from Japan(!), and have had to pretty much re-learn everything about it. It's gone fairly quickly, though, so I'm happy. Here are some of the fruits of my labours.

I don't even know what kind of berries these are.

A garland of (faux) berries makes our chandelier festive.

Elly charmed me with a wink as she nestled into the pillows on my bed.

Brian made a spectacular sandwich.
(That's cheese dripping down the slice of bread.)
Photographing food is surprisingly difficult.

The following three pictures were manipulated in Photoshop, using the High Dynamic Range (HDR) automation. My first attempt (the pears) turned out quite well with almost no difficulty, but several of the ones I tried after that had "ghosts" or odd "burnt-out" spots. Still, it's a fun new technique. A lot of the dramatic landscape pictures you see have been edited with HDR software of one kind or another. Basically, it takes three or more pictures at different exposures or different "white balances" and merges them together for a picture with a lot of visual depth.

My Sunday lunch. (It's impossible to eat a ripe pear without making a mess.)

From the back yard. Loving these colours!

Sedum enjoying the dappled sunlight. (Thank you again, Raeanne!)

In case you're curious (because I always am), here is an example of how my pictures change with editing. It also shows the difference between what you can do with Picnik (which still makes a big improvement to the image) and what you can do with Photoshop. (SOOC = Straight out of the camera)

Click to enlarge.

So what are you doing for fun these days? 

Welcome, Fall

Well, it just didn't seem right, having bright, summery colours on my front porch, now that the weather has changed. So while I was at Winners on Sunday, I picked up some fall decorations.

A more autumnal look, but not too kitschy, I think.

Fortunately, the chairs and table still work, I think. (Not sure how they'll look come winter.) Here's what I added.

Three funky pumpkins, including one in brushed aluminum.

A lantern with a battery-operated candle with a timer.

And a dramatic wreath for the door. (The lights are battery-powered.)

And in case you're wondering, the picture in the banner at the top of my blog was on my camera's memory card, but no one remembers taking it. I think it's kind of cool, so I'm using it for a while.

Also, my camera with the "hot pixel" was determined to have a "hot cluster" of pixels. It is on its way to Japan. I will be using my old camera for the next couple of months. Sigh.