Friday 23 Sept 2005

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It’s a cool, drab, windy morning. Talking with you on the phone spiced it up. And since you’re dreaming about a fall tour, I took the camera out with you in mind. We’ll take the same tour as if you’d just arrived. As if you aren’t taking that when you visit this web page — and as if most of these pictures haven’t appeared onscreen before — but anyway the one above is what I see when I go out the door and down the step. If I walk straight out to the middle of the driveway and turn back to look at the house, this is our front yard ...

The shade garden is tiny. Wildflowers for shade were here the last two summers, but they didn’t bloom this year. Maybe Scott weeded them out in the spring before I got home. Or maybe the hostas I put in last August wouldn’t let them reseed. I am disappointed. The wildflowers were always good for a delighted gasp when a new bloom suddenly appeared. The hostas didn’t put on any show to speak of.

Here’s the deck “before” we get to it ... what a fricking hillbilly porch! Today the mop leaning in the corner is visible but there's no pail upside down on a post; quite often it would be there. The farm version of trailer trash, we. Even my welcoming witch’s cauldron and broom, usually strategically propped up in full view, have been pushed aside, covered up.

That’s a TV under the white plastic, if you were wondering. No one we’ve asked needs one, we’ve no place to store it, it’s garbage. Seems a shame; I could still advertise it on the local Freecycle list but I don’t have much hope there either.

When I planted flowers in this crescent bed last summer, there were 3 to 12 of each type and I thought I’d get the “mass planting” advantage. But no, it’s still not enough to make a visual hit to my liking. The speedwells are past their bloom now and the daylilies are pretty much done. Imagine how good this would look if those browneyed susans spread across the whole bed at the back? But a couple of those didn’t come back this spring; that’s the way with those particular flowers and me. They are supposed to be hardy and spread aggressively, and I love them, but for me there are never enough. What you see, except for a few orphaned petunias I stuck in the front, are all perennials. Next year I’m going to plant annuals — deep-pink cosmos — across the entire back of the bed. Other ideas welcome.

The bed behind is newly made only weeks ago, filled with lilies, carnations, and a miniature bleeding heart. Among them all, next spring, I’ll broadcast the poppy seeds that came from the same lady. Meanwhile, the planters with their daisies, portulaca and petunias got hauled off the grass, onto the flower bed.

This rock sits in the wild raspberries at the back corner of our yard. I like to sit there sometimes, especially when the boys are in the kitchen with the windows open. Then I can listen to them talking or singing (Everett, he likes to sing). If you lived here you’d have the area reclaimed for the yard and it would be a lovely little destination. I just plough through rosebushes up to my waist and don’t go there without long pants).

Running out of things to look at here! The path to the garden is one of my favourite places. It’s all green and shady, and just ... too short, but sweet. I almost always stop in the middle of it, just to relax a moment and let my eyes wander over the “forest” floor. Forest floor, ha! I never think of bush around here as forest. Why is that, I wonder; only deep forest is forest?

You are seeing about half of the garden space. Behind the bush on the right is another side of it. If I was ambitious, I’d grow some commercial garlic, as Julie imagines. I have thought of it, actually, but ... that's as far as it got.

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Thursday 22 Sept 2005
2:42 p.m.

Dead cow sizzling in cast iron for lasagne.

I put in one hour’s work before going out into the sunshine at noon.

Today’s first stroll presented a sky full of migrating geese, whose squeaky door-hinge, boy-changing-to-man breaking-voiced honks filled the southern air for a good 10 minutes as they crossed my line of vision. I had just climbed through the barbwire at the north end of the pasture when I heard them in the distance, and I turned and lifted up the binoculars hanging from around my neck. They were too far away to get a photo, but the sound and its duration were enough.

When I couldn’t hear them any longer, I crossed the summerfallow field north of the pasture. There were tracks out there that I didn’t recognize. They had to have been made by a heavy animal like a cow, but there haven’t been any cattle out over there recently that I’m aware of. That’s probably what it is; if not, there’s some big animal loose out there. There has been a lot of rain in the past while so little sloughs have formed in the fields and here you can see where the animals sauntered over for a drink.

By the time I got to the road, lined on both sides by poplar trees bedecked in their best autumn leaves, I had exhausted the camera battery and couldn't get a picture of them, dazzling in their fall hues of green, red, orange and yellow.

A little further on, a huge grey heron lifted off from the creek and flew, never very high over the ground, to just beyond my sight.

Sigh. Is it lovely here, or is it lovely? People who think there is nothing to see in this province ... haven't seen this, or heard it, or smelled it. Oh, the sweet fall scent of — of what? I don't know what it is, but it is intoxicating —

And now, back to work.