hen party

The adventures never stop around here. Fresh off the heels of my last house-sit, I was asked by a friend of I would house-sit for her, for a month and a half, at her house which is a 45-min drive from my work. I'd have to take care of chickens, a rabbit and a cat, as well as use a woodstove to heat the house.

Of course, I jumped at the chance. "Yes!" I wrote back as soon as I got her email.

Oh and I have to use the Englishtown Ferry to get to and from work, every day. (This is it the other night, when I was waiting on the Englishtown side for it to come back over. I loved how the lights were reflecting off the water, and the evening was coming on.)

This is the view from my new bedroom. The Cape Breton Highlands in the background, still covered in snow. Mm hmm.

Eggs wait by the front door. Every morning I collect between four and six eggs, and I let them pile up before I wash them.

When going to the barn to check on the chickens, you've got to unhook this latch.

There's just something about latches, isn't there?

 In Australia they call them "chooks". Wait, that might be the chicks. I don't know. Anyway, I love their clucking sounds.

 Doing dishes, I put down this dishcloth to put drying dishes on. More chickens!

 

 

Four to six eggs a day adds up pretty fast, especially when I'm away all day working and get back in the evenings and just eat toast and yogurt, and go to bed so I can do it all again the next day. Come the weekend, it's time to wash eggs, and I find myself with two dozen. There's just something about the shape of eggs, isn't there? So beautiful, especially in the grey winter light coming in the window over the sink.

comfort and joy

This is an ornament that my grandmother sent us in the mail. Mum hung it on the banister by the stairs, next to the only Christmas lights we have up so far (and possibly the only ones we WILL have - it seems we're all too busy and/or burned out to get the whole "tree" thing happening). I really like the way it reflects the lights. And I like this shot above, even though it's blurry. Maybe even because it's blurry. Life's not perfect. It's far from it. It's messy and hard and uncontrollable. Yet here we are.

Also, after spending a few minutes photographing it last night, I realized it looks a bit like an angel - the rays coming out from the candle like the wings.

There was a huge rain-and-wind storm earlier this week. The middle of the country got a dump of snow, and we got a dump of rain, and winds about as strong as when Hurricane Earl blew through in September. The power went out and so Tuesday morning I got to make my breakfast by the light of a kerosene lamp.

This is the pot of oatmeal simmering away on the propane stove. That blue light, so comforting.

Another day - it may have been Sunday - I was outside. Taking pictures of the birdfeeder. I stood still long enough that the birds starting coming around me. THRUP. THRUP. The constant "thrupping" of their wings as they moved from branch to branch, getting ever closer to the bird feeder and to me, was so loud! I felt surrounded by the birds, the sound of them moving, their little chirps and "chick-a-dee-dee"s. None of the pictures were amazing, crystal-clear or centered, but I liked this one. Lifting off the branch, flying.

I love a light dusting of snow.

This was my car this morning - the frost patterns on the roof. So beautiful. It would take a person so long to draw something this intricate, yet it just happened. Water meets cold.

Things were feeling a little skimpy around here, without pictures. My camera's part still hasn't come in yet, and the camera store has assured me that if it had, they would have called me. OK, then.

So I thought I might pull out some of my favorite images from the last two years that I've had the digital camera. Then I realized - trying to pick my favorites from the over-10 000 images I have (no joke!) would be ridiculous. So, this morning I went looking, just randomly diving in to the pictures, and pulled out the first seven I liked.

This one was one of the first images I took. It was in March 2008, and it is the teapots that live on the back of the stove. It reminds me of a painting, maybe something by Vermeer - not that I knew who he was until just now, Googling "Girl With A Pearl Earring." But I like the way the light is soft, and coming through a window. Also the colors are mostly muted browns and whites and greys, and then you have this bright green teapot, and the blue one kind of balances it.

This one is from early 2009. I was messing around with my camera and one of our cats, Ginger. He's pretty laidback and forgiving. Sometimes when I'm sad or just wanting a chilled-out moment, I'll go to wherever Ginger is sleeping and just lay my head on his belly. This is what I'm doing here.
This is a cross-stitch piece that lives in my friend Janice's house. Her sister made it. I think it's awesome. I visited Janice and her room-mates last June, and had a lovely time.

While I was there with them, I took a walk around, and down the street came upon this beautiful magnolia tree. I started taking pictures of it, then realized the woman who owned the house was standing in the doorway. I asked her if I could take pictures of her tree and she said yes. I think this particular blossom looks a bit like a light bulb on Christmas lights.

This picture is taken in Pleasant Bay, Cape Breton. It is of Pollett's Cove, in the distance. Last summer I had rented a car, needing to take a break from not having a car, from my little village, from a lot of things. I rented a car and drove away, and visited my friend Ann, who lives in Pleasant Bay. (Well, I suppose it's Red River where she actually lives.) Then I went for a small hike down the Pollett's Cove trail, before having to turn back. I want very much to actually hike the whole trail, which I have done once before. Perhaps this summer.

This plant is called Lamb's Quarters. It is a weed to most people but it is edible, and we let some of them grow in our garden beds. Then we pick them and steam them. Delicious!

This picture was taken the same day as the Pollett's Cove one. It is the beach at Black Brook, also in the Cape Breton Highlands. It actually reminds me of the cover of my friend Bill's book, which I mentioned last post, the book "The Rock In The Water." Or, not, on second glance. Well, whatever.

So, yeah. The point of this post? I miss my camera. But, looking through my old pictures does help to ease the cravings.

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of dogs, baths, music and houses

I'm sitting in the home of some dear friends, for whom I'm house- and dog-sitting this week. The house is a little bungalow-type structure, down by the water of the Bras d'Or Lake, and today is a windy, stormy day. The windows have droplets of water running down them, and across a narrow channel, against the backdrop of Kidston Island, I can see some form of precipitation is being blown along. (Rain? Snow? Wet flurries? All I know is, it's a form of water, and it's in the air.) A red poinsetta sits in a square, gold-colored pot in the window, its red petals and green leaves reflecting light and somehow looking as neutral as the blue-grey scene outside, despite its bold crimson.

I woke up with a headache and I'm feeling off-center, slightly dizzy. When I stand up or change any position, it feels like my head takes an extra second to catch up with my body. I still have a sniffle in my nose. I feel like curling up in bed with the dog and sleeping for a few days. But I'll go to work and see how the day goes. Sometimes these things can be endured, and sometimes they call for self-care. One never really knows - and can only go on the moment, and whatever forces make decisions for us, whatever variables exist just then.

[Edit: I'm at work now and feeling less dizzy. This might be due to ibuprofen. Whatever it is, I'm glad.]

The dog is a border collie. This means she is black and white, of medium size, with a tail that looks like an exotic fern, frond-like. Always wagging. Her need of me is comforting, as is her affection. She frisks around, grabbing this toy or that, dragging it around with her. At night, when she hears me turn on the tap of the bathtub, she runs over from wherever she is in the house, and stops short just at the edge of the tub, staring intently at the faucet. Once the tub is filled, and I get in, she sits there with me, just as her owners said she would. She holds a ragged gray stuffed bunny in her mouth, and stares at the surface of the water until I flick a bit of water her way. Then she makes as if to bite it, only the bunny is still in her mouth. Incredibly, of the thirty-forty times we do this little act, me flicking the water and her jerking her head forward to try and bite it, the bunny only falls in once, and I retrieve it for her, dripping and soggy, slick with her mouth-slime.

As I write this, I'm listening to Ali Farka Toure's "Talking Timbuktu", which is an album that Ry Cooder produced. The music is African, and I wish I knew more about it than that. Like, which country in Africa, for example. So many times we Westerners think of "Africa" as this one big unified country with the same traditions, people, art, culture, history, all across its vast expanse. Kind of how we lump "North American Indians" all together, too. Anyway, the music is good. I can move my body to its rhythm, as well as let it sit in the background, weaving a tinny tune off my computer speakers. It also brings up memories of my brother, who is not living in Cape Breton these days, and who I miss. The memories are not distinct but more a mood - of the first times I listened to this music, and the fact that Mat was there.

That happens with music, doesn't it? The first number of times you listen to an album or a song, it seems like my brain imprints the music with all the other details of that moment in my own personal history - how I was feeling in general, what emotions I was processing, the people I was hanging out with. And it's more subtle than that - the music ends up acting like a hidden trap door, where you touch it and suddenly you are back where you first listened to it. Caracol, for instance, is a Quebecois singer-songwriter, and I got one of her albums just before Christmas. I ripped it onto my laptop, and took it with me to Montreal for my family's Christmas celebration, and because it was new to me, and because it was so darn good, and also because it helped me to release tension and to feel a certain way - cool, and more like myself - I listened to it a lot. (Really, it's likely there are thousands of minute reasons WHY we listen to music.) So now, just three months later, when I play it, I feel as though in a room just down the hall, just off to my right, my time in Montreal is still happening. And all I'd have to do to return there is turn around, nudge open the door and look.

the walk in the woods

I was waiting in line yesterday for the H1N1 flu shot. It was a beautiful sunny day, the wind was brisk but the sky was blue and true behind the golden yellow trees.

"Did you hear about that girl that was attacked by the coyotes?" The man in front of me turned around to make conversation. It was, after all, 11 am and the clinic wouldn't open until 12. Not to mention there were sixty people ahead of us already.

I must have wrinkled my brow in confusion. I had definitely NOT heard about a girl being attacked by coyotes.

"Up in the highlands," he said. "On that Skyline trail. They flew her to Halifax, and apparently she passed away this morning."

Now, the Skyline trail is probably THE most well-travelled hiking trail in the Cape Breton Highlands. It's mostly flat, wheelchair accessible, and it takes you right out onto a gorgeous and dramatic ridge, where you look out over the highland plateau, the ocean and down the shore to Cheticamp. Also, there is a very good chance that you will see a moose up close - they are thick in those parts of the park. Because of its accessibility and popularity, until this moment, I had not really considered this hiking trail as actual WILDERNESS.

After all, I was there myself only a month ago. By myself, like this girl was. And on the hike in and back out again, I passed people every two minutes or so. Even in the fall, this is a well-travelled hike.

As we waited in line for the flu shot, the air cool but the sun shining on us, I asked the man about it. Nothing else was known, really. Just that the young woman had been hiking by herself, that some other hikers came across her and somehow got the coyotes away, and then later when the RCMP arrived, that one of the coyotes was shot. That the woman was airlifted to Halifax, and then passed away this morning.

"That's crazy," I kept saying, and thinking. "Coyotes don't attack people!"

I waited in the line. We chatted about other things. Eventually we got in the door and into the organized chaos of the vaccination clinic. Kids crying, nervous adults rolling up their own sleeves, the nurses holding the vials up in front of them as they extracted the vaccine into countless needles. I got my own shot done - the whole time still debating to myself whether I was doing the right thing or not - and then sat for 15 minutes to make sure there wouldn't be an adverse reaction.

I went back to work. I talked about the flu clinic and the coyote attack with my co-workers. We all shook our heads in wonder and shock. And then I finished my lunch and went back to my computer, where I looked up the latest on the story. I found out the woman's name, and that she was a young folk singer just starting her East Coast tour. She had wanted a short hike and some time to herself. How familiar does that sound? That was me, just a month ago. Exact same hiking trail. Not a whole lot older.

What happened up there? Did the coyotes have rabies? Why did they come close to a human and then actually attack her? I hope we find out. I love coyotes - to me they are the voice of the wilderness. When I hear them yipping and calling at night, my heart thrills. They are so intelligent, so resilient. The harder humans try to kill them, the more they survive, even thrive. So we need to know what happened in this freak accident, so that we don't live in fear of going into wild spaces. So that we can be better informed when we visit the wilderness. So that we don't act only out of fear, and do harm to other members of the species, when it was only two animals whose motivation we don't yet know.

This whole thing makes me sad. I'm sad for Taylor Mitchell's family and friends, for whom this has happened so suddenly. One day has made this awful difference, taking from them their lovely friend, who was just starting out her life, really. I'm sad for the Skyline trail, which will now forever have this mark on it. I'm sad for the coyotes, and for the wild predators in general - too long people have considered them only as vicious creatures that kill anything nearby, when in reality they are sophisticated, wise, generous and fascinating.

This whole thing continues to be jarring. Disarming. It doesn't make sense. After all, I have lived my whole life in Cape Breton, taking many hikes in the woods, in wild spaces. I walk on a dirt road through wilderness, nearly every day. I have seen moose, deer, raccoons, foxes, even the odd bear. I have only seen a coyote once in my whole life. And, when it sensed I was there, it took off, melting back into the trees.

How I wish those two coyotes had done so, two days ago.

the rapture of st. ginger

It is getting colder now. The air on my daily walks is like cool, clear water on my cheeks, like drinking a perfect glass of water when you're so thirsty. I have to wear a hoodie on the walks now, even when I heat up, and I start out with an orange hat on. Hunters are in the woods.

The leaves have fallen off most of the trees, and they collect in the ditches and color the ditch-water tannin brown. My little tomato plant has had its seeds harvested and saved, and soon I'll take the plant out of the pot and leave it on the compost heap. Time passes and we move with it, although we hardly realize we do at the time. It will be 2008 in a little more than 2 months! Crazy.

The picture is of Ginger, one of our three cats. Janice took the photo on her last visit. I'm cuddling up with the cats often these days. Cassis, black and shiny, loves to sit on paper, so she'll curl up beside me here in the "office", on a stack of wrinkled papers I keep there just for her. Bubbinette, the little calico, loves to sit on anyone's lap, provided that person doesn't actually want her there. But she's cute nonetheless. And Ginger loves to writhe on his back in the middle of the garden on a warm sunny day, rapturous. Or in the living room, while I'm petting him, like pictured above.

I'm not sure what else to say about cold weather or cats right now -- maybe that's November having its way with my mind the way it does every year -- except to say, I hope you've got a cat to cuddle, or whatever makes you feel cozy on these darkening, coldening days, heading into November. What are the particular pleasures for you?

And yes, I realize "coldening" is not a word. But maybe it should be?

sweet.

I just wanted to make a few changes to the blog -- add a copyright notice, and perhaps a short bio of myself. I figured I'd play around with the template a bit, see what kind of a mess I could make.

Well, minutes turned into hours pretty quickly (I've noticed this happens a lot on the Internet) and before I knew it I was geekily reading source code for different weblogs I really like. Then I taught myself how to do two things that have always seemed so impossible (like reading The New Yorker if you're just learning your ABC's), and cool, which in hindsight were quite simple.

Thing #1: How to make titles appear over links when a reader runs the mouse over the link. To see what I mean, run your mouse over this next link, or try doing the same to some of the links in the tables to the left. The link is for the Syracuse Cultural Workers' catalog, which I visited today; click here to visit it yourself.

Thing #2: Footnotes! Now, most people that know me, at least on an academic basis, know my fondness for footnotes. These are a different kind but just as wonderful. Instead of sitting at the bottom of a page of written text, these pop up into little windows, when a reader clicks on the linked text. Marvellous!

So, I now know, thanks to reading source code, how to make footnotes, which I hadn't had a clue how to do before.

I'm guessing that my readers fall into three categories when it comes to my new discoveries about link titles and footnotes.

1. People who already know how to do these things and are mildly amused with my naivety.
2. People who don't know how to do this either but frankly don't care, or don't need to care.
3. People who blog and also want to know how to do this.

If you fall into the third category, just read the source code for this page, and mess about with your template, and you should have it. If not, we can communicate.

Now I think it's time to leave my computer and step back into the "real world" for some cooking. One of the cats has been hovering around, meowing, as if to say just that.

rise up!

I wish I could show you how beautiful the garden is. I think even photographs taken by someone skilled would fail to do the plants and the sunshine and the fresh breeze justice. Sometimes when I'm in a cranky or desultory mood, I go sit outside, somewhere on the deck, and look around me. It is July, and I am home, and this is what I wanted. This is what I dreamed about in February and March when things were so miserable, and this is what kept me afloat through April and even May, with the snowstorms and slow growth. Things may not be perfect, there are still issues to deal with, and my energy is still low. But it is July and I am home.

This means: forget-me-nots and buttercups, delicate blue and yellow, mixed together the length of the driveway. Calvin mowing our lawn every few weeks and making the lush growth of the garden stand out. Irises a splashy dance in many colors. Scented stock and sweet rocket making the air smell of clove at night. Tall grey clouds and the sudden rainstorms they bring. My cherry tomato plant putting out little yellow trumpets that will one day in late August be little cherry tomatoes. Green, green, everywhere green, and most everything putting out buds or new growth of some kind. Sitting on the deck in the shade of the maple that grows through it, reading and drinking juice, while the cats lie splayed beside me.

Speaking of reading, what I'm mentally devouring these days is a book Grandmaman gave me last Christmas, which I'm finally getting to, called "Ride the Rising Wind: One Woman's Journey Across Canada", by Barbara Kingscote. It's the true story of how Barbara travelled across Canada when she was 20 on the back of her mare, Zazy, in 1949 and 1950. It's incredible in pretty much every way: her age, her inexperience with that sort of travel, the way people (in general) were so kind to her, not to mention her writing describing the places and people she passed. Also, she travelled at a time when horsepower on farms still came partly from horses, but this was changing rapidly to the modern, mechanized way of doing things. Kingscote thus witnessed both small, subsistence farms, which she describes as having dignity and eking out a living while respecting the land around them, and the larger operations of farming, logging and urban sprawl that were creating a space that was "an obsolete battleground where the battered corpse of wilderness lay unburied, for everyone to see and no one to mourn." Kingscote calls it like she sees it, with clear, dancing prose, and I'm only halfway through--we're just about to enter the prairies. We being the three of us, of course: Barbara, Zazy and me, riding that "rising wind".

And speaking of rising, I've been thinking about mornings, the time one rises, what one does soon after rising. I'm enjoying having time in the mornings, to do those important stretches, eat breakfast on the deck, spying on the birds at the same time. And sometimes, when I get up extra early (7 or 8 am, these days) I feel like I've done something productive just by getting out of bed. There's something special about the early morning and the few times I do get up early, I enjoy it -- there are mists that will later burn off, and shades and angles of light not seen at other times of day. Of course, my body is usually extra cranky at an early hour, so there's a pay-off.

Now it's your turn to rise to the occasion. What's your morning routine? What's early and what's late? What's so special about getting up early, anyway? Do tell.