mumma yaga

july 28 This is not a lost hat, though wouldn't it be spectacular! Today's bouquet is proving very popular: Then: "That is one tiny hummingbird!", I thought. But it's not a bird, it's a moth! The hummingbird moth. I saw one once in Dorset, UK, surreal then, and now. It is a sign ... ... of something.  ***** In the afternoon I took the "camp road" that goes past our neighbour to the north and then to a "camp" much higher up. It is easier path for a second (convalescent) walk. I came across a ghost pipe, we once knew it as an Indian pipe, but ghost is better on so many levels, not least of which is its haunting appearance. I cut back through the meadow and came across these three insects feeding on a white meadowsweet clump. The two waspy ones came face to face around a corner and there was a little altercation. The moth carried on, unconcerned.   ***** Last week when I had a couple of good days, I finished my second "Estrie" mosaic...

 July 27 Is this thing I have made something that has been made before? A hummingbird bouquet. I woke last Thursday in terrible pain and nauseous, still in the throes of my covid vaccine reaction. My hip had been getting progressively more painful for several days, somehow, I thought, related to the vaccine reaction, and in addition, I had severe abdominal pain. I decided I needed to go to a hospital; I was almost ready to call an ambulance. K drove me to Cowansville Hospital around nine in the morning. I was taken in almost immediately: the triage nurse could see how badly I was hurting. The pain in my hip was somewhat relieved from sitting up and moving, but my abdominal pain and nausea were no better. The doctor saw me within minutes, it seemed. He did a complete ultrasound of my abdomen and found nothing untoward. But he put me on an IV with anti-nausea meds and fluids, and ordered an xray for my hip. I had explained my vaccine reaction, which he said was not as uncommon as the...

 July 21 Yesterday there was a haze over the Estrie: there was a smog warning for the area - smoke was blowing from forest fires in northern Ontario. The air was still, and I remembered how there is often a dead stillness before a storm. We almost never get such calm; always a breeze is blowing. The birds had even stopping singing. Sure enough, late in the day thunder began to roll around the valley, low, rumbling and steady. Several brilliant flashes of lightning brought rain at last. This morning new clouds are forming and drifting up like smoke from the hills. There is once again a wind moving the trees and the birds are going about their business. There are beginning to be glimpses of blue in the sky and the maple tree that shades the apron by the house rustles soft then loud; all the trees are stirring as if murmuring to each other. ***** That bit of blue is gone now; the clouds are coming up from the valley obscuring even the closest hills. The trees are silent and still agai...

 July 19 Deer visited! They grazed by the wise witch for a short while, a fawn and his mother, still nursing, then two young bucks with beautiful little antlers followed. They were such a delicate caramel colour, dainty and fragile-looking, with small narrow faces, and skittish as can be, looking about more than grazing. They went on up the west meadow before long. We haven't seen much wildlife in the meadow, perhaps because Blackie runs free over the mountain, although I appreciate his presence as watchdog and friend.  K thought the hummingbird feeder should be taken down because it is not natural. I have worried, too, that the birds must get nutrients from the flowers but only calories from the sugar water, so it may not be good for them. Down came the feeder and I have replaced it with flowers from Rain's garden. (At the farm they have plentiful cutting beds.) I will have to keep the supply up, and supplement it with the day lilies by the road while they last. I hope the li...

 July 15 Nature imitating art: it's like a Turner painting. ***** This morning clouds were sleeping in the Missisquoi Valley. They spend every night in the valley these days. Lazy, they usually get up long after the sun, still sleepy. This morning they were being sentient, and purposeful, crawling up the mountain, as if searching for some graveyard to shroud. ***** Overnight, tunnel spiders arrived, yesterday not a one, today dozens have woven their blanket webs all over the lawn, big and little. Each web has a small hole down into the ground where they wait for hapless prey to be caught. Perhaps they all hatched overnight, or marched in for a grand siege. These two webs are about 10 inches across, among the largest. The web in the first picture was not the only one with a teepee-like cone strung up to a tall plant. ***** The bluebirds flew away a couple of weeks ago; they took their nestlings on a Hansel-and-Gretel adventure to lose them in the wide world. Yesterday they returned ...

 July 8 We have cows again. Last week the children finished the school year. Indre is going into grade four, and Robin is attending grade one, in September. They attend the school my own children went to for their junior years. That is a wheel turning, a season: picking up one's grandchildren from the very school your children attended. I grew up five minutes from our present home, frequented the same subway stops and parks then as now. For those who were born and raised in a small town this must be the way most families, most circles, turn and turn. But the modern world doesn't reflect this as much. People move, indeed K's family moved numerous times during his childhood, first from town to town in Scotland as his father pursued his medical degree, then through several homes in towns on the Canadian prairies. Two of my four brothers left Toronto as young men and never returned. My own parents both left their homes, my father, Saskatchewan, to go to war, my mother, to come ...