221112 being nine again

Nov. 12

Walking: it is like water. It quenches a thirst. Forty millimetres of rain fell overnight. The pools and streams were brimming!

Like water features in a Japanese garden, the ponds seem to have a natural focal point: a rock, tree or log, like an altar stone.

Nature does not waste a good design on just one project. Like those of a clever artist, her patterns and colours repeat on different scales for various effects. (Not counting that whole experimental Burgess Shale thing, which seems to have been a huge brainstorm in creative design! * )

Antlers and a giant squid; and a fungus on white birch, its colours and echoes right out of a Group of Seven painting.

Did you, when you were a child, play in the flooding ditches in the spring, follow the temporary rivers along the curb, and clear debris for them to flow to the drains? When I was little we played in ditches, but my grandchildren and I follow the curbside creeks on our street. Today I was nine again, but following a real stream, engineering it down the hill, clearing logs and leaves for it to run. As you clear the way down, the stream itself begin to clear its own bed with the force of the water. I was childishly delighted that I did not get a soaker in my tall rainboots! What fun it was to play, on a Saturday morning even, eternal for the child, no school until faraway Monday.

Here, where the stream opens into a flat place, it spreads and some volume is lost to the meadow. I cleared its path and it gathered itself and gained impetus across the open area and on down the hill.

While I was playing, I stepped into this loop of rusted wire fence. It was grown into the bark of a tree and I managed to break it off and bring it home. Scary to think of a not-human animal getting caught!

So late! A buttercup: can it have survived the frosts, or is it newly blossomed with the unusual warmth?

This definitely just has come up, tiny leaves springlike!

These purple bramble stems, I see them in the spring. Are they always this colour, under their foliage? Do the brambles think it is spring too?

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Rocky does not like rain, though he is happy to go walking in any weather. Here on the porch, he hopes we will go inside soon...

We put our spare mattress down in the front room, for Rain and Fox, when the power went out at the her farm and they stayed here for the night. Rocky thinks this is very cool: a real bed in the fireplace room is a great idea, he says!

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A chipmunk lives under our porch or in the foundation by the front door, and he regularly pilfers bits of tissue from the box on the porch. Rocky would like to get him but doesn't really work that hard at it. He is not that kind of dog. Whatever his breeds, akita? german shepherd? lab?, he is a person dog, keeps an eye on me (most of the time!), thinks his main job is to be near me. He and I are perfect for each other; he is what I need him to be.

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At the charity shop, there was a pot with no lid. I broke my pot a few weeks ago and had only the lid. Of course I kept the lid!

We have been enjoying squash and greens from Rain's farm. The flavours are so fresh they seem almost intoxicating! Last night it was chard, heavenly, steamed, and served with cooked cranberries. Here is a beautiful late lettuce rescued from a frost, just before the last warm spell. We have had several quite summer-like warm spells through October and November, only a couple of frosts.