Every year about this time, after all the snow is gone and the lovely warm weather returns, I engage in certain spring rituals. The first ritual involves dragging out my ancient geriatric lawnmower and wondering, "Will the poor old thing still work? Or will this be the year it refuses to go, and I have to say goodbye and get a new lawnmower?" So I pulled it out last Saturday, filled it up with fuel, and gave its starting cord a couple of yanks. Lo and behold, it coughed into life!!! Amazing! This lawnmower is now about 23 years old and I can't believe that it still works!
I was thinking of calling this post "Something Old, Something New". The lawnmower is really old, but I got some brand new duckies to wear when I pushed her around the yard and worked in the garden. Aren't they great?
Another spring ritual is, of course, cleaning up my garden and appreciating the emerging flowers. After the horribly cold January, February and March we had here in Eastern Ontario, these crocuses, my first flowers, are even more welcome than usual.
And, about this time of year, the garden centres open and one of my spring rituals is getting tempted by all kinds of beautiful plants. I passed a garden centre when I was shopping on Saturday and told myself to behave, not go in and buy anything yet. But I couldn't resist these gorgeous red Dianthus. Thank goodness for warm, sunny days and gardening and old lawnmowers that still work!
Recently, I found this memento of a very happy time in my life. Several months after Peter and I began living together, we took a trip to Paris (I actually won this trip, but that's another story). While we were there, we got some photos taken so that we could get a transit pass in order to take the subway and buses all over Paris. (The transit pass was called a Carte d'Orange - I still remember that). We got our pictures taken at a place called ARC & TYPES (57, Bd de Grenelle, 75015, Paris), and they gave us the photos in this little paper folder with their name printed on the front. I have kept this little folder in a box for many, many years and rediscovered it recently while culling through stuff, doing one of my "do I need to keep this anymore" purges. There it was, with my picture showing through a window in the folder.
Opening the little paper folder, I found a real treat - two of my pictures and two of Peter's. I think the black and white picture of Peter was a Canadian Passport photo. Wow - we were so young. And I love the setup of our four pics in four little boxes.
These pics were taken in 1992 - thirteen years ago. Those were the days, my friend....
Like many - probably most - people in the Ottawa area, I will be so, so, so happy to see an end to the month of February. It was one of the coldest, most awful Februaries I remember, and it has made life miserable for a lot of people. To celebrate the fact that this horrible month is ending in 2 days, I got together with some colleagues of mine at work today and we made a poster to allow everyone to say goodbye to February.
My co-worker Heather and I drew nasty old man February on a couple of big pieces of paper and hung it on a wall in the hallway where lots of people could see it. Then other people wrote their comments to say goodbye. This is my colleague Aakelah giving her thoughts on what a yucky month it was.
Heather drew a really ugly face and I coloured his eyes and we had a lot of fun. Heather wrote down that the average daily temperature in February was -16.3 degrees C in Ottawa.
It was a hit with people in our office. They all felt better after venting their feelings about how awful the month had been. I drew the word February with icicles hanging off the letters. Somebody wrote "Die, February, Die!" underneath.
So - Goodbye February 2015, and good riddance. Hope we never see such a horrible month like this, ever again!
It was startling to see this magnificent creature outside the window of my apartment in the city. My apartment is right downtown - I mean, you can't get more downtown than it is, a few steps away from the Byward Market and the National Art Gallery and the Houses of Parliament. It is very common to see hawks at my place in the country, but not here in the city. Definitely a first - and very exciting! So I took a picture and then looked up hawks to see what kind it is. I think it might be a Sharp-Shinned Hawk, or maybe a Broad-shouldered Hawk, or maybe...I am really not sure. Any ideas?
It has been so cold for most of January, that I have sought things to cheer myself up and make this cold and dark month more endurable. One day, when I was walking through the Byward Market in Ottawa, I saw this cute little snowman that someone had built in a courtyard. He was so cheerful, he brightened my day.
Another way I overcome the dreary cold is by buying myself a bright bouquet of flowers. Love the yellows and reds. Ahhh! It makes me think of spring, when flowers will be growing in the gardens again.
Most winter evenings recently have been just too cold to go out for a walk. So I cheer myself up by sitting down with a bunch of coloured pencils and scribbling a drawing. Nothing serious - just for fun, just to put down a bunch of bright colours on a piece of paper. Another way to dream of spring, another way of coping with winter.
When walking around the city recently, I have been finding wonderful light displays that have been installed to celebrate the season. Like this configuration of decorated trees in a little courtyard. They looked like strange creatures from outer space, or under the sea, waving their arms and dancing.
In another courtyard a few streets over, I found another set of trees decorated with lights. But this time, they were red and green instead of blue. These ones looked like tall thin creatures stretching their arms.
The light effects I have seen in the country have been quite different. They were not man-made but rather caused by beautiful sunsets and the lovely evening light on the new fallen snow. Truly gorgeous!
We had a full moon this past week. I took this photo of the moon when I was in the city, at dusk just as it was becoming visible. It somehow seemed appropriate that it would be framed by the very industrial-looking structure of the bridge - the moon in an urban setting.
In contrast, when I took a photo of the full moon from the back yard of my home in the country a day later, it was framed by trees and a long silver jet trail. Very appropriate to the country setting.
