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We were talking in the kitchen a few weeks ago when my son said something that sort of surprised me. He said our place is a bit of a museum and that whenever he and his kids visit a small-town museum, they always see things that we have in our house. Oil lamps. A galvanized… Continue reading we are old (near the mountain) →
Thinking: about the bundle of linen I have stored away for an early September dye vat and how when I look up at the sky as I’m swimming my morning back stroke, I see all the blue possibilities: a line of white like a zipper, deeper when the water is reflected, and oh, the grey-blue… Continue reading quotidian, blue possibilities →
So quickly the summer passes. Just last week, wasn’t it, I was tying up roses, planting out the tiny tomato plants. I was thinking ahead. Some family members would arrive in July, some in August. And now, it’s past mid-August. The curtains my granddaughter and I made over a week in late July, using 10… Continue reading so swift time flies →
In the sandbox, the boys were waging a war. A city built, then missiles arrived to destroy it. Not nuclear, the newly-8 grandson assured us. When they came to the table on the deck for their lunch, they told us about it. It was either WW4 or 5, imaginary, and almost everyone was killed. All… Continue reading “It’s hard to build a civilization.” →
I was awake last night, wondering about the Perseids. The previous night I’d gone from my bed to the dark deck, just a few small solar lights stuck in potted plants, and I leaned against the railings. One, two, three satellites, doodling across the sky. And then a meteorite, so swift I almost missed it… Continue reading “…the tender protest of the stars.” (Lorca) →
When we swam in Georgia Strait yesterday, seals followed us. When we sat against the warm stones to dry, a heron flew over us and no one but me noticed that it shat just beyond where we sat. The tomatoes are ripening. The sweet peas continue. The cucumbers are climbing the shelves in the greenhouse… Continue reading daily →
For nearly fifty years I’ve been hiking to Skookumchuck Narrows to look at the rapids. The word Skookumchuck means Strong Waters in the Chinook Wawa, or trading language, that once stitched the Pacific Northwest together like a textile of intricate and unexpected fibres. For nearly fifty years I’ve looked at the wild boil as tides… Continue reading Skookumchuck →
This morning, a fading moon over the lake as I swam, and a dozen swallows swooping, feeding on a new hatch of insects, some of them so close I could see their rufous undersides. How many make a summer? One? A pair? Or a dozen skimming the surface of the water, then rising high as… Continue reading moon and summer swallows →
…the trail to the lake for my swim, I was humming, not Kris Kristofferson’s iconic song, but the dreamier Carrickfergus, My childhood friends and my relationshave all passed on now like the melting snowso I’ll spend my days in endless rovingsoft is the grass, my bed is freeoh to be back now in Carrickferguson that… Continue reading Sunday morning, coming down…. →
–During my swim this morning, I could have sworn I smelled pancakes cooking. Maybe someone in one of the far cabins was cooking an outdoor breakfast? I was taken back to my childhood summers, our family camping trips to Salt Spring Island or Englishman River or any number of sites between here and my father’s… Continue reading summer notes →
The unaccompanied minors arrived safely on Saturday, and with them the rain. Yesterday morning we went down to the lake for a swim, grandson H. exclaiming, “I remember every turn in the road to get here,” as we drove down the wet highway. Granddaughter K. came in for a swim but Grandpa John and H.… Continue reading “one of these mornings” →
