Slowpoke

Winter is slow to arrive this year. October was basically September weather, all through November it felt like October, and now that it's December it only just feels like November. There was the sparest, lightest little dusting this morning, but it's gone already. We are stuck in the bleak pre-snow season of craggy branches and grey backdrops. It's dark by 4pm and still dark when the alarm shrieks. Delightfully melancholy, but more suited to post-Halloween than the advent of Christmas.

This semester was tough (hence my lack of luster here). Not because of workload - or rather not because of school workload. More due to work-workload. That's changing though, for better or worse, and I am job hunting for the first time in rather a long while. Equal parts thrill and terror, I tell you. Let's all hope that something lovely and fun comes along, part-time so I can stay at my favourite library too.

The Redwall gang heading to a winter celebration by Christopher Denise

I feel all craggy and grey, like the weather. This busy semester has left me with little time for stretching my limbs and they're in danger of atrophy. I tried doing yoga the other day and I felt like one of those aged newcomers who only go to the first class and bend over, forever suspended, fingers never reaching toes. Stiff, sore and old. That's how I felt. Weird. If this is a preview, I don't approve.

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I have kept up with reading, moreso than usual during school. Not a reading-heavy semester so I had a bit of time on the commute or before bed. It's so very nice to slip into another world now and then, even a strange somewhat sinister one, or just to slip into the past. Now I'm starting in on my festive reading. Since the weather isn't doing it, the books should put me in a seasonal frame of mind.

(I couldn't decide which trailer I liked best... so you get both!)

Other Autumnal highlights include catching up with an old friend (how is it possible that we'd not spoken for six years? Six? Jeez.) and then there a was a brief dash to stay in a walled city. It's not far from here, but we don't go often. It was really nice, just for a couple of days, to play tourist and to eat scrumptious things. This spot is totally worth it, if ever you visit and feel like a treat. Also, just a block or so away, is this little chocolaterie which is what I imagine Willy Wonka's factory smells like. Go there just to breathe, seriously. 

Nicole Gustafsson, kindred spirit

The Naturalist's Study

Terrarium Tree

I came upon Ms Gustafsson's work at just the right time, I think. Summer has not yet given up the ghost but Autumn is on the verge of charging in with gusts of wind, ripe squash, and the yearly explosion of copper and crimson tree-tops. Not all of Nicole's work is autumnal but a lot seems to fit in with this, the best of all seasons.

All's Well at the Schoolhouse

The Conservatory

Blue Tree Books

Hare House (in the rain!)

Oh, the colours! They're so lovely. Trees growing in unlikely places, terrariums, lanterns, rain. I can't help but be smitten. I want to get all of her card-sets but I won't want to give any away.

Look at all the places you can visit her:
Portfolio
Blog
Shop

Lanterns. A detail of a larger piece, I think.

 

Mountain of a Molehill

The Geologist's Study

Whomping Willow

Octoberish

I love the way taking out of focus pictures makes them look like polaroids. Or at least it does to my eyes. 

Picking Apples on a Sunday Afternoon

 

 

 

Struck Dumb

I've taken a vow of silence. 

Not to get closer to god, but because if I speak I end up having coughing fits that turn my lungs inside out. Nasty allergies morphed this week into a nasty cold. Poor me, right? Not since that one time when I was twelve have I smoked a cigarette, but still I sound like a 90 year old with emphysema. 

No point in seeing a doctor. The same thing happened last year and I went and all he did was give me something to help me sleep. Which I never took anyway. I just have to wait it out with lozenges and endless pots of Cold Formula tea. And silence. But enough about my gummed up alveoli. 


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Earlier this week I was getting my lunch in the break room at the office. It's up on the second floor and the window was open. Someone walked by on the sidewalk below, sending up an operatic chorus. I poked my head out to catch a glimpse of this passing Carmen but no one was there. 


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The annual arboreal fireworks display has commenced. I know, it's such a cliché to get excited about leaves. I don't care.


I grew up on the west coast and so everything east of the wheat fields was "Back East" and made me think of knee socks, ivy creeping over brick and maple syrup. This time of year it's true. This time of year I can just about convince myself that I live on the set of a made-for-TV Halloween movie. It makes me forgive all my seasonal ailments. 


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Adrien and I went for breakfast this morning. He brought a newspaper as I am mute. I wanted to write about how the loss of one sharpened all my other senses. But then I remembered that speech is not a sense. It feels like one. 


In the car I pulled out my notebook and asked him questions at a red light. 

"Is this a new cd?"

"No."

"It's all achy songs."

(Raised eyebrows.)

"A good ache."

(Smile.) 


Some of the music he listens to gives me a lovely, terrible ache. The kind of feeling that comes from having a hopeless a crush. It's nothing to do with the lyrics, most of which I don't even know. It's the music itself, the lowing melody. 

If Adrien's musical tastes could be distilled into one word, that word would be "catchy". 

If my musical tastes could be distilled into one word, that word would be "unsurprising". I wouldn't say that I have bad taste - who says that about themselves? - but I am not edgy. Still, Alissa convinced me to go out last month to see Juliette Lewis and that felt slightly edgy. Although that admission likely just proves my lack of edge.


Here is one of the songs from Adrien's mix:






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Whenever we're out and I see a car pass by with BC plates my heart gives a little lurch of recognition. 


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Je n'écris jamais en français. Pourquoi? Ma vie ici est bilingue. J'aimerais voir plus de films et livres qui sont bilingues. Je veux dire, un mélange. C'est comme ça ici, en réalité. Souvent les conversations sont un mélange. Des mots anglais répondent des mots français. Et l'invers. Des phrases moitier-moitier. Des accents, des anglicisms. 


Aujourd'hui j'ai vu un panneau pour A&W qui offrait: 
"1 oncle burger pour 3.00"
Ça fait bizarre. 


I never write in French. Why? My life here is that way. I'd love to see more films and books in both languages. Mixed together, I mean. It's like that here, in real life. Conversations are often a blend. English words answer French ones. And the other way around. Half and half sentences. Accents, Anglicisms. 


Today I saw an ad outside A&W that offered: 
"1 oncle burger pour 3.00"
Which sounds odd. 


****


On the way home today a car passed in the lane next to us, revving the motor. It was an ordinary sedan, newish maybe, but it didn't look sporty to me. Still, the motor gave a satisfyingly predatory grumble and the two dress-shirted men in the car gave war-cry whoops each time it did so. I looked over at them, wondering how much fun it can be to tease an engine in traffic. 

I forgot about them, though, when a bus whooshed past stirring up fallen leaves. A whirlwind of copper and gold. 


Somewhere above the woollen cloud cover some passing geese honked their solemn fair-well. I wanted to tell Adrien but also didn't want to cough. And my notebook was tucked away. So I'm telling you instead.

My Enemy Wears Yellow

 

What a magnificent grump I've been of late. 

 

As one of my good friends pointed out this morning, I've been a bit distant lately. I know I have, it seems to be an inevitability of mine. Sometimes I flow and sometimes, like now, I ebb. I hole up in my shell. I like being tucked away in here, it's quiet and I can think. The only company I seem to crave is Stephen Fry on ye olde ipod. He reads and I slip through the bricks into Diagon Alley. 

One reason for this habit of mine is that I have reverse SAD. Actually, really, it's regular SAD, it's just that I pass most sufferers going in the opposite direction. Summer finds me clumsy with heat stroke while the onset of winter sets my heart ablaze. Whatever else I am, I am certainly a champion hibernator. Despite my urban postal code I act like a country wife of yore and stoke up the oven, kneading and mixing, baking and roasting. I walk around in a haze of cooking smells, wiping away steam from the windows to peer out at the snow. It's wonderful. 

But not in summer. In summer I swelter and slump. I scowl and bite. There's no denying that it brings out the worst in me. 

By the time the copper tones of August slide down the seasonal horizon I am often in a state of nervous exhaustion. So very ready for the leaves to turn, for the advent of frost and apple picking and pumpkins on doorsteps. Temperatures drop from the 30s to the teens and I rejoice, reaching enthusiastically (if prematurely) for scarves and mitts and warm things to drink. 

But then: enter ragweed. 

Just as I start to feel the relief of Fall, just as my eyes shine in anticipation of the wonderfulness that is BackToSchool-Thanksgiving-Halloween-Christmas-NewYearsEve-MyBirthday I am struck back, my (red) eyes now shining with tears. I am reduced to a sneezing mess with an itchy palate.   

 

What a kick in the teeth allergy season is. I'm not complaining, not really (yes I am). This is still my favourite time of year. This pencil case toting, molasses flavoured month is lovely. But could someone, for the love of kleenex, please do something about the ragweed? 

 

 

 

A lot of walking (and a break for souvlaki)

For a description of where I went last night, visit Alissa's blog here. I wasn't quite as taken with the opening act as she was, but he certainly was ear-catching and an energetic performer. I was taken by Stereo Total. They were a lot of fun.
I spent most of today walking. It was a superb end-of-August day. Warm, but with a chill wind to remind us that apple & pumpkin season is nearly here. 

My book of shadows (but not really)

Ever since I saw Practical Magic (and probably before), with that strange and lovely book of shadows, I've wanted one of my own.

(Screenshot of the Amas Veritas website - if you liked the look and feel of that movie you should browse this website, they have lots of photos. Practical Magic is not exactly my favourite movie but there is something about the style, especially of the Owens house that appeals.)

Apparently I am not so shaddowy though because the book I ended up creating has none of the dark spells and instead has lots of recipes (and the food splotches to go with them). In the end it's really just a recipe scrapbook. I've got it divided up into sections based on the time of year (the old pagan wheel - which I can't say I observe any more than to simply notice them come and go, and maybe use it as an excuse to make something seasonal and tasty). And so I thought, as it is nearing All Hallow's Eve, that I would share a few pages from that section in the book. It still has some blank spots left, which I would be happy to fill with any autumnal recipes anyone wants to share!

(I have blank spots in other seasons too, so it doesn't have to be fall-ish)

 

 

 

 

 

 

(I sometimes cut things out of magazines or other sources... not that I keep track of where they come from. So.. er... I don't take credit for anything in the book not hand-drawn, other than as a collage-ist)