the cassandra pages

Mostly Red

Yesterday was the first day I needed my winter coat. But it was a gorgeous, clear, bright day, and I walked up to work, taking photographs as I went. The leaves are mostly off now, except for some of the protected areas in the parks, and along a few streets planted with late-shedding varieties. Somehow the new bareness always makes me see more.

 

 

 

 

Fin de la saison au jardin communautaire

Ink and watercolor drawing on Stonehenge, 10" x 5"

The colors are subdued; the foliage, for the most part, shorn; the flowers faded. It's the end of the season. 

It was a good year in the garden. I was especially happy with my delphinium and sweet peas and dahlias, and the general look of the massed perennials - after three years, the garden filled in and came into its own this season. Doing these drawings has been good, too: I feel like I "grew" an illustration style that has gotten looser as the year has gone on, and given some pleasure to the other gardeners too.

This morning I went over to dig up my dahlias: a final, last-minute task. Other gardeners were there, and we moved a large pile of wet, black compost, supplied by the city, inside the garden gates; the top of the pile was frozen, as was the surface of the ground underfoot. Afterward we all sat at a picnic table in the sun and talked, wearing hats and gloves, over a bottle of good porto -- a garden tradition for the last day -- and some apple cider. The French chatter flew around me; I'm getting more of it these days, and can put a word in every now and then. But language didn't matter; these are my friends now, and the warmth among us is very real.

That's the happiness of gardening communally - seeing and admiring what others are doing,  sharing the beauty as well as the work, contributing what we're each good at, making friends, exchanging plants, going together on trips to nurseries and the botanical garden. By the same token, I've cherished the times when I was at the garden all alone: precious moments of nature and quiet in the middle of a huge city. Now the garden will become very silent indeed, as we wait for the blanket of snow that will protects the roots from freezing and thawing. Am I ready? Not really, but we never are, are we?

NaBloWriMo

Still trying to decide whether to try to post something every day this month or not. I admit that my blogging-drive has taken a bit of a dive this past year, due to the decrease in readers and comments; it just isn't as much interactive fun as it used to be. But I'm a lifelong journaler, and this medium suits me, so I'm still here, asking your indulgence for these notes on a life that would otherwise end up in a dark drawer!

Last year, I wrote a poem a day, each one built on a color.

It would be fun sometime to do a drawing a day based on a color. But I think that's not going to be this November: too little color around, and too much upcoming travel, rehearsal, work, and busyness.

I've done several month-long haiku/tanka stints, and by the end of the month it's really difficult. Good practice though.

For superhuman feats, surely my friend Dave Bonta's review/appreciation of a poetry book every day of the month, a few years ago, took the prize, though Luisa Igloria's poem-a-day practice has shattered that ceiling many times over.

This fall has felt like a whirlwind of design work, rehearsals, travel, church and family stuff, along with the normal daily routine, and it's been too much -- which is probably why I got sick. Many of those responsibilities aren't nearly finished, either. I think my practice this November is going to be being less demanding of myself, not more, and to focus on the restorative practices that help me: being outdoors, playing the piano, meditating, having quiet time at home. The relaxed expectation might even result in a better outcome -- we'll see!

 

All Souls (Eve) on the Metro

The New York Times published a great slideshow of images from the NY subway last night. I was on the Montreal métro heading to and from choir, and saw quite a lot I would have liked to photograph too, but even on Halloween night, French privacy laws make it difficult to take pictures of people in public. Nevertheless, I stole a few shots. My own neighborhood was full of little ghouls and goblins, but what amused me the most were the adults hosting the trick-or-treaters; on one porch a tall fairy in blue wings arranged her pumpkin lanterns and bowls of treats, and then settled into an armchair to wait for her visitors; across the street a pink-wigged witch and a shark stood in their doorway, handing out candy. And outside the Mont Royal metro, a large pod of forty or fifty zombies danced in slow motion to music the living couldn't hear.

 

Looks pretty normal in this view: what you can't see are her fluffy pink ears and matching shoes.

And in Montreal there's always undressing to consider.

Like our clothes at other times, Montreal Halloween dress-up tends to have a fairly dark flavor, though I did see a man in a bright orange tuxedo and top hat through the window of a blue train, and rued the fact that my camera wasn't in my hand!