On the topic of retirement: Some people go sailing.

Some people restore toy boats they made as children.

And some people just take pictures of stuff!

Whatever we do, we are profoundly grateful for the privilege and the freedom.

A quick entry - for something quite charming, google google's doodles! I will be back! Note: In order to keep up with this blog I am going to have to write 10 entries today! Hold your breath!

If I were a gardener, this is what I would garden...it is a safe garden...

My friend in Victoria is recuperating from a spider bite...a black widow spider bite...a black widow with a red violin on its back spider bite...

And my other friend...Let her words speak for themselves:

"My problem however, is a groundhog! He is kind of cute and was OK while he was just eating the clover on the law. But he has now moved into my vegetable garden and is destroying my beans. My carrot and beet crops have already failed, thanks to him or some other creature. My workman suggested a small shotgun...but he lives in the country. He says there wouldn't be enough left to identify...or maybe he was talking about squirrels. It could be fun picking the squirrels off the fence. I'm not sure I could stand the gore, but I guess they would fall into my neighbours' yards. Oh - I might get "shot" holes in my fences...I don't want that. You aren't into saving squirrels and groundhogs, are you? Only cats and dogs, I hope!"

This is not a violent lady. She already has a hose with a sensor set up to chase that groundhog. I didn't know about that one...I didn't get too wet...

But I'll settle for a pot of flowers...if I become a gardener...

I am suffering from a fit of jealousy. I have just discovered Sharon Creech Love that Dog - a novel. It is a severe case of why-didn't-I-think-of-that combined with a journey through all those wonderful poems that I loved when I was teaching.

The main character, Jack, writes:

I don't understand

the poem about

the red wheel barrow

and the white chickens

and why much depends

on them

And that is just page two!

First a segue...I still remember chaperoning a school dance and having one of my senior students dance by and call out, "Hey Mach - my mother would be proud of all those years in classical ballet!"

I don't think her mother had tumbling around in a dark room in mind.

And now I can say, my mother would be proud of the time she spent taking me to the down town YWCA so that I could learn to swim on the end of a pole...for what seemed liked years...I never swam competitively but that I blame on my grandmother's penchant for tailoring. She insisted on hand sewing my bathing suits...fashioned after sundress patterns...created with pure linen with a cotton lining. I sank to the bottom every time I entered the pool!

All of which is to say that I will do everything not to clean my apartment including (and this is how extreme it was) trying on my 20 year old bathing suit. It fits! It's not a pretty sight...but I have a bathing suit.

Obviously the above is a picture of the cottage I am going to...since said cottage is outside of Huntsville they did have visitors during the G-8!

Shakespeare knew human nature. (There's a doctoral thesis.) I awoke this morning thinking about: To be or not to be. No I'm not suicidal...it is that whole decision making process that one has to deal with. And then I started playing with it. To have or not to have. To want or not to want. To clean or not to clean...the list could go on. And I apologize for the obvious pun. I am surprised at my collection of bee pictures...obviously the creature fascinates me.

And the obligatory ice berg!

Not to mention rocks...

So I went to Newfoundland and I saw:

Mountains...and lupins...and tuckamore trees...and stages...and wee squirrels...and silver foxes...and vikings...and ship wrecks...and reflections...

So much for that idea! What that unreadable text says is: This is just to say I am busy tonight. I'm watching So You Think You Can Dance (It is very very good!). I will be back tomorrow...

My friend took me to see the Japanese lanterns at the Canadian Exhibition...they were Chinese lanterns...

This should be a picture of a train because I'm following the theme of naming devices...
A father who was also a train lover named his children:
Miriam Elizabeth
Bethany Joy
Sarah Suzanne
Tabatha Jean

So that's the closest thing to a train in my picture collection - a crocodile waiting for the zebras and gnus to cross the river in Kenya...

If you have travelled by train...read the names out loud and you will understand!

This is a stoned cat...stoned on honey suckle...evidently that's what they use out West instead of catnip! It's too late this year but next year I'm going to harvest my neighbour's honey suckle...

I know - I'm cheating! Only one blog per day! But I'm trying to get back into the habit and so I am making up for August.
Speaking of naming devices...who in their right mind would call this duck a wood duck when it is obvious to anyone that it is a duck with a very blue bill that is not the product of photo shopping!

On the topic of naming: I have always been fascinated in naming devices. How could my parents know by looking at this bit of humanity that Pat would work perfectly? Not Patty...Not Trish...not Trisha...definitely not Patricia...How could they know that it would take me years to learn how to spell Patricia?
The simplest answer would be that they didn't know, that they were honouring my grandfather, Patrick Philip...in those days no one could predict the gender!
But Pat it is and Pat is who I am.
The other night in a group someone referred to me as Mach...and that horrified someone at the table, "Your students called you Mach?"
Actually one of my students explained that they called me Machin because that was the fastest way to get my attention. By the time they called me Miss Machin, my attention was elsewhere. He defined my attention span as that of a a fly with a lobotomy...I loved that definition!
But I think in fact that the origin lay elsewhere. Until recently there has been a stigma attached to a woman of a certain age who is not married. If one were not married by twenty something, one was abnormal.
After the age of thirty, one was considered a spinster...and spinster teachers were always called...Miss Machin. I like to think that my students and the other teachers could not get their minds around the fact that I fit the stereotype of the spinster teacher. And so they compromised...they called me Machin.
As I write I realize that that is fading. I am more and more Pat now...the transition was so subtle that I didn't notice...but even my friends are calling me Pat!
And I can't resist mentioning Miss Craze. She was definitely not the stereotype of a spinster. She was cool and elegant and she climbed mountains in Nepal. But she could never be called Craze...for obvious reasons.

I met this lady on a walk by the Lachine rapids. I try to coordinate my photos with the content. One minute after I took this picture chaos reined as she sensed danger and took her fledglings and the whole flock to midstream. I found this quote which she would appreciate:

Live your life in such a way that when your feet hit the floor in the morning, Satan shudders and says, "Drat! She's awake!"

OK so I censored it. I am perfectly capable of cussing...but only orally. I can't actually write the words down!

We eat cold eels and think distant thoughts.


For a moment I had trouble thinking of a picture to go with this quote. I found the quote a long time ago and liked it. I like it even better now that I have put it in context.
In a 1900's interview with champion boxer, Jack Johnson, he was asked why white women were attracted to black men. He replied with the above which was both his ironic and poetic way of pointing out the ignorance of the question.

On my first trip with that friend I learned about clouds...I have become very fond of clouds...

Pobody's Nerfect!

I have learned something new in this last trip to Newfoundland

...make that this first trip to Newfoundland. I learned that one has to keep one's horizons straight! I listened to two photographers talking about a third whose horizons were crooked. I had really thought of it until I looked at my pictures. There is a certain drunkenness about them!

Nothing profound...I'm just trying to get back into the rhythm of this thing! It is pictures such as these that make me want to go out to Calgary...before it gets too snowy!