Hedges

Oh man, the smell in the air this morning was incredible.  Layer woodsmoke and windfall apples, add in a touch of leaf mulch, the tang of the ocean just a couple of blocks away and top it off with the crispness of a Fall morning.  My nose was all a-tingle as I took in Harpooner Place today.

Across the street, an older gentleman pottered around in his garage ... he obviously cared a great deal about his yard.  He made sure to give me the eyeball, as I was an intruder in his area, so I felt like I had to surreptitiously get this photo.  I loved the hedge and I laughed, thinking about Bruce and how he hated the hedges of his teens.  Betcha, if a realtor had lined up this house to show us a few years ago, he wouldn't even have got out of the car.

Oh man, imagine the work necessary to keep this trimmed properly

Not a half hour later, I chanced upon another well-manicured hedge that caught my eye. 

Admit it.  You also thought "Hobbits!!"

Across from all that summer greenery was evidence of Autum.

Days like this make me wish I had a dog to go walk with .. or a pony to ride.  Or maybe a Shetland pony to take for a walk.

Shangri-La

Today's post found me off wandering into Lantzville, which is a small town on the northern edge of Nanaimo that gradually found itself surrounded by city on its landward side.  If our realtor had shown us places in Lantzville when we moved to the coast six years ago, I'm pretty sure we'd be living there today instead of the city proper.  Maybe we'd be living on Shangri-La Road.

And what's does Shangri-la look like?  Trees of spun gold, certainly. 

But mostly, it's a comfortable, quiet street where everyone knows each other and your pets, which is necessary when they wander off to snooze under the old vehicle parked in your yard, or in the cedar hedge.

This last has actually happened to us.  While they lived next door, our neighbors had a wonderful fluffy grey and white cat that adored our garden.  He liked people and would come up to the window to talk to us or Murray and Mr.  Tippy.  Strangely, the pair of our cats weren't all that territorial when it came to Fluffy.

During the summer, our neighbors moved and Fluffy disappeared from our lives.  We've recently found him back here though, sleeping in the sunshine below our cedar hedge, perhaps dreaming of the squadron of birds who land on our lawn to peck at the seeds and bugs. 

Bruce ran into our old neighbors the other day to find that they are now living only a few blocks away.  Turns out Fluffy is a bit of a traveller, having covered large distances to get back here.  Apparently, he likes the neighborhood.

An old shed at the corner of Shangri-La and Lantzville.

Across the road, the view is more rural than urban

Autumn in Nanaimo doesn't happen in gradual stages, at least in my experience.  The oak tree next door is a really good example.  Where the leaves are not glossy emerald, they've gone brilliant orange and carmine. 

All of these will end up just off our front step in the spot where
they eddy lazily and can't achieve escape velocity.

In Alberta, the leaves turn from green to a beautiful yellow outlined in green or gold with green freckles.  Sometimes, you'll find variations on the gold theme, but not color like we find here. On a sunny Autumn morning, you can drive around a corner and smack into color that takes your breath away.

Turner Road & Uplands Drive

Longwood Station Shopping Centre

The lights at Turner Road

Out here, it often seems like horticulturalists plant for Fall color rather than what will happen in the Spring or Summer.  I'm all for that. Fall is my favorite time of year.  :D

The grocery store parking lot

And that reminds me of something kinda funny.

If you're going to be doing jackassery on the road and slide around the corner into the shopping centre, maybe you should make sure that the police aren't behind you.  Maybe you should not pull over into the grocery store parking lot when the police lights start their dance in your rear view mirror.  And maybe you shouldn't park in front of the main doors of the grocery store where the lights and ticketing process get watched by every customer heading in and out of the store, and reported on at length by the cashiers working the tills.

I'm laying odds his mother heard about it before he got home.  *snicker*

A Sharp Kind of Day

You ever have one of those days when you can't find a sharp set of scissors anywhere? 

I have a love/hate relationship with scissors that stems, quite likely, from my love/hate relationship with my sewing machine, fabrics and my complete lack of ability to get fabrics to do what I want.  Which has nothing at all do with scissors, but when you're looking around for a scapegoat, a pair of dull scissors will do handily. 

All of my 'good' scissors somehow end up in the kitchen utility drawer until one day I pitch a hissy fit over not being able to find anything sharp enough to cut the end off one of those drink packets you put into a water bottle.  Now, if you're a good enough homemaker, you likely have an a pair stashed away in the sewing kit that you can access in an emergency such as this.  Which is how they end up in the utility drawer and ... cycle repeats.  Or your husband spots them on the counter before you get them put away and the next time you see your expensive fabric scissors, they're being used to cut those garden ties with the thin metal strip in the middle. 

All you women out there are nodding your head right now, saying "I feel your pain, sistah."

So today, I gathered up all my scissors with their brightly colored plastic handles .. blacks and aquas and oranges .. and put them into a bag to take to the knife store.  I was just hoping to get to the counter without looking like some scary homicidal whack job escapee from a bad B movie.  I think I managed, but it was touch and go for a minute or two when I looked down and discovered the ends of one pair poking through the bag.  I wrestled them down .. crisis averted.

So I wandered into the knife store and ... o.0 .. shiny.  

This is how things in my house get replaced .. you get frustrated with something, you put up with it for years and then one day you go nuts and come home with this ...

Five pairs of sharpened scissors, four brightly colored cutting mats, one knife tip replaced because someone broke it off five years ago trying to pry off a jar lid, two new paring knives, a utilty knife, a shiny fork to replace the one in the drawer with the rust marks and one big blue one because the colored knives were buy one, get one free.

Whew!  Can you feel the waves of contentment rolling from the West Coast?

A quick note

I just clicked on Tracy  Chapman's website when I changed the album cover below.  zomg!  Probably the best website design I've seen in a long time.

Tracy Chapman

Just sayin' ...

(By the way, if you click on any book or album cover in the bottom part of my website, it will take you to the author/artist's site.

Hey, just trying to help

I was just outside helping Bruce put up deer fence by offering suggestions and telling him how he should do things.  Hey, we've all got a job to do .. and mine is obviously supervision.   He chased me away, and I can't swear he didn't have some sort of tool he brandished in my direction in a vaguely threatening manner.

In my defense, this is his horoscope today:

I'm a map provider!

So I wandered off and inspected the garden.   There's evidence of fall all around, so I grabbed my camera for you ...

I still don't know what these are called, but they are really working hard on their display techniques.
This is the view from the neighbour's side of the fence.

This is the burberry with its variegated leafery and bright red berries.

Remember that stand of Pampas from our visit to the Crow and Gate?
I think ours has a long way to go.

And finally, Mr. Tippy enjoying his favorite sunbeam spot in the house .. Bruce's chair.

Hey Kristen

It's impossible to wax enthusiastically enough about that dense, moist, chocolate cake that Bruce brought home last night.  He told me it was your chocolatized recipe for carrot cake!

And since words are pretty much failing me, I'll just say this ....

Must. Have. Recipe.

Please?

A kindred spirit

Those of you who know me also know that I have weight issues.  When you see me infrequently, you can be greeted by almost any sort of body type .. thin, heavy or any of the stages in between.  I'm a regular Oprah in that manner, but without the expensive wardrobe.  Or the personal chef.  Damn, I need me a good personal chef.

I'm going to blame the genes that my mother passed to me along with the ones for curly hair and facial structure. (I'm not sure who gave me the short arms, but I'd really like to have a word with them about that.) Mom, however, had the luxury of being 5' 10" so her weight probably sat a bit more well distributed on the larger frame.  Be that as it may, I'm currently in a 'heavy' phase and am plagued by all the insecurities that go along with it.  I also know that I could easily turn this into a litany, but that's tedious and if you've been around any dieter or pre-dieter, you've heard them before, ad nauseam.

I tell you this only as a way of introducing you to an author new to me.  On the footer of this page, you'll see that I'm reading Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente.  The book was recommended to me by my fake French Montreal friend Eric and since we have a great deal in common, I thought I'd give the book a whirl.

I admit it's tough sledding for me.  The first few chapters have left me more than a bit confused with their shifting perspectives, yet I'm determined to get through because I trust Eric.  I'm starting to see the unifying thread that will drop all of the various stories into focus.  I think.  Time and more chapters will tell, but at least the thread that runs through the book is starting to pull at me as well.

I was somewhere on the 'net the other day and ran into a link to her website, which I followed because I wanted to see more about this author that Eric had recommended.  I was surprised .. often, author's sites are run impersonally by their publication companies or have been designed by a firm that allows little to no interaction with the author.  When authors do post, they are often very closed and private or simply regurgitate the information you can find on the back flap of any of their books; all of which discourages getting to know them.

The site is well designed and if you follow my pages, you'll know that I'm attracted by the steampunk genre.  Her site design spoke to that bit of geekery in me.

Catherynne M. Valente ... Cat ... is eloquent and blogs about day-to-day things in an open manner that manages to convey who she is, as a person and at the same time, excites me to read more of her works.  She paints the everyday on her page in strokes of interesting phrases.  She posted her views on dieting that forever linked us through the BS of dealing with all the crap that goes along with weight issues and the hyperlink I'm sharing with you now.

I hope you enjoy her blog as much as I do.

Here's the link for A Frivolous Post About A Girl, Her Thesaurus and Her Diet
Here's the main site link:  Catherynne M. Valente  or you can simply click on her site header above.

Eric, I owe you one introduction to an author you'll love but have never read.  Since your library is larger than mine, I'm not sure how I'll accomplish that.  The fun will be in trying.  :D 

The Crow and Gate

I hope the road from "turkey stuffed with bread" to "you stuffed with turkey" has been a wonderful trip, full of family and friends, and almost as importantly, pumpkin pie, which is the inspiration for my site design this month.

It has been a time of family lately for Bruce and I lately, with our trip to Vancouver a couple of weeks ago, followed by a visit from nephew Brad and his clever wife Kristen.  They reside in Richmond, Virginia and are up here for a trip to see her parents, a well-timed visit that coincides with Kent and Ilana's brief return from Singapore. 

Brad is a Geek, with a capital G, and he loves it.  It's hard not to become enthusiastic about his subjects as we sit and chat about random things .. internet memes, underlying differences between Canada and the US, his work, their activities, and various bits of geekery.  Kristen is the fairy in the family, full of mischief and good humour, flitting from subject to subject, but hitting all the important topics ... like how much cocoa is the precisely right amount for a chocolate bar.  She is the rememeberer of the two of them, bearing little gifts that might mean nothing, but in actuality, mean everything.  Your hazelnuts will find a home in our backyard somewhere, Kristen :)

I thought we'd take a walk around the area in Cedar around The Crow and Gate, but we arrived in time for a huge growl from Bruce's stomach, so we settled into a ploughman's lunch and more importantly for me, a pint of Smithwick's ale.  Mmmm.

Over lunch, we talked about the activities the two of them had been up to and discovered that Brad has been biking and went out for ride recommended by a bike store owner.  As it turns out, the group leader was our friend Cécile who, until this summer, worked part-time for the store.  The ladies in the group made sure he got a good workout, a rather exhaustive effort for a man who, although fit and a regular cyclist, hasn't been on a mountain bike in a few years.  He admitted he had to pack it in early, but he was going to be off with them again on Saturday, so he has resilience going for him.  Bruce and I had brunch with Cécile and Richard on Sunday, so we heard about the ride from her as well.

The parking lot edges on a duck pond where the Mallard pairs happily
cozy up on the bank when they are not demonstrating their
rather impressive swimming skills.

Nothing says English cottage garden quite like a pergola
of rambling roses. This is the entry to the Crow and Gate pub.

We talked about Kristen's spinning for a bit and when asked if she sewed, she ducked her head, looked over at me with a grin and said, "Not really, but I recently did have my apron-itzvah."  For the menfolk who may be reading this, in school where you get to take some version of home economics electives, the apron is usually the first thing you sew, making it a rite of passage for fledgling designers. 

Autumn is only just beginning to be sketched in chalky hues
across the countryside

We discovered there wasn't really so much an area to walk as to meander and take pictures of the vignettes carefully crafted by the owners.  So we strolled the grounds and Kristen attempted to get Brad to actually smile for a picture, Bruce jumping right in to assist her with the project and I grabbed some blog photos. Brad declined to be featured in my blog and since my photos of them include Kristen, I'm sorry I can't share pictures.  I could remove Kristen from the background, but generally, photos of her make more sense as a context of the two of them.  You might think her mentally deranged in at least one of them where she's attempting to get Brad to smile.  I'll save that one for a 50th wedding anniversary retrospective for you, Kristen.

The dahlia beds provided some stunning color and contrast against the emerald lawns.

Blue on blue on blue on blue ...

We have a stand of this grass in our yard, but its not nearly so impressive
as this.  The pampas grass towered over me.

I love old pathways, maybe because they remind me of visits to Granny Gideon in Bently.

Confession:  I added a blue layer to give the skies some more
dimension.  I loved this shot of the weather vane.

 

The late afternoon sun provided a bit of drama in the reeds alongside the stream.

I'm not sure if these were waiting to become dessert at the pub or are being saved for Halloween
jack-o-lanterns.  Either way, they showed the bounty of the large pumpkin patch we spotted.

On the way home, we stopped at the waterfront and strolled down to the crab dock where Brad chatted with one of the fishers hauling up crab traps.  We'd been watching them try to capture the crabs scuttling sideways after being released, which was a bit comical and not without its element of danger to fingers.  Most of the crabs ended up being under the catch size and released back into the water.

Its rare to see the ocean this calm, so this shot of Cameron Island
and the harbourfront docks was begging to be preserved.

Brought to you by the letter G ..

I've been doing a bit of sorting through my sizable collection of fonts.  Each month, as I search through my collections, I vow to spend a few minutes in cleaning it up.  It's actually a daunting task that will require days of work, rather than a few minutes; sorting through styles has brought better people than me to their knees.  Having finished my beginning-of-the-month web updates with this post, I am already re-delegating that task to the 'someday' pile.

I love fonts.  I love how they look, I love what they convey without words and I love to play with them to bring out their potential.  Sometimes, I succeed.  Ha!  Most times, I can wrestle them into behaving the way I want.

There are two letters that will make me instantly fall in love with a new font ... the lowercase g and the uppercase Q.  Unusual renderings can have me scrambling for the download button.  Here are fifteen fonts that caught my eye simply because of one letter. 

I haven't included any links in this post, although Colwell can be found at the bottom of this page because I've used it elsewhere for the October 2011 site design.  A quick Google search can bring up most of them, and I highly recommend dafont.com for you fonting needs.  Or to get you started down the murky path where letters jump off pages to get your attention, but it could be that's just me having a personal relationship with letter shapes.