These bright, cheerful photos are from Ruston’s Roses courtesy of DavidinOz. This area of the gardens looks perfectly set to host a wedding. The path is lined with pure, white roses and at its end is a lush canopy of deep red roses signifying love. David didn’t specify, but I think Ruston’s must host a few weddings here. I was most delighted by the wandering red rose who has traveled far from home alone. Perhaps it was for love.
©David Brindley, all rights reserved
Riviere Peche, ©voyager, all rights reserved
It’s been snowing here since last night and Jack is chuffed. He wants to go out and play, but he’s isn’t allowed any exercise until next week when the stitches come out. Jack does not like this and he’s been making his displeasure known. He sits wistfully looking out the windows and whenever we pass by he looks up and makes little crying noises. When we tell him he has to wait he heaves a heavy sigh and lays his big, bowling ball of a head down dramatically with a thunk. He hates the word wait and his patience has worn thin. He was full-on giddy with excitement this morning when I took him out to the yard for business and even the promise of cookies couldn’t lure him in. I had to promise ice cream (a rare treat) before he even paid me any mind. It’s going to be a long few days until Tuesday.
The summer photo for today is of Riviere Peche, or Fish River. The river empties into the sea at the bottom of the hill where it meets the beach at Smuggler’s Cove.
As chigau pointed out, it’s been 29 years since the École polytechnique massacre in Montreal, yet the story is all too common almost 30 years later. A white man who thought the world owed him a certain place went out to kill women, because he thought they were taking what was rightfully his, denying him his due.
While the event shocked not only the Canadian public, the ideology that led to it is far from eradicated. From Elliot Rogers over the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High to Alek Minassian killing women in Toronto, the pattern of entitlement and violence continues. And these are only the cases that make headlines, the cases where the victims were more or less randomly chosen. It doesn#t even get into the thousands of cases where men kill their (ex) partners or just a woman they hardly knew for turning them down.
And whenever these cases happen, the discussion is the same: mental illness is blamed*, women themselves are blamed. It’s a well practised dance around the violent misogynist mass murderer in the room.
This is why on this day of all, I have no moment of silence, but loud anger. For all of our sisters who have died and who will still die at the hands of men who think they are owed the world, and at the words of those who always have more empathy for the murderer than his victim.
*Before somebody feels the need to mention that X, Y, and Z had a history of mental illness, spare yourselves the time, I’ve got none for that discussion. While mental illness may make it easier for those men to turn to more extreme actions, it didn’t instil a hateful ideology into them and no mental illness ever forged a gun.
This is a bit of an extended Jack’s Walk with a few photos we took while traveling through the Matapedia Valley on our way east. The area is world renowned for salmon and trout fishing and the river is dotted with high end fly fishing resorts. The Mr. and I fish with rod and reel, but we’d both like to try our hand at fly fishing. Most resorts are now catch and release (after the photo, of course) and there are strict limits on what can be kept. There are also fishery officials out and about watching. I know from personal experience, but that’s a story for another time. The last three photos were taken from the car.
Passing over the great rivers of the Matapedia Valley, ©voyager, all rights reserved
Many things have fascinated me over the course of my life, not necessarily because I understood or understand them fully, but usually because there is some element of incomprehension – the idea of Schrödinger’s cat, for example, or a mysterious book that is actually a treasure hunt. While the first led to many… odd creations of art that included cats perched pensively in boxes in outer space surrounded by snakes and spiral galaxies, the second had gorgeous paintings of their own that I can still remember clearly (though I never solved the riddle itself).
About a year ago, I found myself returning to the paintings of Masquerade – though subconsciously. I was playing around with cats contorted into unusual positions by virtue of being forced into a small box: the frame, as it were. The whole idea was that you could place it any way you like, there was no proper up-down orientation. Later, as it happened, I had to adjust the subject matter to more closely align to a colleague’s preferences, and the final painting is of a horse (of course), about 10cm x 15cm.
It even works when upside down.
©rq, all rights reserved.
And although one’s own paintings should look familiar, there was something more to it that wouldn’t stop poking at the back of my brain, until I remembered this image:
A page from Masquerade by Kit Williams.
Not quite the contortioning example of equine flexibility I came up with, but one can see the signs of influence. And it’s always fascinating how these sorts of little things can come together to become something new and different.
Anyway, I like my horse-in-a-box, and one day I will also complete the originally-intended cat-in-a-box.
To be honest, I always pictured Schrödinger’s poor cat as something of an unfortunate astronaut.
More roses from DavidinOz. Today he’s taking us on a country path that winds around the rose garden’s perimeter.
©David Brindley, all rights reserved
David sends these wonderful images of pelicans. Plus a bonus cormorant, I think.
I don’t think there can ever be too many Pelicans, so here is a bunch
roosting on a submerged tree, Murray River, Loxton, South Australia.
©David Brindley, all rights reserved
©David Brindley, all rights reserved
©David Brindley, all rights reserved
Fashionista with a happy tail, ©voyager, all rights reserved
This is Jack this morning and you’ll notice that his tail is out of focus. That’s because he was wagging it for the first time since his surgery last week. He had a few post-op complications, including a vein that popped out and bled for 2 days before the vet had to add 3 staples to his incision. Even after the staples were inserted the area oozed for another few days. That finally stopped on Sunday, but it wasn’t until this morning that Jack looked up at me and smiled his goofy guy smile. Now I can relax a bit. It’s another week before the stitches come out, but the incision is looking good and Jack is his usual happy self again. I’ve never been happier to have an out of focus photo.
At some point Affinity became the go-to place for spiders and Nightjar continues this tradition with a wonderful set of photos taken at dusk.
I’ve noticed a lack of spiders on Affinity lately and since there is one currently living right in front of my bedroom window I thought I would share. I’ve only seen it after sunset, I think it’s one of those spiders that only sit in the middle of the web at night. I got home late today, saw it and went inside to grab the camera to get some silhouette shots against the evening sky, but the light faded too quickly and I had to resort to using the flash for a few more photos. The flash really brings out all those hairy and spidery details, making the last photos particularly unsafe for arachnophobes I think.
All photos are posted under the fold.
As tends to happen, I’d forgotten about these beauties. This is a fungal skeleton I came across one early autumn morning, and in that delicious light, it was irresistible. The word that comes to mind is fragility.
©rq, all rights reserved.
©rq, all rights reserved.
Translucency at its best.
©rq, all rights reserved.
Delicate like a thin film of soap.
©rq, all rights reserved.
One with the light.
©rq, all rights reserved.
For more mushroom fun, I found this wonderful piece:
And Sting has the perfect song for us:
This week we have an incredible tree from Down Under that’s full of big, bright, colourful flowers, courtesy of DavidinOz.
The first 3 are of a huge Bottle Brush tree, an Australian native that has been exported to other climes.Look closely in 2 & 3 and you will see bees had at work.
4 & 5 are of a different tree, but all the better to see why they are named …. Bottle Brush.
Cheers, David
©David Brindley, all rights reserved
Sorry for being so quiet lately. I could explain, but there is no point to it. Sometimes I genuinely do not have the time, but mostly I just cannot muster the strength. Inspiration got away with the sun.
So today for lack of better material, here is one of my paintings from way back when I still had the strength to actually do something and managed to follow through. It does not have a name (none of my paintings has) because I do not like to prompt people what they are supposed to see and how to interpret it.
Distemper on HDF coated with bone-glue based gesso, lacquered, 610×485 mm.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
The tracks at Corner of the Beach, about 15 minutes outside of Perce, ©voyager, all rights reserved
Lack of routine maintenance now equals expensive major repairs, ©voyager, all rights reserved
When my husband was young there were daily trains going to Perce, a little town at the end of the Gaspe Peninsula. The train brought supplies and tourists and was the main form of transportation for residents of the town to get Quebec City and Montreal for specialist doctors, hospitals, shopping and schools. Over the years the trains started coming less often and finally in August of 2013 the train stopped coming at all. Today train service will only take you as far east as Matapedia and good luck getting farther east from there because even the buses have stopped going to Perce. It’s all about economics. More people drive nowadays and there is an airport in Gaspe that handles a lot of supply and tourist traffic. Also, track maintenance is expensive and everybody thinks somebody else should pay for it. The tracks in this photo were a vital part of life in the Perce area for just about 100 years. When I first started coming here 20+ years ago we used to wave at the trains from the beach as they passed us by. I miss that.