The morning sun, yes, the sun, is rising through the Hope Bay Forest which comes almost right up to my front door. And there they are – in part of the large garden of perennials a strong, extraordinary woman planted many years ago with so much care and devotion – a “host of golden daffodils,” risen and now blooming.
Daffodils lovingly planted many years ago by Wilma Butchart
Cathedral Drive, rural Ontario, another reality
I’d like to conduct a bit of a survey.
So, here are my survey questions:
Do you have an Ontario Driver’s Licence?
Do you live in an urban area with access to reasonably good taxi or public transit service, or friends and family to help you get to appointments, do your shopping, run errands, or just get out?
Do you live in a rural area without public transit, no nearby taxi service, and relatively speaking, compared to people in urban areas, not that many neighbours you might ask to drive you to the nearest small town, or Owen Sound?
Are you more than 70 years old?
Do you know that if you’re involved in a collision that results in you being charged with a Highway Traffic Act (HTA) violation, and you either plead or are found guilty, you will be required to pass a three-part re-examination of your fitness to have a driver’s licence?
That includes a written and vision tests, as well as a road test.
So this is where it ends, in solitude picking up the pieces as best I can, which isn’t very good at this point. I push myself to do something, anything: I do, therefore I am.
self-portrait, flash and mirror. I’m in there somewhere
I go down into the rough, old, stone-foundation basement of this old farm house to do some clean-up. I’m trying to pick up where I left off more than two years ago when we bought this place, before everything, finally, went wrong.
There was a “we” then. Now there’s just a “me.” And that’s not enough anymore. “What dreams may come” indeed. Continue reading
Something happened yesterday, quite unexpected, and initially very upsetting. Maybe it still is; but I’m trying to process it in an open-minded way, rather than accept it as simply disastrous news and let it get me all down and discouraged.
One must read the signs
An update. As of today, the news I got isn’t as bad as I thought it was yesterday when I got the mail, and then when I made a phone call to a government office that seemed to confirm a “worst case scenario.” But another phone call to the same office this morning, and a conversation with a different “agent” put it in a much better light.
How’s the weather where you are?
Better than here, I hope, especially if you’re a farmer trying to plant crops, or, like me, a market vegetable gardener.
This is April 26, 2016, southern Ontario, Canada, just south of the 45th Parallel, halfway between the North Pole and the Equator. And this snowstorm you’re seeing in these photos is not normal for this time of year. By this time I’ve usually been out in the garden for two weeks, cultivating the soil, and then planting some of the early, hardy crops like peas, definitely peas, beets, carrots, lettuce, and even potatoes. Continue reading
That old chicken coop, or rabbit hutch, or whatever it used to be is long overdue for demolition, I tell myself for the umpteenth time, as I look outside my second-floor, office window. It’s an eyesore, even if it is somebody’s home.
Lately, I’ve noticed a groundhog has borrowed it. That’s my way of putting it anyway. The groundhog itself would regard it as a long-term residence as long as I leave her or him alone. Continue reading
I wish my father were here today, to do justice to the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death. No man ever loved English literature more, and Shakespeare most of all.
My father would be more than 90 now if he had lived to see this day. I have no doubt at all he would still be able to recite the immortal soliloquies from the great plays, and other memorable passages.
They were that engraved in the fabric of his soul, an integral part of the man he was, so much so that, so long as he could take another breath, nothing could erase them. For all I know, he may be reciting Shakespeare at this eternal moment somewhere in Paradise.
Or maybe he was there just now, standing beside me, looking over my shoulder as I searched the web for the King’s “band of brothers” speech in Henry V, to refresh my memory. Continue reading
I found this long-lost fragment of an age-old drama and thought I would send it out into the blog-cosmos just to see what might happen; just a bit of playfulness to pass some time on a dark night . . . Continue reading
What a guy, that Mr. Massey.
Mr. Massey and I have a moment
He puts me to shame. While I’ve been off doing other things, including stuff like this, and generally spending way too much time trying to figure out where to start with a to-do list that’s always too long – and then getting all down and discouraged about it – he’s been patiently waiting for me to give him some attention. Continue reading
I only fairly recently discovered Massey Harris Ferguson Legacy Quarterly, after its editor, Gary Heffner contacted me about a column I wrote for the Owen Sound Sun Times about my “Mr. Massey.” A local reader of his magazine and my columns had brought it to his attention.
Owen Sound is a small city of 22,000 people on the shores of beautiful Georgian Bay in the small-town, rural area of Grey and Bruce counties in southwestern Ontario. Yes, Canada, the birthplace of Massey-Harris – Ferguson. But then everybody reading Legacy Quarterly more than likely knows that, right?
Three good friends, Me, Mr. Massey, and Aussie
But apparently not a lot of Canadians know it, from what Gary tells me. A group of retired engineers who helped design the tractors and other farm equipment that made Massey-Harris and Massey-Ferguson the most popular brand of farm machinery in the world still meet annually over dinner up here to socialize and talk shop. But otherwise what Gary said doesn’t surprise me. Continue reading
Finding Hope Ness 