Saturday Photo: Pumpkins...and Pumpkin Pi

Just returned from scouting pumpkins.  Thomas and Louis (5 and 17 months) are coming over today and we're going to make a pumpkin, or maybe two.

We currently have two tiny ones and two small ones, chosen by Jeanne when she was here earlier in the week.  She left with three small ones for herself and her parents.  She also chose the ones we have: I was surprised that she wanted the smaller ones, but she was the one who got to decide.

Not sure what Thom will think though, hence the scouting trip.  Funnily, there seem to be very few medium sized ones around--a few tiny ones and several enormous ones in the stores. 

Well, we'll see what the boys decide.  And afterwards we'll have the prospect of several pumpkin pies, which are favourites around here. As is this terrific jack o'lantern carved a few years ago by some talented folk.

Saturday Photo: Hibiscus in October II, Inside

The plants were brought in, there was a little frost Tuesday morning, but the temperatures shot up considerably at the end of the week.  Because of this--or despite it, take you pick--one of the hibiscus celebrated by sending forth another flower.

Should be interesting to see if the plant continues to be so colourful.  At the moment, we're just enjoying have the green inside, as the trees finally begin to turn colour. 

Climate change is really weird.  We haven't had to turn the furnace on yet this fall, and didn't run the air conditioner very much either this summer.  Maybe this Montreal is becoming a more temperate climate?

Saturday Photo: Hibiscus in October

For years I've had two hibiscus bushes that have bloomed perhaps a half dozen times when the conditions were just right.  I put them outside in the summer, but even then blooms are rare. This year, however, things are different.  They've spent four months in their usual vacation place, in our shady little patch of front garden, and in the past few weeks they've been blooming.  At the moment, they have three flowers (I couldn't get them all in the photo) with a few more buds still to go.

Two things may account for this.  First, I did put some composted manure on them in early August, because their roots had begun to show, but I've done that before with no real results. 

The second factor is more important I think: for the first time ever I've kept them outside well in October, and the light coming through the overhanging tree branches is lower and  more intense. 

Is this one of the upsides of global warming?  Will we have other falls where the temperatures match or exceed those of July and August?  No idea, of course, although the prospect of climate change gives me chills.  What I will do is bring the plants in next week, before the frost which is forecast for Monday night.  In the meantime I'll enjoy the blossosm.

Coming Soon to the Atwater Library: Road through Time

Hope to see you at 12:30 p.m. Thursday October 12 at the Atwater Library when I'll be talking about  Road through Time: The Story of Humanity on the Move (University of Regina Press.) This image of Persian charioteers (as imagined in the 19th century) will be one of those I'll show as I talk about the first roads, warrior's roads, modern roads, and where they may be leading us now.

Saturday Photo: Happy Thanksgiving...

A little fall in the air, finally, with some leaves turning colour!  Nice...

This weekend in Canadian Thanksgiving, a feast I like a lot.  The idea of giving thanks to some Supreme Being doesn't appeal to me, but I think it's good to occasionally stop and reflect on what one has.  We're lucky to live in peace in a country that is more good than otherwise, to have family and friends, and to be able to eat our fill.  Personally, I have been very lucky to be able to follow my star with the help of some wonderful people.  Thank you!

And tomorrow we'll all have a lovely meal chez Lukas and Sophie.  It's the first time they've hosted the feast.  It's great that they stepped up to plate when I hesitated because of uncertainty about a small health problem (which has more or less resolved itself, thank goodness again.) Merci and bisous à tous et toutes....

Saturday Photo: Stars on Earth--Asters

Before the rain we had on Thursday, our little front yard was filled with bouquets of native asters.  The flowers are a lovely shade of mauve, and bloom at the very end of summer. 

They're part of my wild, Darwinian garden in which I strive to have something low-maintenance in bloom from the time the snow melts until a good freeze levels things.  For the week or two when the asters overlap with the best of the golden rod, the effect is quite wonderful, I think.

We'd gone through a long, hot dry spell after a wet spring and summer, and the flowers were thriving with a little watering from my soaker hoses.  But the temperature dropped Thursday night, and thunder storm blew in for a few hours.  A few of the clumps of asters suffered from the hard rain so the effect isn't quite what it was.  But the change in the weather is a good one, and long overdue....

Saturday Photo: Belles dames Or Painted Ladies?

Somewhere in there are a couple of lovely butterflies.  At first, when they appeared in mass about a week ago, I thought they were Monarchs, but it turns out they are what are called Painted Ladies in English or Belles dames in French.  The differences are obvious, when you see them side by side, but if you're not a butterfly expert, they're hard to distinguish.

Needless to say, Montrealers have been delighted to see so many of the beautiful creatures flitting around in these amazingly warm last days of summer/first days of fall.  All very normal, we're told.  A spring and summer that led to great success for the butterflies when it came to reproduction, plus this unusually warm weather after a wet summer.

Okay, I'll accept that, and not let my climate paranoia lead me to worry that the reason I haven't seen anything like this before is not a harbinger of more damage to the planet.  So I'll keep my comment to a linguistic one.  The names for the butterfly in French and English say a lot about the cultures--or what the cultures were in the 19th century when many plants and animals were catalogued.  Quite simply, something lovely in French could easily be named Belle dame, but in English a moralizing quirk led to Painted Lady which we all know is up to no good.

Would that the French are right!

Saturday Photo: Rock of Ages, How Concrete Built the World as We Know It

This is the week that I start work in earnest on my next book, tentatively titled Rock of Ages: How Concrete Built the World as We Know It. Now that the major revisions to Different: Places that Should be Alike That Aren't Alike  (due from University of Regina Press in Fall 2018, if all goes well)  have been sent off, it's time to change gears.

Not that I haven't been thinking about the topic for a long time.  During our trip this summer, one of the things I wanted to see was Grand Coulee dam on the Columbia River, which for a while was the biggest concrete construction in the world.  But one of the things I forgot when I was thinking about the hydroelectric potential of dams is the massive effect irrigation with water from the projects. 

Concrete is essential for getting water to the countryside.  Without canals lined with it, the water so carefully collected behind dams would simply sink into the earth without the desired effect. 

This is a photo of the outlet canal at Grand Coulee.  I haven't yet researched just how the irrigation system works in this part of Washington state, but you can see the kind of countryside the river and its channeled water runs through.

More later....

Saturday Photo: Le Jardin botanique, Montreal's Jewel

A good friend is visiting from out of town and we did something we hadn't done in a long time: visit Montreal's Jardin botanique.  What a delight!

Our friend had spend some time around here in the early 1970s, but she said she'd never gone there then, and I realized, too, that until I was in my late 30s and had kids, I never went looking for the loveliness of gardens.  But when the children were small the garden was free, and one of our favourite winter outings was to spend an afternoon in the green houses.  Quite wonderful to be in a tropical atmosphere when it's snowing outside!

Since then we've gone through phases when we visited frequently, but lately the press of work and other projects have pushed the Jardin to the back of our schedules.  This visit has revived our interest, and I'm sure we'll be back soon. Here's a link.

Saturday Photo: Or What Happens When the Internet Lets You Down

No picture this weekend, to show my profound disappointment that we didn't have internet for 24 hours this weekend.  Amazed at how much we have come to fit regular views of news sites, Facebook and e-mail into the fabric of our lives.

Things are back to normal, which means I can waste more time than I should following links to interesting sites....

Saturday Photo: Bees....

My overgrown, mostly-indigenous garden of perennials has been hosting a bumper crop of bees this summer.  Glad to see that, given the current worry about the fate of bees in the wild.

But last night a few wasps decided to check out the sausages I was barbecueing.  Not so welcome visitors, but I guess all part of the web of life, or some such.

Saturday Photo: Pear Harvest

It's been a wet, rather cool summer but the two pear trees in our backyard have loved it.  There are more pears than the squirrels can eat, and I harvested those I could reach this week.  Not that they're terribly tasty, but getting fruit like this in the middle of the city is pretty cool.

My neighbor Nicola, with whom we share our harvest particularly since they get a lot of down fruit on their side of the fence, said she makes a purée of the pears, freezes small portion,  and then uses them to make pear mousse.  Sounds like a winning idea.  As soon as the pears are ripe enough (and you have to pick them before they're ripe) I'll do just that.

Saturday Photo: The Grand Antonio, and Electricity

One of the grandkids favourite stories is that of The Great Antonio, a Montreal strong man, by Elise Gravel.  He pulled buses with his teeth and other feats of strength.  Gravel's illustrations are delightful, and obviously made a big impact on not-quite-five Thomas.

When we were doing a little morning walk-about near Grand Coulee dam on our recent trip, he got very excited, pointing toward the hilltops and talking about the Grand Antonio.  The adults couldn't figure out what he meant, but then it dawned on us: the high tension pilons carrying electricity from the dam.  They look a little like someone flexing his muscles, I agree.

You could probably do a nice turn on that: how electricity makes the world run, and how it magnifies the strength of all of us.  But I think I'll just be delighted at a little boy's imagination. 

Saturday Photo: Dry Falls and the Forces of the Earth

On our trip West in July, one of the most interesting places we stopped was at the Dry Falls State Park where the ancestral Columbia once ran.

Or maybe it wasn't the Columbia, exactly.  What is certain now is that  an enormous amount of water  surged over this precipice as the Ice Age ended and an ice dam burst, letting free the impounded waters of a massive meltwater lake.  The result was a catastrophic flood (or floods) and this dry, empty landscape which followed.  The dark rocks, by the way, were laid down in another geologic event that staggers the imagination: the great volcanic episode which saw lava spread over hundreds of thousands of acres for perhaps a million years.

All this puts our particular problems in  perspective.  We are screwing things up royally, but our presence on this planet is likely to be only fleeting.  The rocks remain.

This Just In: Full Page, Back Cover Ad for Road through Tiime in the NYReview of Books!

It was a quiet evening yesterday until my husband shouted from upstairs that I had to take a look at the new New York Review of Books.  So I scurried up to find a full page, back page ad for Road through Time: The Story of Humanity on the Move!

Wow!  I had thought maybe there'd be a little publicity some place, but I certainly didn't expect this! Do hope that it introduces the book to a much wider audience.

Saturday Photo: Fiat Lux at Grand Coulee Dam

Back from nearly two weeks in British Columbia and Washington State with kids and grandkids.  Many excellent adventures, you can be sure...

This photo was taken just as the sun was rising on Wednesday downstream from the dam itself.  I like the combination of the sun and the power lines: truly fiat lux. both solar and electric.

The Columbia River and it dams are under threat from interests that want to privatize them.  Terrible idea!  Here's the link to a good story from The New York Times about the situation.

Saturday Photo: The Western Edge of the Continent

Summer is vacation time, and I'm thinking of the trip we took to the West Coast a few years ago.  This is photo taken on Vancouver Island, showing the abundance of the sea.

We're headed out that way soon, and I can hardly wait!

Saturday Photo: Fruit!

We're not quite there yet (the photo was taken a couple of years ago) but it looks like we'll have a bumper year for raspberries and pears--if the squirrels aren't too hungry.

The problem with urban gardening isn't that it's in a city. No, it's the high density of critters who like the garbage that's left out, but really prefer to eat what you try to grow.

Some years ago I gave up on tomatoes, and now only have flowering annuals, and the fruiting plants that I put in before the decision.  But this looks like a year when perhaps there will be even more than the beasts can eat, perhaps because of the rainy spring.  The cherry tree across the lane is loaded with fruit, while in our yard I've rarely seen such promise.

Now if it would only be sunny for a while to let everything ripen...

Saturday Photo: Bonne fête nationale, Happy St Jean Baptiste Day

So, I'm actually posting on Friday, not Saturday.  That's because it seems like the weekend already.  Jeanne's school was finished yesterday, so she and Elin spent the night, after a picnic with Louis and company.  It wsa Louis's first birthday, and Thomas's soccer team, the Barracudas, also had a game.  A very pleasant evening!

Tomorrow is Quebec's Fête nationale, formerly known as St-Jean Baptiste Day.  When I finish posting this, I'm going to put up our Quebec flag, which, of course, featured the fleur de lys, the blue iris.  I do this not because I'm a Quebec nationalist, but because this is where we have chosen to live, and I want to signal that we (and other immigrants) should be included in all fête nationale celebrations.

Saturday Photo: Another Invasive, and One Not So

The perfume of Russian olives fills the air these mornings.  A bit like the scent of orange blossoms, it lingers all day.  I love the trees hardiness, as well as the smell.

But not everybody does.  Russian olives were introduced as wind break plantings early in the 20th century, and found conditions right to spread widely.  British Columbia is only one jurisdiction that considers it an invasive nuisance.  But around here, it's reached the limit of its natural comfort zone, and so grows in a well-behaved manner.

The Japanese maple, which is also beautiful right now, is much harder to grow.  I've tried, and in the end decided that I'd thrown away the $75 or so I spent on the small tree, because it simply did not appear when the snow melted the next winter.

But this gardener on The Plateau has succeeded in putting the two trees together wonderfully.