Saturday Photo: A Rose by Any Other Name, Or What to Do When the Pumpkins Are Sold Out

Even though our kids are long grown-up and their kids are busy with other things, I like to do the Halloween thing.  Pumpkin, candy, front porch light on invitingly.

But this year I put off buying a pumpkin until too late:  the only ones in our immediate neighbourhood were huge, or from California so I decided to do something different.

Luckily we have a nice glass front door on which we've often displayed artwork.  So I got a sheet of poster board and cut out a pumpkin.  Looks rather nice, I think, but it remains to be seen whether the kids (and there are far fewer than formerly, kids grow up and move away) stop by to see what we're offering.

 Doesn't look bad, though, does it? 

Saturday Photo: Sere Beauty of the Fall

The colours have passed their peak but the beauty continues.

This photo was taken at sunrise a couple of years ago, but I'm using it again because I think it captures the pared-down glory of the after-Autumn.
 

Saturday Photo: Countdown to Halloween

 Still about two weeks to go before Halloween but  a lot of folks have started celebrating.  This stack of lovely pumpkins and gourds is outside a small resto in the neighbourhood.  I wonder how long it will last...

Saturday Photo: Abundance for Thanksgiving Day

This photo of windfall apples spaks to the abundance of fruits and vegetables available to many of us during this harvest season.

Thank goodness!  We are so lucky to have more than enough to eat, to go to sleep in a warm, clean place, and, frequently, to be loved.

So even if you are not a believer, I think it is good to pause occasionally and take stock of all we have.  Gratitude is not a dirty word.
 

Saturday Photo: Resilient Beauty

 Saw these flowers this week.  Growing between paving stones on a busy street can't be easy, but nevertheless they have succeeded.  A lesson for us all when it seems the odds are stacked against us, perhaps.

Saturday Photo: Fall Flames...

 September is the time of change, when the landscape can change overnight to be something quite different from what you'd been enjoying for weeks.  These sumac leaves are a harbinger of what is to come.  The first flames of fall....

Saturday Photo: The Bones of the Earth

 This is what you go through when you take Montreal's REM trains, the Réseau express métropolitain.  Well, you don't magically find yourself transported through solid rock, but you do travel through a tunnel cut through the rock that forms the bones of Mount Royal.

 

The REM designers wisely left a window on the rock at the level before the level of trains in the Edouard Montpetit station.  When I took the train downtown the other day, I was wisked 20 storeys down from the brilliant fall sunshine to the bones of the earth in seconds by one of the elevators.  The experience is a little unsettling if you stop to think about it, but if you're in a hurry, all you can think about is the speed with which you can get one place to another.

 The REM has had/is having problems at various times, but it is an excellent addition to public transport when it runs.  

Saturday Photo: Harvest, Marché Jean Talon

This is a great time of year for anyone who loves fresh food.  The Marché Jean Talon in Montreal's Piccola Italia is full of tomatoes, basil, lettuce, corn, garlic, ontions, not to mention the first apples and pears, nectarines and grapes from Ontario.

I love to go there and I love even more coming back home to eat what I've bought.  Next up today: finding some new recipe for the eggplant I bought.  
 

Saturday Photo: And Another Thing You Shouldn't Mess With--A Wasp Nest

This is the time of year when wasps suddenly appear around here.  It's often hard to eat outside because they come around looking for a snack.  Preparing for winter, it seems.   Usually, though, you can move your picnic a short distance or otherwise outwit them.

But sometimes they decide to set up housekeeping around your house.  What they make is quite wonderful when you think about it: a sort of piñata made of wood pulp that inspired the Chinese a couple of thousand years ago to make paper from wood pulp.

 However, as long as the wasps are actively residing in the nest you don't want to have anything to do with it.  This one was up the street a year or so ago, and the people who lived there got the city to come and take it down.  Didn't see it, but I imagine it was quite an operation. 

 There's a lesson there, too: don't go after something that might be dangerous unless you've got a good end game.  That's advice that some folks in power should heed, I think.  

Saturday Photo: And 62 Years Later We're Still Together

This photo was taken at a party my mother insisted we have to celebrate our engagement.  It was part of a trade-off: party at Christmas with all their friends, wedding Aug. 29, 1964 with only close friends and family.  

The engagement party was okay, but the wedding was really great fun--everybody went swimming after the ceremony.  And the time ever since has been great!
 

Saturday Photo: Dog Days in Mile End

Well, according to Wikipedia the Dog Days of Summer run from July 19 to Aug.11, so this beast sitting on a car in Montreal's Mile End neighborhood last weekwas a little past due date.

Neverthless, it stopped many pedestrians who, like me, were taken by the creature who seemed to be sitting without being attached to the roof of the car.  The book in its paws has something to do with dogs: is it a guide to hunting them?

Whatever, the temperatures have started to fall in the evenings around here, while the worst heat seems passed.  We were spared the terrible hot spells other regions have suffered recently, but reasonable folks can't deny that summer is a lot hotter than it used to be.

Maybe the thing to do is to sic the beast shown here on climate deniers... 
 

Saturday Photo: Cosmos, the Star Flower of the Perseids

This week the self-seeding cosmos have begun to bloom.  Of course, there are places which have had them for weeks, but they were all started inside and some, like the ones I bought in June, are beginning to look a little ragged.  But cosmos re-seed themselves, and they're easy to grow from seed in a sunny corner.  They just take their own sweet time to flower.

And now is the time.  They are all over the place here, and looking great.  It's a delightful coincidence that their arrival coincides most years with the August shower of meteorites, the Perseids.  Shooting stars in the heavens, dancing flowers on earth.... 

 

Saturday Photo: Eight-thirty, Aug. 6, Parc Outremont

 Summer twilight: magic time.

Although I must add that the kitchen is full of fruit flies from the nectarines I left on the counter.  The advantages and disadvantages of the season. 

Saturday Photo: Walter Cronkite on Libraries; We Will Not Be Shushed

Well, actually I haven't been in a library recently where anyone has been shushed.  One of the wonderful things about libraries these days is that, while there may be quiet corners to read or study, there also always are places for activities that may make some joyful noises.

The "shushing" isn't coming from inside the libraries but from outside--from governments who want to cut budgets and from folks who want to ban books. 

We've got to resist both kinds...
 

Saturday Photo: Falling Water

This is not the first time that I've posted this photo, but I like it a lot on summer days.  The fountain is a nearby park, and seeing and hearing it is enough to feel 10 degrees cooler.

This year the fountains in the western part of Montreal island aren't running as an effort to slow down water consumption.  Major repairs are being done to a part of the system that serves about 100,000 customers, so to set an example, fountains have been shut off.

The splash pads are still operating, though--thank goodness for them on hot days. 
 

Saturday Photo: Mellow Yellow, Cool Blue..

The yellow loose-strife blooms are nearly all exhausted, but they bloomed for more than a month.  Now their place is being taken by hostas and creeping bellflower.  The latter is supposed to be invasive, but I believe in Darwinian gardening: that is, what survives, survives. 

Saturday Photo: Floral Fireworks

This is the month for shooting  off fireworks, it seems.  Canada Day, the Fouth of July, Bastille Day, and other holidays all seem to require pyrothenic displays.

 But it also is the time around here when day lilies are in bloom.  Their bursts of colour are truly gorgeous, and what's more they don't frighten animals with loud noises.

  

Saturday Photo: A Beautiful Library!

Been traipsing around and visited this lovely library last week.  It's the Bibliothèque Lucy-Faris in Aylmer, QC, jus across the river from Ottawa. The Friday afternoon I was there it was full of people, obviously enjoying this replacement for a library which had been in a corner of a strip mall.

Not only is the library spacious with plenty of room for more books, it has a number of well-thought special features, like a terrace on the green-roof which offers a   wonderful view of the Ottaw river. 

Nice to see what great place being used by all sorts of people, too.,  

 

Saturday Photo: Evi in the Garden with Her 'Escape-proof' Harness

This is Evi in the little front garden, on the watch for interesting flying insects.  You'll note she's wearing a harness and on a leash.  That's because we don't want her to bother birds.

But the harness is not entirely what we'd hoped for.  I had thought I could put it on her (she learned rather quickly associate it with going outside which she really likes), attach the leash to a stake and do a little gardening.  She, however, wants to roam and she's figured out to back out of three different sorts of harnesses, including this one which is supposed to be escape-proof.

 The result is I take her outside and sit and read the papers on my phone.  Could be a worse situation, I'm sure! 

Saturday Photo: Help! I Need Somebody...

Those are gloves you see, seeming to come out of the pipes in this roadwork project.  Makes me wonder if anybody is having trouble getting all the work done.  Is this a real cry for help?

Certainly there are days when it seems that you really could use another pair of hands. Think how much faster you could wipe down kitchen cabinets (a job I've had on my to-do list for more than a week.)  I don't know that you could write that much more with four hands, since you only have one head to plan the work!