Tiny noises...

Past rusty railroad tracks...

 ...up the unused drive...

 ...where once you could hear voices and farm plows, 

it's only the sounds of us and the pups and the birds.

 We meander where busy lives once existed...

 Sapsuckers are the busy ones now...

 The colours, the textures of the past greet us at the gate...

 Someone long ago took time to plant these wee autumn crocus' and 

for many years watched them come up every September...

 These are scenes from a life abandoned...

 Tiny noises play in our heads...

 ...the low of cattle, the cluck of chickens

 For a hundred years this was a place...

 ...linked strongly to a life of farming

 Now weathered and disappearing...

 What happens when lives fade away?

 It was a home...

 And as always we look closer...

 try to hear those distant voices...

 Wishing the grasses would rustle up the story through the breeze...

 But the sounds grow fainter...

 The past keeps her stories to herself for now

 But this life abandoned has had some visitors today, who think about it, 

wonder and maybe keep the tiny noises turned up again, just a notch or two.

What's up?...

It's been a while since writing, in the meantime, 

SPRING has arrived here!

The woods, all dark and mossy have been lit up with the first sweet little wildflowers...

Fawn lilies or if you want to get all Latin about it, Erythronium oregonum.

 No matter what you call them, they will call to you along the paths with their

little nodding heads, like fairy hats on parade...

 Holding onto drops of rain until the most delicate of movement shakes them off...

 My walks are twice as long now while I stop and stoop on bended knees
(sometimes stiff and achy bended knees!)

to try and capture this fleeting show...

 The mushrooms are staring to make a show as well.

I spotted these tiny little ones, the biggest about the size of a nickel, 

reminding me of minute Japanese paper parasol's 

 Jed is growing into a sweet little pup and I love that he's beginning to

know the trails and paths we walk every morning...

 ...running ahead, knowing which fork to take, full of joy, as only a young pup can!

 I must apologize for photo quality as I seem to just bring along my iPhone

thinking I won't really take any photos...I should know better!!

A few things completed on the studio table in prep 

for a gallery show coming up in May.

This is Stuart.

I named him after our beloved CBC storyteller extraordinaire who passed away

early this year. He will be missed by many, many listeners who have been

following 'The Vinyl Cafe' and before that his stints on 'Morningside' for many years.

He once did a story on birdwatching and called the ones he couldn't identify 'LBJ's'

or 'Little Brown Jobs'.

So thanks for all the stories Stuart.

This little Stuart bird will always be singing your praise as one of 

the best storytellers of our time.

xo

This other piece was so much fun to make...

 It's called 'Spike on Wellesley Street', a nod to my dads childhood home...

...and yes Spike is anatomically correct!

I used a thin piece of gold wire for his pee.

Funny enough, while I was sleeping, someone left tiny hand prints in the sidewalk!

It may be the part of a series as I'm now making two more versions of Spike.

So that's about all from this big rock in the North Western Pacific Ocean.

Hope you are all well and enjoying spring wherever you are!

Thanks for stopping by!

These woods....

The other morning we had a very frosty one. 

The sun came out a bit and showed off the workings of cold and nature...

Look how sporty Jed looks!!

Ready for some duck hunting bud?

Another perspective on wabi sabi...the beauty of the decaying...acceptance of the imperfect...

I have a never ending fascination with moss...thick, thin, feathered, velvety, fluffy, trailing...

Remnants of the old farm that used to be here many years ago...

And then there are These Woods.

Growing up in Victoria I had a love for Garry Oaks.

There ecosystem is restricted to a small area on the Southeast part of our Island.

Nowhere else in the world do these gnarly, craggy ones grow...

The very bones of them in the winter, the loving dappled shade in the summer.

But for eighteen years when I lived in Sooke I had a relationship with the coniferous

evergreen forests that surrounded our house.

The deep, tall woods of the west coast are a spiritual place for me.

A free and open place of worship where quite often I was alone with my thoughts and prayers.

So now I think among these different beings...some tall, some short and scrubby. 

But a place like this is my tall drink of water in this sad and beautiful world.

I can sit and wonder and grow along with the moss and the lichen.

Invent my own stories of the things I find.

Like this simple wooden cross I found lying at the base of a big oak.

I wondered...what lies beneath?

So I propped it up against the great tree, stood up some of it's meaning again...

So I will wander these wiry meadows now.

They are new kin to get to know.

I find comfort when I drive up our road, past the subdivision, entering our block

 where the oaks still line the sidewalk-less street. 

Some parts around here were left to be.

For that I am grateful.