When gas was cheap ....

While in Calgary, I went for a walk in time in this very cool car museum! (As you may recall, I have been thinking about what it would have been like to do a road trip back in the 50's, or 40's, or 30's.)

 

I think to myself, wouldn't it be great to pull up to pumps like these! I wonder, how much for a fill-up back then?

I just think that it might be a little easier to have to pay the price of today's fill-up if we could still be gassing up from these bright, shiny pumps. These were the days where there were gas station attendants. No self-serve.

I also would have liked the drive-in movie theatres.  A  big old car, a pair of loudspeakers, and the privacy of one's vehicle. Out, but in.  Very nice!  Someone should set up a giant theme park, where you could have all of these experiences: a road trip, gas-up service, a motel with outside pool, and a drive-in movie, all with a 50's theme.  Guess this is as close to the real thing as I'm ever going to get!

The Dorothy Harvie Garden at the Calgary Zoo

 Planning a new garden is so much work.  Where to start? Well, I look back to the trip to the Calgary Zoo, with its beautiful garden. lSo, once you are wandering through the gardens, it may become difficult to remember what your favourite colour even is!   I know I love purple, but strolling through the gardens, I change my mind with each flower bed I see. 

Gorgeous red poppies. A world of red is easily contemplated.  Red is so vibrant and alive.

What about pastels?  Yellows and pinks create a  very cheerful setting.

Blue, blue, blue - this is a cold colour?  It certainly livens up this bed!

Red again. Red is beginning to seem like a wonderful choice.

Golden flowers for a golden afternoon.

And blue again, glowing in the sunlight.

Finally, a magnificent purple.  Now what could this be? It's truly marvelous.

Silver foliage adds a magical touch.

Competing with the sun to epitomize the colour yellow.  Oh, ligularia!

 

 

 Too many choices! I don't know if I can do a monochromatic garden!

Coral - a colour not so often seen, but well worth considering!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Drifting down the stream...

"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."
"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"
Lewis Carroll

Summer has been busy, with not enough time for reading everything I wanted.  On the plus side, that means a nice little stack of books waiting on my bedside table. Not too much fiction in that pile right now. I do hope to pick up some more books this fall. Wonder what Books in Canada will be reviewing.

As for the moving.  I think that it should feel like a move forward, if you understand what I mean. It rather just feels like a move crosswise.  A change of scenery, as it were.  A novelty, which will wear off eventually.  It's a good thing it is not like a marriage! (Although, there must be many people who change habitats and relationships at the same time.  I wonder how stressful that is.) Or could it be a 'non" move as in, did we really go anywhere new? Much too much thinking before a late breakfast, hmm?

 Well, as with every summer, I have tried to enjoy as many "summer" activities as possible:
- reading, of the lighter kind of reading, including at least one horror novel, one crime novel, and one current best seller.
-gardening - this year rather interesting, with mainly container gardening, and mainly annuals
- travelling - into B.C for the first trip, and then around Alberta, sticking close to mountains, and also Edmonton and Calgary
- movies at home late at night - certain movies, which must include Jurassic Park, Twister, The Shining, and at least one animated Walt Disney movie.
- cleaning up one major area of the home - this year, moving! cleaning up and rearranging will be ongoing.


In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream --
Lingering in the golden gleam --
Life, what is it but a dream?
Lewis Carroll


Am I the only one who finds these lines terribly melancholy? When I was a child, understanding that life wasse just a dream was a frightening concept.  That Death would come too quickly, and likely  when we approached death, that is exactly what we would thnk, oh where did our time go ... . Well, this particular golden summer is over (work dictates it so). And, contrariwise,  I choose to end this post here with a picture to illustrate, not Carroll's perspective, but James' perfect "summer afternoon".

Rearrangements

Rearrangements.  You begin with a certain arrangement, and then, you begin to rearrange so that, eventually, the original intent, or thought, has drifted away.  To be specific here, I am thinking of household objects.  You buy a certain object which holds appeal, and arrange it a certain way so that it will give pleasure. As time goes by, you cease to notice it, or else you buy other objects which either replace the first, or join the first in a new arrangement. 
This is especially true when you decide to rearrange a room, or else when you move!  I have been very busy the last two weeks with packing and unpacking.  Unpacking, moving pictures, vases, candlesticks, etc., into new arrangements to fit the new space.
I  happen to like glass, and have some depression pieces and some reproductions also. Most of it was in my old screen porch, set up like a little retro 50's porch, but that has been dismantled.  The new yellow sunroom will be more of a modern "Victorian" (is that a paradox?), although I have kept the set of bubble glass dishes in the cabinet.  My poster of Icarus shall go into that room. And I am sewing a new set of curtains for two of the windows, for something new to add to this room's composition.
I am also unpacking my books in the basement.  This is taking longer than I thought it would. I know I am going to run out of space, as the bookcases were packed full before, and I don't think I can possibly recreate the previous arrangement.  This time, I find myself adjusting some genres, and some authors.  It's not that I had a very organized system before, but it is being changed just a bit again.  For example, my Atwoods and Munros no longer sit on the shelf where my eyes look directly when standing, but are lower.  Why?  Because I know them so well.  Newer Canadian authors, such as Camilla Gibb and Elizabeth Hay, have moved to the higher shelves, because I am still making the acquaintance, shall we say, of these writers. Female authors are now separate from the males. (Greg Hollingshead still stays on a higher shelf, though  When will that man write another suburban novel?) David Adams Richards is on a lower shelf, but this is because it is a painful thing to read his novels - The River of the Broken-Hearted almost did me in.The Victorians have moved up again, for I intend to reread many of these again when I have time.  And this is just the beginning of my revised categorization system.
I am back at work on Monday.  So that  means final touch-ups and rearranging will take some time. And that is all right.  A move always disorients me, makes me reflect too much on time passing by. The "old" place now sits  empty and I miss it. yes, I miss the old arrangement, and will need time to readjust, to regain my equilibrium. I say again, what must it be like to stay in one place for most of one's life?


Time is a circus, always packing up and moving away.
Ben Hecht

How doth the busy little bee improve each shining hour...

That is because the bee is working so hard.  And, alas, so am I.  The company my husband works for offered a house instead of the townhouse we now occupy.  The cons are that there are no trees on the yard, and I will once again have to grow a new flower garden! Oh, it is a sad, hilly yard.  Two of the pros are that we get an extra bedroom, and a small year-round sunroom. But the most important thing is the light. It is the light which sold me.  The house is filled with light in the kitchen and dining room, and of course, so is the sunroom, and the basement's rooms are also fairly large and bright, the windows being larger.
So I have been packing, and then unpacking again.  The new place is about two blocks away.  Once again, my library goes into boxes.  So many boxes.  I wonder what it would be like to stay in the same house all one's life.  Never to have to shift a favourite thing, except when the whim takes me.  My poor library. This time, most of my bookcases will reside in the basement, as there is no room which has a  wall long enough to accommodate them.  I have reserved one bookcase for the upstairs living room, which is filled with some of my most recent reading choices. Both the living room and the family room do not have enough wall space, so the best thing is to keep them all together downstairs.  Dear book friends, you are not banished, but my little study just has no space either, having only enough room for my writing armoire, a day bed and a reading chair.
I sometimes think that the new "open space" concept is not very friendly to home libraries at all, and may be contributing to their demise.  Quiet reading is difficult when there are hardly any private reading spaces.

The travelling we did this summer already seems like quite a while ago .... sigh.  But I plan to print out my favourite pictures and frame them, just for the new place. I think I will put up a few more pics to remind myself of the fun we had.

 

The drive from Jasper to the Columbia Icefields is always spectacular.

 A rainy afternoon at Lake Louise. This view is from the hotel.  We had a look at the little shops inside, and I found a gorgeous moonstone necklace in one of them.. (So I got my birthday gift early, as there was no other way to justify an extravagance like that!)

 

 The mountains of Kananaskis country.  While I always swear that I if I had to pick the best from the Alberta Parks, I would pick Jasper, I do think that next year, we should spend a week down "south". Many cowboy movies have been made in Kananaskis country and I think it would be found to spend some more time exploring and enjoying this scenery.