Why I love my sunroom, and TV dinners

Today it has been snowing non-stop.  A real snow day.  Hades demands his Persephone now.  No dillydallying. An abrupt grab.
So I have been sitting in my sunroom, painted a nice cheerful  yellow, and with its own heating system providing some coziness on what looks like a full-fledged winter's day in October.  Now, the other place we had provided us with a screened porch- blessed relief from mosquitos and horseflies.  But this home gives me warmth and much more light and a cozy place to sit all winter long.  Which I love, even when winter provides only its dark light.
Now, there should be two yellow and brown chairs, but I am fond of my old slate-blue armchair, and so it remains for now.  It is still a good place to sit and read and drink a cup of tea.  (I have just finished a collection of stories by Edward P. Jones, called All Aunt Hagar's Children. Which I may blog about later.)
My blue chair would probably look better in my living room.  But the living room seems to have enough furniture, although I think it still needs a little bit of wow factor.  I just don't know.... it has a serene feel to it right now.

For supper tonight, nothing elaborate.  TV dinners.  Now, most people may equate the TV dinner with the meal of a lonely only.  Not so me.  Why, a TV dinner is an amazing meal.  The perfectly planned out meal, in perfect proportion, complete with a dessert.  There is something so satisfying in that.  Thank you to the home economic scientists, for developing such an amazing concept.  I always like to imagine that somewhere in the future, space travellers eat their  homely TV dinners.  That, and they are sipping their favourite Starbucks coffees whenever they want.

 The kitchen where the TV dinners are heated up.  Modern civilization. 

Owlish Evenings...

I  keep reading this poem, and I like it the more I read it.  To able to soar, to fly - that is the superpower I would choose.  To glide about at night, with the moon and stars for light, on a nice warm breeze. I remember a book I read as a child, but I can't remember the title. It was about a young boy who had a bottle of pearlized ointment, and when he rubbed it on his shoulders, he grew wings and flew about and had adventures.  I wish I could find that book again.
The light fades quickly now, and it makes the evenings seem more mysterious.  Twilight -  "Laugh heart again in the gray light of twilight". (Yeats)

 

If the Owl Calls Again

  by John Haines
at dusk from the island in the river, and it's not too cold, I'll wait for the moon to rise, then take wing and glide to meet him. We will not speak, but hooded against the frost soar above the alder flats, searching with tawny eyes. And then we'll sit in the shadowy spruce and pick the bones of careless mice, while the long moon drifts toward Asia and the river mutters in its icy bed. And when the morning climbs the limbs we'll part without a sound, fulfilled, floating homeward as the cold world awakens.

The Wistful Garden ...

In my lately abandoned garden, the little garden ornaments wait for me to gather them inside, safe from the cold winter, although I wonder what they might look like if they stayed outside for the coldest season. They do look like they should remain where they are, but I know the damage winter inflicts.

 My "statuary" is nothing grand or indestructible, but they do just fine. See for yourself.

 

This pensive cherub is tucked in by the Henry Hudson rosebush and mock orange shrubs.

This little fellow cuddles his rabbit beneath the Golden Elder.

 Two companions share a secret.

Well, St. Francis does stay outside.  He is  too heavy to move.  Besides, the chickadees like him, and perch in the Polestar  rose bushes surrounding him.

And here is the kind of  secret that the two cherubs might be sharing (although it could be something quite different):

“There are many different stories to tell. It's never the same. Every day weather blows in and out, alters the surface. Sometimes it is stripped down to a single essential truth, the thing that is always believed, no matter what. The seeds from which the garden has grown.”
― From Helen Humphrey's The Lost Garden

What could this single essential truth be?  That the garden also has four seasons, each with its own particular beauty?  That even if a garden is abandoned, it is still a garden?   That the person who plants the garden is sending a message about herself to the world, even if  she doesn't know exactly what she means to say?   

The Lacuna

Well, perhaps in part because of a cold, I have finished Kingsolver's The Lacuna. There was no choice about having to rest quietly, and the novel took my mind off my aches and pains.  It was rather like reading three novels though,because each section was so long. (Not that I am complaining.  I like a long novel.)  A young man's life, from his life with his mother, to his life working with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and then, his life in the Communism-phobic United States. This story was amazing, combining the story of Communist leader Leon Trotsky's exile in Mexico with the lives of Kahlo and Rivera, as seen through the eyes of a sensitive youth, who also happens to have the gift of writing.

 self-portraits of Frida Kahlo

After teaching Grade 8 Social Studies for the first time last year, I too am now fascinated by the ancient Aztec and Mayan civilizations of long ago.  So it was good to find a character who took those societies from the past and wrote his own impressions of them.  All civilizations change and sometimes fall apart, in no small measure due to the leadership of each.  This is also true of the United States (Truman and Hoover, and a bit part by Nixon),  and of Russia  (Trotsky versus Stalin), as revealed in the novel.

A mural of the Aztec civilization by Diego Rivera

The why of the Cold War is explained very well here.   Ignorance is revealed to be the true evil that bedevils any society.  Do all civilizations fail because of fear of the other?  "Most of them do not know what communism is, could not pick it out of a  lineup.  They only know what anti-communism is.  The two are practically unrelated."  (Harrison's lawyer).   I admit that I found the last part of the novel the most traumatic, the most painful section to read.  Even the tragedy of Leon Trotsky's death must compete with our hero's disillusionment with United States society in those years of J. Edgar Hoover.

 murals by Diego Rivera

 Rivera's  Man at the Crossroads

 
 So thank you, Barbara Kingsolver, for reminding another idealist of the political way of the world.

On Tea, and Leaves of Autumn

It has been just my luck to have a bad cold over the Thanksgiving weekend. Aches and pains and stuffed-up sinuses.  I am so glad that I had that glorious walk last weekend at Elk Island.  It makes up for the cloudy days now.

I drink my ginger and lemon tea, with a soothing spoonful of honey for my throat,  and look out at a melancholy world.  The trees are mostly bare now. Only the most stubborn leaves remain.

I took photos on my walk last Sunday, and have to admire the great variety of dying leaves, how they all have their own particular beauty.  The perfect rounded gold leaf of the poplar, the small bright orange leaf of the wild rose bush - these are expected.  But there is also the beauty of the less spectacular.

Blackened leaf with orange veins.

 

Drying dark orange and spotted leaf

  

Orange and black leaf

   Green-gold and blackened leaf.

 

The urge to wear colours like gold and orange are understandable.  I wish I had bought that dark orange coat at the mall.  Sigh....

And  then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the .... fall leaves!  (apologies to Wordsworth)

The wonderful windy days that bring the fall.

This is the ideal way to spend a cool afternoon in the fall woods, if one could be a squirrel.   Although, as humans, better perhaps with a bonfire, a hot tea, and a large afghan or throw to cuddle under.  And, of course, on a day when suffering with a cold, and accompanying  cloudy weather:  a  comfy chair inside, with a warm shawl, an herbal tea and a view of melancholy autumn.

One of those special places....

Even when I go to the city, I visit those special places nearby... like Astotin Lake in Elk Island National Park.   In the fall, there is no better experience, than to walk the path around the lake, drinking in the glory of the golden leaves, and feeling that fading golden warmth of the sun.

 The path changes continuously, from trim and gravelled, to wooden walkway, but mainly leaf-strewn dirt.  It's like walking through a wondrous fairy wood  with gold and silver light to guide you on the way.

Entering the woods.

 

 

 

 

Ad you walk continuedown this path, the fall colours dazzle.

Afternoon shadows add a mysterious atmosphere.

 

A stretch of silvered beauty.

  A friendly walkway, with many damelflies flitting almost invisibly, but everywhere.

I try to come here at least once a year, and in the fall, to experience the magic of this place.  I have never been disappointed.  Those gold leaf coins are a treasure in my heart, spent in memory throughout the long winter months ahead.