Less is More?

Every year a few scraggly tulips come up in our front garden. We never planted them. There was only one there our first spring - in 1987. Now there are several, but never strong, though this year they are particularly red, brilliant - stark against the luscious, green fresh grass.

Jane and I spent the afternoon at a garden centre looking at the gorgeous splendour and variety of flowers - some of which we'll put as annuals in the backyard and also add some perennials to that part of the display. We might build a deck out back and generally spruce up the exterior of our Winterset Crescent abode. It's taken us about 20 years, finally, to begin to invest in some structural, outside things. Guess that means we're planning to stay a few years there, yet, though the kids are mostly gone now.

Still, cheaper than starting over fresh somewhere else - and we're not quite ready to gear down to retirement, the condo, the apartment, the retirement-residence, the grave . . .

Sigh. Where do the years go?!

Musing

Walking by a stream near my home as spring unfolds - could anything be better? . . .

Ottawa Valley Barns

Ottawa Valley

The mill dams and falls at Almonte, Ontario

My work took me, at the end of last week and today, to the beautiful Ottawa Valley area of Ontario. Lanark County, the Maple Syrup capital of Ontario has many old log buildings - sturdy log houses still in use, as well as barns and sheds.

The spring buds are forming in meadows and forests; tulips are opening in visual concert with hyacinthes and daffodils. I wanted to come back to take pictures, having been through many of these towns and villages in the winter when I did not yet have my camera - and wishing I had so as to capture the stark white beauty of the fields with the stark, dark contrast of ancient farm buildings. Almonte, Arnprior, Beckwith, Carleton Place, Lanark, Pembroke Perth, Renfrew and many more beautiful places, Scotch settlements many of them . . .

I had no idea there was such beauty and power in the waterfalls, the rushing rivers and spring-fed streams, fields and budding forests - the ancient buildings and lore of this part of my province.

Tapestries

All those cliches about how all the colours - even the ones that initially don't seem to fit, actually do come together someow, often quite beautifully, in the tapestry of our lives . . .

And all the knots and nubbins on the reverse side - unseen to others, and maybe to ourselves . . .

Or maybe we just see the knotted, tangled side of our everydays - reflecting the ups and downs, the seeming contradictions, the disappointments, failures, picadillos - and great big sins . . .

But whatever - the colours eventually fade, as does our strength, our health, maybe our mind and perspective . . .

The above tapestry, hanging now in my sister Muriel's house in Fonthill, came from England with some branch of the family a century or more ago, reflecting evidence of middle-class sacrifice, culture and value, and a day when the oriental theme of such a treasure was much espoused.

It hung for years at Uncle Jim and Aunt Mary Potter's house. My Dad would have seen it when visiting their home in Freeman (now Burlington, Ontario) as a boy.

So many people I can't ask now about such tapestries, stories, meanings, memories.

I wish I could . . .