I’m continuing to make drawings in the garden. Here is a picture of the one I did this morning. Like the others, this one is pencil on hot-pressed watercolour paper.
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Forager’s bad dream
We had some rain showers on Canada Day after what radio reports suggest was the driest June in a quarter century. From a forager’s perspective this is bad news. Most years, I find chanterelles up in the enchanted mushroom forest at the beginning of July. Although in my heart of hearts, I didn’t really think there was enough rain Canada Day to fruit any mushrooms, I convinced myself to go have a look anyway. What drove me to do this was my memory of a strange day in August a few years ago, during a similar very dry period, when I found the motherlode of lobster mushrooms. You won’t know if you don’t go look, I said to myself.
Yesterday morning, I tossed my stick (I like to have a long stick to poke around with when I forage) and my basket in the car and took off on my scouting mission. Fortunately, the enchanted mushroom forests are not so far away. All I can really say is I enjoyed a pleasant hike in the woods. Not only did I not see any tasty edible mushrooms, I saw little evidence of any mushrooms at all. I shouldn’t be surprised.
I can recall other years with little rain. One year, a particularly dry summer, I found hardly any chanterelles all season, although I did a bit better for lobsters and hedgehogs and others later that summer. We could really use a good rain sometime soon to get some fungi action happening. I don’t mean showers or a cloudburst or even a healthy thunderstorm. The forests are really dry. I’d like to see a nice two-day rain, a real soaker.
The Whites by Richard Price
The Whites is a pretty good bit of crime fiction. Gritty cop/ex-cop drama, curiously propelled by the actions of one of the characters many years before. Perhaps too many characters for me to cope with. Plenty of detail. Several murders. This was a “notable book of the year” (2015) according to The New York Times Book Review. Well, maybe that was a little generous. If you’re looking for a meaty crime novel, though, this one is well worth reading, even if a wee bit predictable. I don’t think predictability is always such a big deal in this genre.
This book was written by Richard Price. Apparently it was initially sold as a book by Harry Brandt, but that was quickly changed to “Richard Price writing as Harry Brandt”. The copy I have just says Richard Price. It’s all too confusing. It got me thinking though, of how many books might actually be written under pseudonyms? I recall as a kid reading the Hardy Boys books, naively thinking they really were written by Franklin W. Dixon (sorry kids, they weren’t). At risk of getting all conspiracy theory on you, I wonder if the Harry Potter books were really written by someone named J.K. Rowling? (I know, I know, I’m just talking through my hat).
These days it’s become increasingly difficult to separate reality from marketing in any case. I remember reading or perhaps hearing on a radio program something about a Canadian pop star who is also billed as a song-writer. This program or article or whatever it was, suggested that the record company hired a song-smith to “work with” the star. The song-smith allegedly did almost all of the work, with a bit of input from the star, but the song was credited to both of them, all the better to market it. True or false, who knows. I’m not out to slag anybody here, just making the point that what seems real is sometimes just another way to sell product. Branding is very complex and often deceptive business, intentionally or otherwise.
Back to The Whites – if you like this kind of hard-boiled crime fiction, in which you learn a lot about the history of the characters in a book which weaves a complicated plot, you should enjoy this one. I wouldn’t want a steady diet of this stuff, but it’s a fun treat from time to time.
Another bee hotel
I made another little bee hotel for our “solitary bee” friends today. For this one I started with some pieces of clay sewer pipe and filled the with bamboo. The hollow bamboo should be a good place for Mason bees and Leafcutter bees to nest. I don’t expect this bee hotel to be populated until next season. Once there, the bees will lay eggs in the hollow bamboo stems in early spring or summer.
There are folks out there commercially making bee hotels, but it seems to me that it is not necessary to have anything fancy. I think as long as I can meet the basic needs of the bees, they will move in, even if their housing complex does not look like it came out of a factory. I suspect they won’t appreciate the hobby horse or the Ellie Mae memorial garden, complete with giant crown.
Toronto Pride Parade
We were honoured to have been invited by Toronto Pride Parade Grand Marshal Salah Bachir to march alongside his float in today’s Pride parade.
Salah and Jacob
with Lori and a friendly policewoman
Tuffy P takes a selfie with the Mayor
Remembering Orlando victims
Me and Tuffy P
The day was sunny and hot and the entire parade route was packed. What a great vibe along the parade route! Everybody was in great spirits, dancing and cheering and having a wonderful time. It was a fantastic expression of solidarity, freedom and equality.
We were near the front of the parade. At about 3:00, all the music was turned off and there was a moment of silence observed for the Orlando victims before we continued on. At some point after that our float stopped – near the end of the parade route – and we realized other floats were quite a way behind us. Apparently the Black Lives Matter people staged a sit-in or protest of some kind, stopping the parade for a while. It was difficult to know just what was going on as we were well in front of it. After that was resolved, the parade – and the party – continued.
This was the first time a sitting Prime Minister marched in the Pride parade. We caught a glimpse of Mr. Trudeau near the staging area at the start of the parade, but he was marching somewhere way behind us, so we didn’t see him during the parade. Premier Wynne was there as well, and so was Mayor Tory, who circulated around the staging area before the parade started saying hi to people in the parade and folks lining the streets as well.
Congratulations to Mathieu Chantelois, executive director of Pride Toronto, Grand Marshal Salah Bachir, and the fantastic people of Toronto for making this such a great event.
Happy Canada Day
For my Canadian friends a question….what did you do this Canada Day? We took a drive to our fave emporium of the unexpected, Nice Old Stuff, in Jarvis Ontario, and came back with a carload of imagination.
This garden gate had a flat top…until today. Whatever this architectural element was, it fit on top just nicely and with a few screws it is very secure. Eventually, the English Ivy will hopefully grow up to the top.
Don’t forget to laugh….
Take a ride on the Peace Train
To complete the Canada Day happiness, we’ve ordered some take-out from Feast of Dilli. I’ll be picking it up at 5:00. Yum!
100 Days
I just need another little dose of Sharon Jones…..
Drawing in the Garden
I’ve been drawing in the garden lately. Most days I make one drawing, other days two and of course some days none at all. I wander about the garden and without thinking too much about it, find a spot to draw. Today’s spot had a lot to do with the location of the shade. Subjects have included plants and trees as well as the Imagination Stations. One day a plastic hobby horse found its way into a drawing. I don’t think too much about how to approach these things either, beyond my decision to use pencils on a big block of swanky Arches hot-pressed watercolour paper (I love hot-pressed paper). I just sit down and draw. The closer I can get to “drawing is thinking” the better.
When I say pencils, I mean basic pencils, some harder and some softer. I’m going to digress for a moment to talk about pencils. I’m sure there are generations of kids who have rarely used one. Ever wonder what HB means? First, everybody refers to “pencil leads” but they are not made of lead at all. They’re made of graphite with a clay binder. Curiously though, when the first huge graphite deposit was discovered in Britain, it was actually thought to be lead. Pencils are graded using a European system which describes the ratio of graphite to clay. The more clay, the harder the pencil. The H in HB stands for Hardtmuth and the B for Budweis. The higher the H value, the harder the pencil and the higher the B value, the softer. You may have noticed that some pencils are labelled F. F is arbitrary and an F pencil is halfway between H and HB. The hardest pencils you can get are 9H and they are mighty hard indeed. The softest are 9B. In my drawings, I’m using a 2H, an H, a 2B, a 4B and an 8B.
Back in the early 80s, my friend John McCartney and I had an opportunity to work on a Saul LeWitt wall drawing. One of the features of this huge drawing was a 9H pencil grid. I was working away on the pencil grid one day when LeWitt’s studio assistant came along and dressed me down because I was not twirling the 9H pencil while making the grid lines. He said my lines were never going to be uniform. One day, just for fun, get yourself a 9H pencil and explore its dynamics. A 9H pencil is so hard it barely makes a mark at all. At the time, I though LeWitt’s assistant was a bit over-jealous (I may have been more direct back then). Now, all these years later, it seems kind of adorable.
Prior to the recent Long Branch garden tour, our friend Jacob Yerex dropped off two big bags of what I’m going to call sculptural ideas for our garden. Some of these ideas are quite resolved, finished sculptures – others less so. We’ve got them all over the place. There are some in the Imagination Stations, some in among the plants. A few have found their way into the bird community housing developments out back. One is hanging in the camo-netting. Today I sat down in the shadiest spot in the garden, and there in front of me was one of the Yerexes, demanding to be drawn. If truth be known, it’s been calling to me for a few days now, and I’ve been resisting.
For years, Tuffy P and I, along with Ronald Bloore and Tim Noonan and Ardis Breeze, did what we called Sunday painting. We would go for a drive until we found a good spot (I can’t tell you just what a good spot entailed) to draw and paint. We always had a picnic lunch, and Bloore usually brought Retsina. We did this for years, until Ron’s health made it impossible for him to participate. Somehow or another, Bloore was the glue that kept it together. We have some of the drawings Ron did back then hanging in our house and I’ve been thinking of those days lately. Ron used to do his drawings with pencil on hot-pressed paper and I suppose my decision to use those materials was kind of a tribute to him.
It’s been a long time since I drew the landscape (or the gardens, as I’m doing now) regularly. It’s unique challenge. You have to deal with changing light conditions, weather that is too hot or too cold or too windy or too something else. Sometimes you can see a storm approach and you know you only have a short time to finish. The result reflects all those things and more. What do you draw, or perhaps as important, what don’t you draw? I recall when we used to go out drawing and painting with Bloore, we would often look for broad vistas, and he would sit down and draw the forest at his feet.
I’m not sure why I need to go back to drawing at this time, except that after making 6 encaustic paintings, I strongly felt as if I finished something. For a painter, being at the end of series of work can be very difficult, because you’re faced with the question, what next? Sometimes I look at my work and shake my head and think, how the heck did I come up with this? How did I get here? I don’t know what these drawings will lead to, I just know I need to do them.
Imagination Station and Bee Hotel
For a few years I’ve maintained structures in our backyard we call Imagination Stations. They are like shelters but too small to be comfortable for a person. I’m constantly adding to these things and they have both changed quite a bit over the seasons.
Last weekend we learned about bee hotels on the Secret Gardens of Oakville garden tour. It occurred to me that since I have these pre-existing structures, I might be able to easily make some changes to them to make them more inviting for bees.
Bee hotels in our area typically attract mason bees and leafcutter bees, which require hollow stems or existing holes for nesting. These are small, stingless native bees and they are serious pollinators. There are no guarantees that bee hotels will attract bees and there are many factors involved. As well, other bugs might like the new digs and move in, and these can include wasps. The good thing is that solitary wasps (that will live in this kind of structure) are not nasty stingers like the yellow jackets and also have a place in the greater ecosystem.
Today I started making some changes to Imagination Station #1 to make it a more inviting place for bees. The white items are sculptural elements provided to us by our friend Jacob Yerex. I have some of the logs with holes on the ground and others higher up to accommodate different species of bees. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, moves in.
Some people are confused when we introduce the backyard structures as Imagination Stations. For those folks I can say, actually, they’re bee hotels.
The fishin’ is always good…
With a break in the hot weather and the promise of a cloudy day, I felt compelled to load my fly rod and waders into the car this morning and go find a trout stream. It was a lovely day to be out, but then there is something to be said for any day spent on a trout stream.
The weather was perfect, cool with a bit of a breeze. It looked like it might rain, but it didn’t. We haven’t had a good rain in quite some time now. Even the bugs cooperated today – there were plenty of adult caddis around as well as some craneflies coming off the water. The only thing missing were the trout, none of which seemed to be aware this was a perfect day for fishin’. Sometimes the trout just don’t come to the party.
27th Street 